Sun-Ah Jun

Overhearing a Language During Childhood

Despite its significance for understanding of language acquisition, the role of childhood language experience has been examined only in linguistic deprivation studies focusing on what cannot be learned readily beyond childhood. This study focused instead on long-term effects of what can be learned best during childhood. Our findings revealed that adults learning a language speak with a more nativelike accent if they overheard the language regularly during childhood than if they did not. These findings have important implications for understanding of language-learning mechanisms and heritage-language acquisition.

A Phonological Model of French Intonation

French intonation has been characterized as having a sequence of rising pitch movements. Recently, this intonation pattern has been phonologically analysed by several researchers such as Hirst and Di Cristo (1984, 1996), Mertens (1987, 1993), Di Cristo and Hirst (1993a, 1993b, 1996), (1993), 1995), and Hirst, Di Cristo, and Espesser (forthcoming), among others. These authors agree that a tone is associated with a stressed syllable, and that stress is rhythmic or postlexical. They also agree that an utterance is hierarchically organized into different prosodic levels, though some of these levels are not referred to in the same terminology. These models diverge principally in the levels of phrasing and their tonal representation. They also disagree in the notion of accent in French and in the degree of abstractness in the tonal representation, which is due to the conceptual differences linked to the application of the model: the focus is either on acoustic representation of models relevant for speech synthesis and recognition, or on abstract representation for phonological description, or on both levels.

The Accentual Phrase in the Korean prosodic hierarchy

A universal characteristic of speech is that utterances are generally broken down phonologically into smaller phrases which are marked by suprasegmental features such as intonational events and/or final lengthening. Moreover, phrases can be further divided into smaller-sized constituents. These constituents of varying size, or ‘prosodic units’, are typically characterised as performing the dual function of marking a unit of information and forming the domain of application of phonological rules. However, there is less agreement about how prosodic units are defined in generating an utterance. There are at least two different approaches (for a general review, see Shattuck-Hufnagel & Turk 1996). One approach posits that prosodic constituents are hierarchically organised and that prosodic constituents larger than a word are derived indirectly from the syntactic structure by referring to the edge of a maximal projection (Selkirk 1986), to the head–complement relation (Nespor & Vogel 1986) or to the c-command relation (Hayes 1989). This position, which I call the SYNTACTIC APPROACH, has been called the Prosodic Hierarchy theory, Prosodic Phonology or the Indirect Syntactic Approach (Selkirk 1984, 1986, Nespor & Vogel 1986, Hayes 1989).The other position, which I call the INTONATIONAL APPROACH, also assumes a hierarchical prosodic structure, but defines the prosodic units larger than a word based on the surface phonetic form of an utterance by looking at suprasegmental features such as intonation and final lengthening (e.g. Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986, Pierrehumbert & Beckman 1988, Jun 1993, Beckman 1996). Both approaches assume a prosodic hierarchy in which prosodic units are hierarchically organised and obey the Strict Layer Hypothesis (Selkirk 1984, 1986, Nespor & Vogel 1986; a prosodic unit of a given level of the hierarchy is composed of one or more units of the immediately lower prosodic unit, and is exhaustively contained in the superordinate unit of which it is a part). The prosodic units which are higher than a word, and which are commonly assumed by proponents of the syntactic approach, are the Phonological Phrase and the Intonation Phrase, while those assumed by the intonational approach are the Accentual Phrase, the Intermediate Phrase and the Intonation Phrase. The prosodic units below the Phonological Phrase, i.e. the Syllable, Foot and Prosodic Word, do not differ much in the two approaches, since these units have more fixed roles vis-a-vis syntax or intonation.The intonational unit corresponding to the Phonological Phrase is the Intermediate Phrase in English (Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986) or the Accentual Phrase in Korean (Jun 1993), in that these are the units immediately higher than a Word. The Phonological Phrase is defined based on the syntactic structure, but the intonational units are defined by intonational markers. The Intermediate Phrase in English is the domain of downstep, and is delimited by a phrase accent, H- or L-; the Accentual Phrase in standard (Seoul) Korean is demarcated by a phrase-final High tone. The next higher level, the Intonation Phrase, is much more similar in the two approaches. Even though the proponents of the syntactic approach define this level in terms of syntax (e.g. a sister node of a root sentence), they claim that this level is the domain of the intonational contour and is sensitive to semantic factors (Selkirk 1980, 1984, 1986, Nespor & Vogel 1986). In this paper, we will focus on the prosodic level corresponding to the Phonological Phrase.

Holding on to childhood language memory

While early language experience seems crucial for mastering phonology, it remains unclear whether there are lasting benefits of speaking a language regularly during childhood if the quantity and quality of speaking drop dramatically after childhood. This study explored the accessibility of early childhood language memory. Specifically, it compared perception and production of Korean speech sounds by childhood speakers who had spoken Korean regularly for a few years during childhood to those of two other groups: (1) childhood hearers who had heard Korean regularly during childhood but had spoken Korean minimally, if at all; and (2) novice learners. All three groups were enrolled in first-year college Korean language classes. Childhood speakers were also compared to native speakers of Korean to see how native-like they were. The results revealed measurable long-term benefits of childhood speaking experience, underscoring the importance of early language experience, even if such experience diminishes dramatically beyond childhood.

Prosodic Phrasing and Attachment Preferences

The attachment of a relative clause (RC) has been found to differ across languages when its head noun is a complex NP. One attempt to explain the attachment differences is the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (IPH) proposed by Fodor (1998, 2002). The goal of this paper is to show how the default phrasing of a sentence (explicit prosody), defined phonologically, differs across seven languages (English, Greek, Spanish, French, Farsi, Japanese, and Korean), and how the prosodic phrasing of a sentence in each language, both default and nondefault, matches the interpretation of RC attachment by individual speakers. Observed tendencies show that there is a direct relationship between the prosodic phrasing and the interpretation of RC attachment, strongly supporting the IPH. In addition, the paper discusses the status of default phrasing and the factors affecting the default phrasing, including rhythmic and syntactic factors and their interactions.

The phonetics and phonology of Korean prosody : intonational phonology and prosodic structure

A linguistic dissertation presenting experiment results focused on Korean speech rhythms and how they differ from those in English. The volume describes differences in the role of intonationally defined prosodic grouping influencing the pronunciation of consonants and vowels, the results of researc

Early childhood language memory in the speech perception of international adoptees

It is as yet unclear whether the benefits of early linguistic experiences can be maintained without at least some minimal continued exposure to the language. This study compared 12 adults adopted from Korea to the US as young children (all but one prior to age one year) to 13 participants who had no prior exposure to Korean to examine whether relearning can aid in accessing early childhood language memory. All 25 participants were recruited and tested during the second week of first-semester college Korean language classes. They completed a language background questionnaire and interview, a childhood slang task and a Korean phoneme identification task. Results revealed an advantage for adoptee participants in identifying some Korean phonemes, suggesting that some components of early childhood language memory can remain intact despite many years of disuse, and that relearning a language can help in accessing such a memory.

A Prosodic Analysis of Three Types of Wh-Phrases in Korean

Wh-phrases in Korean are ambiguous due to the lexical ambiguity of “wh” words: wh-pronouns as in a wh-question, or indefinite pronouns as in a yes/no-question. Furthermore, since a wh-word in Korean is in-situ (i.e. not moved to the front of a sentence as in English), wh-questions are not distinguished from echo questions in their surface forms. In this paper, we investigated prosodic characteristics disambiguating these three types of wh-phrases: 1) wh-question, 2) yes/no-question, and 3) incredulity question, a kind of echo question giving an incredulity meaning. Production and perception data were examined to discover what prosodic features are used to distinguish these three types of wh-phrases and which feature is more salient and reliable in perceiving such differences. The production results show that yes/no-questions and other types of questions are distinguished by different accentual phrasing, while incredulity and wh-questions are distinguished by different peak amplitudes, pitch ranges, and boundary tones. Interestingly, not all speakers used the same strategy to distinguish incredulity from wh-questions. The results of the perception test suggest that accentual phrasing is significantly related to the perception of three types while amplitude and boundary tones are significantly related to the perception of wh-and incredulity questions, respectively.

The Effect of Age on the Acquisition of Second Language Prosody

This study reports an exploratory analysis of the age of arrival (AoA) effect on the production of second language (L2) prosody. Three groups of Mandarin-speaking immigrants (N = 10 in each group) with varying AoA in the United States and ten native speakers of English as controls participated in the study. All participants read a paragraph of English, and their speech samples were subjected to three prosodic analyses: speech and articulation rates, native speakers’ judgment of the prosody based on segment-filtered speech, and analyses of tones and prosodic groupings using the Mainstream American English Tones and Break Indices (MAE_ToBI) transcription conventions. The L2 groups also filled out a survey providing information about their demographic background, English input, and socio-psychological aspects of language learning. The results revealed that the AoA factor impacted different aspects of prosody to varying degrees. Group differences were statistically significant for speech rate, degree of foreign prosody, the frequency of pitch accents, and the frequency of high boundary tones (H-H%). However, group differences were not significant for articulation rate, prosodic groupings, and the rest of the ToBI-labeled phonological categories. Multiple regression analyses further confirmed the AoA effect on degree of foreign prosody, the frequency of pitch accents, and high boundary tones (H-H%); AoA remained a significant predictor controlling for the effects of other variables. However, speech rate was predicted by English media exposure and motivation variable but not by AoA.

Acquisition of second language intonation

Foreign accents in second language (L2) production are caused by the phonological system and phonetic realization of the first language (L1), including both segmental and prosodic features. This paper examines the intonation structure of Seoul Korean and its realization by American English speakers. Four English speakers of Korean, differing in fluency, and two Korean speakers participated. Thirty‐six sentences were designed to test the realization of prosodic structure, focus, and intonation patterns by varying the number of syllables within a word and a sentence, and conditions for the segment–tone interaction. Preliminary results show that, as in segmental data, more advanced L2 speakers produced more nativelike intonation pattern and prosodic structure than less advanced ones. Advanced L2 speakers were better in grouping words into phrases and producing the phrase‐final high tone than less advanced speakers, but they still produced English‐like pitch accents following English stress rules, suggesting that a lexically linked prosodic feature is hard to suppress. In addition, less advanced L2 speakers more often produced each word in one intonation phrase, reflecting a limitation of information processing as found in L1 acquisition. Finally, more advanced speakers distinguished the segmentally triggered tones better than less advanced speakers but with large variation.