English Stop Production before a Nasal in Korean L2 Learners

Abstract

The present study examines the production forms of English stops before a nasal produced by Korean learners of English (L2). Korean L2 learners have to learn the phonetic and phonological properties of an English stop before a nasal as a stop is not allowed in this position in Korean. This study attempted first to investigate whether Korean L2 learners were able to establish an L2 phonological subsystem with distinct phonetic categories for English stops in this position, and then to uncover what acoustic values they exploited for these new categories depending on their L2 proficiency level. The results revealed that low-proficiency talkers showed considerable evidence of L1 interference; in some instances, they did not create a new category for a stop by substituting it with a nasal. In other instances, they inserted a vowel after it. They also realized voiceless stops with significantly longer voicing than those of native English talkers. In contrast, high-proficiency talkers realized voiced and voiceless stops with significantly longer stop closure than did native English talkers respectively. This paper showed that stop categories with different acoustic values were established by Korean learners of English compared to native English talkers and that the time of exposure to the L2 affected production forms as has been suggested in many previous studies.