Yoon Tae-Jin, Ha Seunghee
Department of English Language and Literature, Sungshin Women's University, Seoul 02844, Korea.
Division of Speech Pathology and Audiology, Audiology and Speech Pathology Research Institute, Hallym University, Chuncheon-si 24252, Korea.
Children (Basel). 2022 Nov 3;9(11):1690. doi: 10.3390/children9111690.
The study examined the link between Korean-speaking children's vowel production and its perception by inexperienced adults and also observed whether ongoing vowel changes in mid-back vowels affect adults' perceptions when the vowels are produced by children. This study analyzed vowels in monosyllabic words produced by 20 children, ranging from 2 to 6 years old, with a focus on gender distinction, and used them as perceptual stimuli for word perception by 20 inexperienced adult listeners. Acoustic analyses indicated that F0 was not a reliable cue for distinguishing gender, but the first two formants served as reliable cues for gender distinction. The results confirmed that the spacing of the two low formants is linguistically and para-linguistically important in identifying vowel types and gender. However, a pair of non-low back vowels caused difficulties in correct vowel identification. Proximal distance between the vowels could be interpreted to result in the highest mismatch between children's production and adults' perception of the two non-low back vowels in the Korean language. We attribute the source of the highest mismatch of the two non-low back vowels to the ongoing sound change observed in high and mid-back vowels in adult speech. The ongoing vowel change is also observed in the children's vowel space, which may well be shaped after the caregivers whose non-low back vowels are close to each other.
该研究考察了讲韩语儿童的元音发音与其在无经验成年人中的感知之间的联系，还观察了中后元音正在进行的元音变化在儿童发出这些元音时是否会影响成年人的感知。本研究分析了20名年龄在2至6岁之间儿童所发单音节词中的元音，重点关注性别差异，并将其作为20名无经验成年听众进行单词感知的知觉刺激。声学分析表明，基频不是区分性别的可靠线索，但前两个共振峰是区分性别的可靠线索。结果证实，两个低频共振峰的间距在识别元音类型和性别方面在语言和超语言方面都很重要。然而，一对非低后元音在正确识别元音方面造成了困难。元音之间的近端距离可以解释为导致儿童发音与成年人对韩语中两个非低后元音的感知之间的最大不匹配。我们将两个非低后元音最大不匹配的根源归因于在成人语音的高、中后元音中观察到的正在进行的语音变化。在儿童的元音空间中也观察到了正在进行的元音变化，这很可能是在非低后元音彼此接近的照顾者之后形成的。
