Korean Learners' English Stress Placement and Vowel Reduction in Morphologically Related Words

This study considered how Korean learners place stress in morphologically related words in English according to suffix type and phonological opacity. It also examined how Korean learners treat stress and vowel reduction in morphologically related words. For these, the participants' stress productions in the three types of nonsuffixed bases were compared with one another and with associated morphological derivatives, and the vowel of non suffixed bases was compared with the corresponding vowel of opaque nonneutral derivatives. The results of this study were as follows: 1) The participants acquired stress of neutral bases more readily than that of nonneutral bases and they placed stress in transparent nonneurtral bases more accurately than in opaque nonneutral bases; 2) The participants showed higher accuracy for stress of transparent nonneutral derivatives than that of neutral derivatives; 3) The stress assignment in neutral and transparent nonneutral derivatives was found to be easier than in opaque derivatives; 4) The participants assigned stress more accurately in nonsuffixed bases than associated neutral derivatives while they exhibited higher stress accuracy for transparent and opaque nonneutral derivatives than for bases; and 5) The participants acquired stress placement earlier than vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and treated stress shift and vowel reduction as independent processes. On the basis of these findings, the pedagogical implications were suggested.