한국인 영어 학습자의 동음이의어 'for∼four'와 'to∼two'의 음성실현에 대한 연구

Phonetic Realization of the Homophone Pairs 'for∼four' and 'to∼two' by Korean Learners of English

Homophones are words which are pronounced the same but have different meanings. Contrary to a wide variety of studies on homophone production by native speakers (Cohn et al. 2005, Gahl 2008, Guion 1995, Oh 2013b, Whalen 1991), the production of homophones by second language learners is rarely investigated. This paper explores how the two English homophone pairs 'for∼four' and 'to∼two' are phonetically differently realized by Korean learners of English. A production experiment was conducted on 15 Korean university students. Each participant produced the two homophone pairs depending on the following three conditions: i) citation, ii) unaccented phrase-medial, and iii) accented phrase-medial. Five acoustic measurements (duration, F1, F2, intensity, and F0) were compared for each homophone pair. Results revealed that in citation forms, both homophone pairs 'for∼ four' and 'to∼two' did not show any significant differences in all five acoustic measures. In unaccented condition, no distinction was found in all five acoustic measurements for the homophone words 'for' and 'four', but there was a significant difference for the homophone words 'to' and 'two' only in F2. In accented condition, no distinction was found in duration, F1, F2, and intensity, but a significant difference in F0, for both homophone pairs. These results imply that Korean learners of English generally produce homophone words as identical in all contexts and do not show the phonetic reduction of function words as in native speakers of English.