한국인 영어학습자의 영어 발화에 대한 리듬메트릭 측면에서의 접근

Rhythm Metrics Approach on English Speech by Korean learners of English

Linguists have classified various languages into stress-timed languages, syllable-timed languages, and mora-timed languages according to their rhythmic properties. In this study, English sentences read by Korean learners of English were evaluated by English natives and rhythmic metrics such as %V (proportion of vocalic intervals in the sentence), ΔC (standard deviation of intervocalic intervals within the sentence), ΔV (standard deviation of vocalic intervals within the sentence), nPVI-C (pair-wise variability index of intervocalic intervals), nPVI-V (pair-wise variability index of vocalic intervals), VarcoC (standard deviation of intervocalic interval duration divided by the mean) and VarcoV (standard deviation of vocalic interval duration divided by the mean) were used to capture their relative effect on Korean learners' English proficiency evaluation. Contrary to the author's expectation, these rhythm metrics were not as powerful as in discriminating languages. However, %V and ΔC were shown to be more prevailing tools to evaluate Korean learners' rhythm.