Study on utterance-final lengthening in sentence medial position in the Korean speech of Jordanian learners
The International Network fo Korean Language and Culture, Esraa Hasan Esraa Hasan · 2018
This paper examines the temporal aspect of utterance-final lengthening in the Korean speech of Jordanian learners in which a foreign tone was observed, especially on the boundaries of words followed by a stop. Although these pauses are usually accompanied by vowel lengthening in the Korean language as well, the vowel lengthening made by Jordanian speakers seems to be different. To discover the reasons for this phenomenon, this study assumed that stress position in Jordanian Arabic affects utterance-final lengthening in Korean. Based on this assumption, this study examined the vowel duration of eight targeted words inserted into the middle of eight sentences followed by pauses. Resultantly, a longer vowel duration was observed in the speech of Jordanian learners when the stress fell on penultimate syllables, whereas ordinary vowel duration was observed when the stress fell on the antepenultimate position. The results suggest that further studies should follow to reveal whether there are other aspects of the mother language that may be considered to interfere with the Korean language speech of Jordanian learners.