Perception of English Intervocalic Liquids by Korean Learners of English

This paper investigates acoustic cues to perception of English liquids by Korean learners of English. In a discrimination test, participants were provided with stimuli of speech tokens containing intervocalic liquids whose F2, F3, and duration were manipulated and their responses to each stimulus were statistically analyzed. The result shows that Koreans, unlike native speakers, utilize secondary acoustic cues (F2 and duration) considerably in perception of English /l/ and /./ as well as the primary cue, F3. An analysis on a specific cue weighting of Korean listeners was also attempted using statistical machine learning techniques.