Research

Here you can learn more about my projects.

a_project Compound tensification in Korean - Bridging phonology, phonetics, and morphology [paper] [poster]
This is my dissertation project studying a morpho-phonological process in Korean called sai-sios, or compound tensification. It causes a plain obstruent in the initial position of the second noun in a noun + noun compound to become tense. Compound tensification is interesting since it's not fully predictable when it occurs and what happens to the pronunciations when it does. I look at speech data from a corpus and a production experiment to answer questions of how compound tensification is manifested in actual speech, and whether there is categorical distinction between tense stops derived from compound tensification and underlying plain and tense stops, as described in traditional literature.
q_project The prosodic patterns in English production by L1 speakers and Korean L2 speakers of English [abstract]
I looked at prosodic patterns exhibited by Korean l2 speakers of English compared to those of native speakers. Since English and Korean are prosodically distinct languages, I expected unique patterns to arise for Korean L2 speakers, mainly due to L1 influence. Specifically, I hypothesized that the difference would stem from phrase edges being more prominent in Korean. This hypothesis is supported by the result that shows that L2 speakers are more consistently affected by boundary effects. It further shows that specific prosodic characteristics of l1 shape the realization of L2 speech, which helps us understand why L2 speech sounds distinct from L1 systematicall.y