Abstract
This study examines factors which affect the recognition of the intervocalic tense fricative by the groups of native Korean speakers and of Japanese learners of Korean language. The latter consists of the subgroups of the beginners and the advanced level learners. The stimuli consist of the variety of sounds transformed from either of a Korean tense word and of a non-tense word. The length of the pair of fricatives and of preceding vowels were gradually extended and contracted. Participants were requested to listen to the stimuli and judge whether they recognized the sounds as tense consonants. Results showed that the length of the preceding vowel had no significant influence on the recognition either of native Korean speakers or of Japanese learners of Korean language. Regarding the length of fricative, however, the recognition rate of the tense consonant was found to be increased in all groups when the length of the fricative section was prolonged. While native Korean speakers showed the higher recognition rates in stimuli produced from the tense word than those produced from the non-tense word, Japanese learners, on the other hand, showed slight difference between the two kinds of stimuli regardless of their Korean language proficiency level. These facts suggest that while Korean native speakers take factors other than the length of fricative in their judgment of the tense consonant into consideration, Japanese learners tend to rely solely on the length of fricative.
