Voice Quality Processing Strategy of Korean Learners of Chinese

This paper investigates whether the advanced Korean learners of standard Chinese produce Chinese with specific voice quality, and which voice quality parameters have significant difference. The study includes comparative analysis between the Korean and Chinese vowel /a/ for Korean speakers. It can be made certain by measuring voice quality parameters by means of EGG (electroglottalgraphy). The results showed that the Korean learners use specific voice quality features for improving Chinese nativeness, and especially the phonation quality changes were obvious. They produced Chinese phonation quality characteristics depending on higher F0 (fundamental frequency), lower OQ (open quotient), SQ (speed quotient) and H1-H2 (harmonic amplitude difference) compared with Korean. In addition, this study found that there are similarities between phonation quality features of Korean/ Chinese contrasts and Korean lax/ tense contrast features. It suggests, that in the target language processing, phonetic features of the L1 (mother tongue) contribute to “phonation quality” perception and production of a L2 (second language).