부산대학교 도서관

This study aims to examine the perceptual patterns of Korean stop consonants in word-initial position among Sri Lankan learners. Using Best's PAM as a theoretical framework, we predicted how Sri Lankans would assimilate Korean sounds to Sinhala sounds, and also examined the perceptual changes in Sri Lankan Korean language learners (beginner and intermediate) as their learning experience increased. The prediction based on the results of Perception Experiment I was that Sri Lankan learners would have great difficulty distinguishing between lenis and fortis in the case of bilabial and velar stops when perceiving word-initial stops. In the case of alveolar consonants, it would be difficult to perceive not only lenis- fortis but also lenis-aspirated pairs, and the order of difficulty was predicted to be / /-/ / > / /-/ / > / /-/ /. The results of Perception Experiment II showed results that were generally consistent with the predictions of PAM for both beginner and intermediate levels. Even with increased learning experience, Sri Lankan learners were found to still have difficulty perceiving ‘fortis’.