This study examines the spectral characteristics of English voiceless fricatives depending on the manner and place of articulation, gender, age, the post-fricative vowel height, and the location in a word based on the Buckeye Corpus of Spontaneous American English Speech. The acoustic analysis results indicate that fricative duration, the center of gravity (COG), variance and skewness play a role in distinguishing all English voiceless fricative articulation places, despite variation in gender, age, the location in a word and the post-fricative vowel height. These acoustic parameters distinguished the sibilant /s, ∫/ from the non-sibilant fricatives /f, Ɵ/, and alveolar /s/ from palate-alveolar /∫/, labiodental /f/ from interdental /Ɵ/: fricative duration, COG, and variance of the sibilant fricatives were significantly longer/higher than those of the non-sibilant fricatives. Skewness was high for the non-sibilant fricatives and low for the sibilants. (Korea Polytechnic College)

This study examines the use of discourse markers in English presentations by first-year university students in Korea. A total of forty-eight students made three-minute speeches about both education and social issues. Their speeches were analyzed regarding discourse marker types and the effects of speech topics and English proficiency. The results reveal that they rarely used discourse markers in their speeches and the frequently employed types were referential and structural markers. The education issue more familiar to them led to more use of discourse markers. In addition, the difference in English proficiency did not affect employing discourse markers. It is suggested that EFL learners' pragmatic knowledge be improved through sufficient input and output of discours markers. (Jinju National University of Education)

The current study aims to introduce the ESFWN-based Event Structure Frame Type (ESF type) Classifier for English verbs in text. It is a component of the Event Structure-based Inference Generation (ESIG) system we designed to generate event structure-related inferences. The classifier annotates a proper ESF type to a verb in a given sentence using the Event Structure Frame-annotated WordNet (ESFWN) and the Word Sense Disambiguation algorithm named EWISER. The advantage of the classifier is that because its verb classification depends on ESFWN, we only need word sense disambiguation, which maps the target verb to its proper wordnet synset. Given the WordNet synset for the target verb, the classifier annotates the ESF type corresponding to the synset. The F1-score of the classifier is 84.71%. (Seoul National University)

The current study investigated the effects of two writing genres (narrative and argumentative) and two writing task types (direct and translated) on L2 learners' writing performance in terms of lexical and syntactic complexity. A total of 46 college freshmen were asked to write four articles, one in each genre and one in each writing task type in a counterbalanced way. The findings are as follows: 1) the genre effect was found significant both in lexical and syntactic complexity measures, irrespective of writing task type, that argumentative texts displayed greater lexical and syntactic complexity than narratives; and 2) the role of L1 use in L2 writing (writing task type) was significantly evident in syntactic complexity measures, especially in narratives, but not in lexical complexity measures except for one measure of lexical diversity. The theoretical and pedagogical significance of the findings is discussed. (Chungnam National University)

The purpose of this study is to examine phonological variations of internet-based Korean language use. A review of data revealed variations in the consonants and vowels, and the syllable structure of a word. First, online language users tend to employ a polite speech style ending with -yeo instead of -yo, and the diphthong, /wə/ was also monophthongized into either /ə/ or /o/. Second, the nasal consonants /m/ or /ŋ/ were added into a syllable final position of a CV syllable, yielding a CVC syllable It was also found that the nasal /m/ was used in the deferential speech style with the omission of the middle syllable of -sup-ni-da, resulting in -sum-da. It is suggested that online Korean language users employ those phonological variations to deliver solidarity and intimacy to the addressee, establishing specific linguistic forms in an online speech community. (Sun Moon University)

This paper aims to investigate how syntactic complexity differs depending on production modes. To this end, we examined a learner corpus obtained from undergraduate students, which comprises casual conversations, monologues, and writings. The syntactic complexity of each mode was measured by an automatic syntactic complexity analyser (TAASSC). The results are as follows: a) both the monologue and writing modes elicited greater syntactic complexity than conversation. However, syntactic complexity was not significantly different between monologues and writings except for Complex Nominals per Clause; b) among the three modes, syntactic complexity (i.e., Mean Length of Sentences and Complex Nominals per T-unit) in conversation was the best indicator of the L2 proficiency. Different cognitive or executive processes underlying the modes may have affected the complexity use. This paper suggests pedagogical implications that a monologue-like manner, such as presenting motivating topics, may enhance the use of complex structures in L2 conversations. (Incheon National University)