Yu, Hye Jeong. 2021. Acoustic cues to English word-final S in Korean English learners. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 27.3. 439-461. The purpose of this study is to look at whether Korean English learners differentiate homophonous morphemic and non-morphemic /s/ and /z/ using acoustic cues. This study examined acoustic properties of the third-person singular suffix (e.g., he makes, and he gives), the plural suffix (e.g., cats and dogs) and the alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/ in the final position of English words produced by Korean learners of English. A reading experiment was performed with six Korean learners of English and two native English speakers. The frication duration and center of gravity of word-final /s/ and /z/ (so-called S) were measured. The results are mostly consistent with previous studies, showing longer frication for non-morphemic S than for morphemic S. The Korean English learners exhibited considerable differences between voiced and unvoiced realizations of word-final S. 

Keywords: word-final S, homophone, morpheme, fricative duration, COG

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