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This paper investigates the acoustic characteristics of L* in English and compares them with those of Korean speakers of English, discussing some relevant problems that Korean speakers inevitably entail in their production of the English L* pitch accent. In the phonetic experiment, three acoustic properties of L*, pitch range, amplitude, and duration, were examined and compared between native speakers and Korean speakers. The recording stimuli were composed of three types of questions, all involving L*: yes-no question, alternative question, and incredulity question. Results show that the pitch range is significantly greater in native speakers' utterances than in Korean speakers'. The amplitude in L* syllables is significantly lower in native speakers' utterances, and the duration of the L* syllables is also statistically longer in native speakers' utterances than in Korean speakers'. These findings can be interpreted as saying that Korean speakers do not drop the pitch of L* as much as native speakers and do not produce the L* syllables as long and loud as native speakers. This may consequently reduce the prominence of stressed/accented syllables and also curtail the rising effect toward the end of the questions, which will surely give a perceptual impression of much deviance from English per se. The acoustic patterns of L* produced by Korean speakers seem to effectively reflect the prosodic structure of Korean phonology; that is, the pitch range is not comparatively small in Korean and amplitude and duration do not play a significant role due to the lack of stress. Therefore, such differences might be attributed to their mother tongue transfer, which should be remedied through education of English intonation.

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