• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.14-22
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• 2003

In this study, we examined the acoustic characteristics of Korean vowels through a production test under three conditions of speaking rates (slow, normal, fast). The effects of a change in speaking .ate on vowel duration were found to be very strong. The faster speaking rate was, the shorter the total duration of vowels was. But the duration ratio of two components of diphthong was not changed significantly according to changes in speaking rate. But unlike the temporal aspects, the formant value of vowels at their steady-state and change ratio of formant of semivowels were not affected strongly by the change in speaking rate.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• autumn
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• pp.89-92
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• 2001

본 논문에서는 한국어 대용량 음성인식 시스템의 기초가 되는 자소(grapheme)가 지니는 음가를 분류하였다. 한국어 자소를 음성-음운학적으로 조음 위치와 방법에 따라 분류하여, 그 음가 분석에 관한 연구와 함께 한국어 음성인식에서 앞으로 많이 논의될 청음음성학(auditory phonetics)에 대하여 연구하였다. 한국어는 발음상의 구조와 특성에 따라 음소 분리가 가능하여 초성, 중성, 종성 자소로 나눌 수 있다. 본 논문에서 초성은 자음음소 18개, 중성은 모음 음소(단모음, 이중모음) 17개, 그리고 'ㅅ' 추가 8종성체계의 자음음소로 하였다. 청음음성학적 PLU(Phoneme Like Unit)의 구분 근거는 우리가 맞춤법 표기에서 주로 많이 틀리는 자소(특히, 모음)는 그 음가가 유사한 것으로 판단을 하였으며, 그 유사음소를 기반으로 작성한 PLU는 자음에 'ㅅ' 종성을 추가하였고, 모음에 (ㅔ, ㅐ)를 하나로, (ㅒ, ㅖ)를 하나로, 그리고 모음(ㅚ, ㅙ, ㅞ)를 하나의 자소로 분류하였다. 혀의 위치와 조음 방법과 위치에 따라 분류한 자음과 모음의 자소를 HTK를 이용하여 HMM(Hidden Markov Model)의 자소 Clustering하여 그것의 음가를 찾는 결정트리를 검색하여 고립어인식과 핵심어 검출 시스템에 적용 실험한 결과 시스템의 성능이 향상되었다.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.3-10
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• 1998

본 논문에서는 음소단위 PSOLA 한국어 합성을 LSP line의 조절과 자모음 분석을 통해서 실시하였다. 음성합성에서 많이 사용하는 triphone, diphone, demisyllable등과 같은 합성단위들은 자연스러운 합성음을 위해 다양한 음운환경에서 수집된다. 그러나, 이런 방법 은 많은 시간과 메모리가 요구된다. 본 논문에서는 합성단위로서 자음17개, 모음 16개로 총 33개의 음소를 이용하였다. 자음은 후위모음/이/인 CV에서 segment되고, 모음은 단음절의 단모음과 이중모음을 1인의 화자로부터 합성데이터를 수집하였다. 또한, 10명의 화자가 발성 한 CV에서 각 모음에 따라 변하는 자음의 주파수를 분석하였고, CV+VC 또는 CV+CV에서 각 자음에 따라 변하는 모음의 포먼트변화를 분석하였다. 분석결과를 토대로 모음은 LSP line을 조절해서 PSOLA합성을 하고, 자음은 합성하려는 모음과 결합하였다. 그 결과 6개의 합성단어에 대한 청취율은 65%를 보였다.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

This study aims to enhance English pronunciation education for Korean students by examining the impact of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect on the articulation of English vowels. Data were obtained through the Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC). Seven Korean words and ten English mono-syllabic words were uttered by adult, male speakers of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect, in particular, speakers with little to no experience living abroad were selected. Formant frequencies of the recorded corpus data were measured using spectrograms, provided by the speech analysis program, Praat. The recorded data were analyzed using the articulatory graph for formants. The results show that in comparison with speakers using standard Korean, those using the Gyeongsang regional dialect articulated both Korean and English vowels in the back. Moreover, the contrast between standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect in the pronunciation of Korean vowels (/으/, /어/) affected how the corresponding English vowels (/ə/, /ʊ/) were articulated. Regardless of the use of regional dialect, a general feature of vowel pronunciation among Korean people is that they show more narrow articulatory movements, compared with that of native English speakers. Korean people generally experience difficulties with discriminating tense and lax vowels, whereas native English speakers have clear distinctions in vowel articulation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.264-269
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• 2008

When English disyllabic words are borrowed into the Korean language, the loanwords tend to have extra syllables. The purpose of this paper is to find the syllable increase conditions in loanword adaptation and further to provide an algorithm to predict the syllable numbers of English disyllabic loanwords. There are three syllable augmentation conditions. The presence of diphthongs and the existence of consonant clusters guarantee the increase of the syllable numbers in the English loanwords. Further, the quality of the final consonant (and the preceding vowel) sometimes trigger the increase of the syllable numbers. Based on the conditions, an algorithm composed of 4 rules are proposed in order to predict the number of syllables in English disyllabic loanwords.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.251-256
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• 2005

When English monosyllabic words are adapted to the Korean language, the loanwords tend to carry extra syllables. The purpose of this paper is to find the syllable augmentation conditions in loanword adaptation and further to provide an algorithm to predict the syllable numbers of English monosylabic loanwords. Three syllable augmentation conditions are found as follows: 1) the existence of diphthong, 2) the existence of consonant clusters, and 3) the quality of the final consonant (and the preceding vowel). Based on these three conditions, an algorithm to predict the syllable number of English monosyllabic loanwords are proposed as three rules applied iteratively with ordering. In addition, the applications of the algorithm to data are given.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to determine how the Korean diphthong /jo/ shows phonetic variation in various linguistic environments. The pronunciation of /jo/ is discussed, focusing on the relationship between phonetic variation and the distribution range of vowels. The location in a word (monosyllable, word-initial, word-medial, word-final) and word class (content word, function word) were analyzed using the speech of 10 female speakers of the Seoul Corpus. As a result of determining the frequency of appearance of /jo/ in each environment, the pronunciation type and word class were affected by the location in a word. Frequent phonetic reduction was observed in the function word /jo/ in the acoustic analysis. The word class did not change the average phonetic values of /jo/, but changed the distribution of individual tokens. These results indicate that the linguistic environment affects the phonetic distribution of vowels.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to obtain normative nasalance scores for adult subjects speaking the Korean language and to determine whether significantly different scores exist for female and male speakers. Mean nasalance scores were obtained for normal speaking Korean adults while they are reading vowels, consonants, no nasal sentence, mild nasal sentence, and high nasal sentence. Thirty adults who had lived in Seoul area with normal articulation, resonance, and voice were included. Among the subjects 15 were male aged 24-38 years and 15 were female aged 19-33. Nasometer data were collected and analyzed using the Kay Nasometer 6400. Nasalance scores were evaluated to investigate the effect of gender by using statistical tests. Nasalance data showed that nasalance values varied accroding to speech stimuli, and there was no significant difference in nasalance scores between male and female speakers in most of the language samples.

• MALSORI
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• no.25_26
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• pp.3-26
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• 1993

The goals of the present study were (3) to collect and analyze sets of fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequency (F1, F2, F3) data of Korean diphthongs from ten linguistically homogeneous speakers of Korean males, and (2) to make a comparative study of Korean monophthongs and diphthongs. Various definitions, kinds, and previous studies of diphthongs were examined in the introduction. Procedures for screening subjects to form a linguistically homogeneous group, time point selection and formant determination were explained in the following section. The principal findings were as follows: 1. Much variation was observed in the ongliding part of diphthongs. 2. F2 values of (j) group descended while those of [w] group ascended, 3. The average duration of diphthongs were about 110 msec, and there was not much variation between speakers and diphthongs. 4. In a comparative study of monophthongs and diphthongs, Fl and F2 values of the same offgliding part at the third time point almost converged. 5. The gliding of diphthongs was very short beginning from the h-noise. Perceptual studies using speech synthesis are desirable to find major parameters for diphthongs. The results of the present study wi11 be useful in the area of automated speech recognition and computer synthesis of speech.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.12
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• pp.459-466
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• 2009

While Korean allows the same consonants at the coda of the preceding syllable and at the onset of the following syllable, English does not allow the geminate consonants in the same intervocalic position. Due to this difference between Korean and English, Korean learners of English tend to incorrectly produce geminate consonants for English geminate graphemes as in $su\underline{mm}er$. Based on this observation, a pilot study was designed to investigate how Korean learners of English perceive and produce English doubleton graphemes and singleton graphemes. Twenty Korean college students were asked to perform a forced-choice perception test as well as a production test for the 36 real word stimuli which consist of (near) minimal pairs of singleton and doubleton graphemes. The result showed that the accuracy rates for the words with singleton graphemes were higher than those for the words with doubleton graphemes both in perception and production because the subjects misperceived and misproduced the doubleton graphemes as geminates due to orthographic influence. In addition, the low error rates of the word with voiced stops were accounted for by Korean language transfer. Further, spectrographic analyses were provided where more production errors were witnessed in doubleton grapheme words than singleton grapheme words. Finally, pedagogical implications are provided.