• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.166-177
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• 2000

The purpose of this study was to create letters for of nonliterary Pulang tribe in Thailand those who immigrant from China. illiterate Pulang tribe hand down their tradition by primary oral culture therefore their tradition can't initiate and keep, moreover, it may disappear throughout history. So it is expected to crusade against unlettered people. The scheme of research adopted in this study was a minority race who habitate at the northern Machan, Chiangrai in Thailand. It is not only analysis of language but also the eradication of literacy and the research based on linguistic, ethnolinguistic, and primary oral culture. Five Pulang people who live in that area were chosen for creating letters. By using the I. P. A., after each word was listen to their pronunciation one by one it was described and repeated this process several times; the material words and humanbody were pointed in front of them while other words were described by gesture. For final description, number of people were in the lineup for listening the sound of words and phrases to sentences. In the first stage, it was an analysis segmental of Pulang: vocoid, contoid and diphthong were described with each sample syllables and words. The suprasegmental were studied with intonation and juncture of the words in the second stage. Two words were compared and different meanings within their intonation and juncture were shown. At the end of this part, each case of phonemic or morphophonemics representation described the juncture in the words. In the third stage, minimal pairs were analyzed with vowels and consonants and described in free variation based on words. In the last stage, syllable structure in open syllable and closed syllable was studied and then each syllable of its structure was analyzed with samples. There were thirty-two phonemes in apong Pulang as follows: seven vocoids; a, i, e, o, u, ${\ae}$, and $\wedge$, one diphthong; wu, 24 contoids; b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, k, 1, m, n, ${\eta}, {\;}p^{h}$, p, p, r, s, s, sh, t, t, w, and y. Their pronunciations of p, s, d, $p^{h}$, j, and t are frequently used in speech and are unique in triphthong. Moreover, most of the words used initial and final consonant cluster.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.77-88
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• 2002

Acoustical correlates of stress can be classified as duration, intensity and fundamental frequency. This study examined the acoustical differences in the first two syllables of stressed English words produced by ten American and Korean speakers. The Korean subjects scored very high on the TOEFL. They read at a normal speed a fable from which the acoustical parameters of eight words were analyzed. In order to make the data comparison meaningful, each parameter was collected at 100 dynamic time points proportional to the total duration of the two syllables. Then the ratio of the parameter sum of the first rime to that of the second rime was calculated to determine the relative prominence of the syllables. Results showed that the durations of the first two syllables were almost comparable between the Americans and Koreans. However, statistically significant differences showed up in the diphthong pronunciations and in the words with the second syllable stressed. Also, remarkably high r-squared values were found between pairs of the three acoustical parameters, which suggests that either one or a combination of two or more parameters may account for the prominence of a syllable within a word.

• MALSORI
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• no.46
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• pp.87-102
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• 2003

In this paper, we present an English pronunciation correction system for Korean speakers and show some of experimental results on it. The aim of the system is to detect mispronounced phonemes in spoken words and to give appropriate correction comments to users. There are several English pronunciation correction systems adopting speech recognition technology, however, most of them use conventional speech recognition engines. From this reason, they could not give phoneme based correction comments to users. In our system, we build two kinds of phoneme models: standard native speaker models and Korean's error models. We also design recognition network based on phonemes to detect Koreans' common mispronunciations. We get 90% detection rate in insertion/deletion/replacement of phonemes, but we cannot get high detection rate in diphthong split and accents.

• 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.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.143-148
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• 2002

This study examined the foreign accent of Korean speakers of English concerning vowel length and utterance position. It then attempts to explain the foreign accent of Koreans when they speak English. The method was to measure the sentence-initial and sentence-final vowels as spoken by Koreans. I chose these two positions, sentence-initial and sentence-final, in order to know if Korean speakers of English, compared with native English speakers, show a difference in sentence stress. I chose English diphthongs, because most Koreans have difficulty pronouncing these sounds. I found that Korean speakers of English as a second language do not know English sentence stress patterns and show a foreign accent, especially when using diphthongs.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.87-93
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• 2009

The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate and compare the vowel lengths of English diphthongs and low vowels among native-English-speaking Americans and Korean college exchange students. To do this eight words and sixteen sentences were uttered and recorded by nine subjects, five Korean subjects and four American subjects. Results showed that the vowel lengths of English low vowels between American subjects and Korean subjects were different, which may lead to foreign accent of Korean speakers. Comparing the average length of English low vowels of Korean subjects with those of American subjects, we can see that American subjects tend to pronounce the English low vowels longer than Korean subjects do. In the pronunciation of diphthongs /eI/ and /ou/, Korean subjects pronounced longer than American subjects did. However, in the pronunciation of diphthongs /au/, /aI/, and /ɔI/, American subjects pronounced longer than Korean subjects did.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.7-14
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• 2001

This study was done to find out the difference in vowel length between the English language produced by American soldiers and KATUSA soldiers. Though English pronunciation by Koreans shows different features in many ways, I focused on English vowel length of KATUSA soldiers. I wanted to know if KATUSA soldiers, when compared with American soldiers, showed a foreign accent when they produced English diphthongs. The reason I wanted to deal with English diphthongs is that most Koreans have difficulty in pronouncing them since they do not understand the concept of diphthongs. Therefore I selected five English diphthongs, /aI/, cI/, /au/, /eI/, /ou,/as/ the experimental object, and I tried to find out the foreign accent of them. In this study I also tried to find out the vowel lengths in relation to their utterance positions. I investigated the difference of the English diphthong length between American and KATUSA soldiers using information gathered from experimental results.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.71-74
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• 2003

In this paper, we present some of experimental results developed in computer-based English Pronunciation Correction System for Korean speakers. The aim of the system is to detect incorrectly pronounced phonemes in spoken words and to give correction comment to users. Speech data were collected from 254 native speakers and 411 Koreans, then used for phoneme modeling and test. We built two types of acoustic phoneme models: native speaker model and Korean speaker model. We also built langugage models to reflect Koreans' commonly occurred mispronunications. The detection rate was over 90% in insertion/deletion/replacement of phonemes, but we got under 75% detection rate in diphthong split and accents.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.323-331
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• 2013

This study aims at investigating and comparing the diphthongs, words, and sentences between two Korean highschool students groups using the Praat program. To do this English words and sentences were uttered and recorded by twenty Korean subjects; each group has ten subjects. All the subjects are female and their grades range from freshman to sophomore. Acoustic features were measured from a sound spectrogram with the help of the Praat software program and analyzed through statistical analysis. Results showed that the lengths of diphthongs and words were different between two groups, but the difference was not significant. However, in the lengths of sentence utterance, the group of 5 to 6 grade students in the current grading system pronounced longer than that of 1 to 2 grade students. Especially in the pronunciation of the first two sentences with more than five words, the difference was significant. From the data of the overall sum of words between the two subject groups, we were able to find out that the differences of the lengths of the words with the diphthongs were not significant, but those of the sentences with more than five words were significant. In the pronunciation of the words between coat and code, the length of the diphthong in coat was smaller than that of in code.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.25-47
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• 2002

Human language activity in the information society has been developing the communication system between humans and machines. The aim of this study was to analyze dialectal speech in Korea. One hundred Kyungsang and one hundred Cholla informants participated in this study. A CSL and Flexible laryngeal fiberscope were used for analysis of the acoustic and glottal gestures of all the vowels and consonants. Test words were made on the picture cards and letter cards which contained each vowel and each consonant, respectively. The dialogue between the examiner and the informants was recorded in a question and answer manner. The acoustic results of two dialects were as follows: Kyungsang and Cholla informants showed neutralization between /e/ and /$\varepsilon$. However, the apertures of Kyungsang vowels /i, w, u, o/ were higher than those of Cholla vowels. The /wi/ and /$\varepsilon$/ of Kyungsang Diphthong vowels were shown as simple vowels /i/ and /$\varepsilon$/ in Cholla dialect. The VOT of Cholla dilaect was longer than that of Kyungsang dialect. The fricative frequence of Kyurlgsang dialect was about 1000Hz higher than that of Cholla dialect. The glottal widths on fiberscopic images showed that the consonant durations of Kyungsang and Cholla dialects were correlated all together with the acoustic duration on the spectrogram.