• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.1-14
• /
• 2003

This paper proposes an empty constituent, a silent beat, to express long duration of stressed syllable in the word final position and rhythmic correspondence in English. This empty constituent has an important consequence. It helps reveal one of the characteristics English feet have: they must be non-final in nouns as well as in verbs. In addition, the silent beats overcome the shortcomings of empty constituents proposed previously, namely null vowels (Burzio 1994) and invisible suffixes (Hammond 1999).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2023

This study investigated the influences of probabilistic accessibility of the word being produced - as determined by its usage frequency and neighborhood density - on native and high-proficiency L2 speakers' realization of six English monophthong vowels. The native group hyperarticulated the vowels over an expanded acoustic space when the vowel occurred in words with low frequency and high density, supporting the claim that vowel forms are modified in accordance with the probabilistic accessibility of words. However, temporal expansion occurred in words with greater accessibility (i.e., with high frequency and low density) as an effect of low phonotactic probability in low-density words, particularly in attended speech. This suggests that temporal modification in the opposite direction may be part of the phonetic characteristics that are enhanced in communicatively driven focus realization. Conversely, none of these spectral and temporal patterns were found in the L2 group, thereby indicating that even the high-proficiency L2 speakers may not have developed experience-based sensitivity to the modulation of sub-categorical phonetic details indexed with word-level probabilistic information. The results are discussed with respect to how phonological representations are shaped in a word-specific manner for the sake of communicatively driven lexical intelligibility, and what factors may contribute to the lack of native-like sensitivity in L2 speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.25-30
• /
• 2012

This study investigated whether native Korean listeners could use visual cues for the identification of the English consonants /b/ and /v/. Both auditory and audiovisual tokens of word minimal pairs in which the target phonemes were located in word-initial or word-medial position were used. Participants were instructed to decide which consonant they heard in $2{\times}2$ conditions: cue (audio-only, audiovisual) and location (word-initial, word-medial). Mean identification scores were significantly higher for audiovisual than audio-only condition and for word-initial than word-medial condition. Also, according to signal detection theory, sensitivity, d', and response bias, c were calculated based on both hit rates and false alarm rates. The measures showed that the higher identification rate in the audiovisual condition was related with an increase in sensitivity. There were no significant differences in response bias measures across conditions. This result suggests that native Korean speakers can use visual cues while identifying confusing non-native phonemic contrasts. Visual cues can enhance non-native speech perception.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.200-207
• /
• 2001

In this paper, we propose an HMM(Hidden Markov modeJ)-MLP(Multi-layer perceptron) hybrid model for recognizing legal words on the English bank check. We adopt an explicit segmentation-based word level architecture to implement an HMM engine with nonscaled and non-normalized symbol vectors. We also introduce an MLP for implicit segmentation-based word recognition. The final recognition model consists of a hybrid combination of the HMM and MLP with a new hybrid probability measure. The main contributions of this model are a novel design of the segmentation-based variable length HMMs and an efficient method of combining two heterogeneous recognition engines. ExperimenLs have been conducted using the legal word database of CENPARMI with encouraging results.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.103-110
• /
• 2015

The purpose of this study is to assess the vowel property by examining the vowel duration of the American English vowles found in the Buckeye corpus[6]. The vowel durations were analyzed in terms of various linguistic factors including the number of syllables of the word containing the vowel, the location of the vowel in a word, types of stress, function versus content word, the word frequency in the corpus and the speech rate calculated from the three consecutive words. The findings from this work agreed mostly with those from earlier studies, but with some exceptions. The relationship between the speech rate and the vowel duration proved non-linear.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2000.07a
• /
• pp.255-270
• /
• 2000

Because the accuracy is essential, in order to get the fluency in speaking, both of them are very important in English education and in-service training programs. To get the accuracy and the fluency, the causes and phenomena of the unnatural pronunciation have to be surveyed first of all. Therefore, this article surveyed the problematic and unnatural pronunciation of Korean English teachers in elementary and secondary schools using CSL and Multi-speech. And also, tried to pinpoint what the causes of unnatural pronunciation are\ulcorner Next a procedure or steps were offered for them to speak naturally through in-service training programs. Through this analysis, it was found that elementary teachers have unnatural pronunciation below, within and beyond word level, and the secondary teacher has unnatural pronunciation within and beyond word level. Therefore, pronunciation training courses have to put emphasis on segment features first, and move to suprasegmental features for elementary teachers. For secondary teachers, pronunciation training courses have to focus on word level and move to suprasegmental features, in other words beyond word level. And these pronunciation training courses have to be run integrated.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2002.11a
• /
• pp.165-168
• /
• 2002

This research was conducted to investigate the priming effect in Korean and English word production by Korean speakers. Picture-naming with distractors was used as experimental task. The type of target language, the type of distractor language and SOA(Stimulus Onset Asynchrony) were used as variables. Cross-linguistic priming effect and within-linguistic priming effect were mesured to investigate bilinguals' conceptual system.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2006.11a
• /
• pp.139-141
• /
• 2006

Korean college students' experience in studying English overseas playes the significant role to their perception, not production. Korean Group which experiences foreign-stay for almost 1 year shows the similar pattern with its counterpart, Korean Non- Experiencing Group, in producing the signal of pre-vowel. On the contrary, Korean Experiencing Group shows the similar perceptual pattern with Native Speakers in word-final non-release stops.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.43-65
• /
• 2004

In the comprehension of English texts, Korean students generally try to translate English into Korean in accordance with the word order of Korean language. As a result, the comprehension of English texts is made in a regressive way, which results in slower reading. In order to enhance the reading speed, it is necessary for students to practice progressive reading. Also, while reading English texts, most readers' eyes tend to look at one word at a time, which actually cuts down on the reading speed. Reading by the sense group of as many words as possible at a glance, however, can help a reader more efficiently in less time. This research aims at developing the Powerpoint program for progressive reading by the sense group according to the student's level. In this program, as for methodology, the technique of rooking it fade-away is introduced to force a reader's eyes to move fast. Through this technique, it is possible to make a line of the texts disappear on the screen and make another line appear, which enables a reader to sweep the words across each and every line of the reading material smoothly without regression.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.133-148
• /
• 2001

Focus and information structure are closely related with the distribution of pitch accents. A focused word conveys new information and bears a pitch accent. A content word can usually get a pitch accent, but it can be deaccented if it is mentioned earlier in the discourse. In this paper, we test how English native speakers and Korean learners of English realize pitch accents according to focus and information structure of a sentence. The production experiment shows that English native speakers give a pitch accent to narrow-focused items, deaccenting all the other items of the sentence. For VP broad focus, native speakers give a pitch accent either to both the verb and its complement or to the complement only. On the other hand, it is found that Koreans give pitch accents to most content words regardless of focus and information structure. Moreover, the perception experiment confirms that Koreans' intonation patterns, which are not appropriate in terms of focus and information structure, may jeopardize listeners' comprehension. This paper shows that Korean speakers have little knowledge about focus and information structure for intonational realization, and that such notions should be applied to teaching of English intonation.