• 말소리와 음성과학
• /
• 제7권3호
• /
• pp.139-149
• /
• 2015

This paper aims to analyze pronunciation variations of loanwords produced by Korean and improve the performance of pronunciation modeling of loanwords in Korean by using syllable-based segmentation and phonological knowledge. The loanword text corpus used for our experiment consists of 14.5k words extracted from the frequently used words in set-top box, music, and point-of-interest (POI) domains. At first, pronunciations of loanwords in Korean are obtained by manual transcriptions, which are used as target pronunciations. The target pronunciations are compared with the standard pronunciation using confusion matrices for analysis of pronunciation variation patterns of loanwords. Based on the confusion matrices, three salient pronunciation variations of loanwords are identified such as tensification of fricative [s] and derounding of rounded vowel [ɥi] and [$w{\varepsilon}$]. In addition, a syllable-based segmentation method considering phonological knowledge is proposed for loanword pronunciation modeling. Performance of the baseline and the proposed method is measured using phone error rate (PER)/word error rate (WER) and F-score at various context spans. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the baseline. We also observe that performance degrades when training and test sets come from different domains, which implies that loanword pronunciations are influenced by data domains. It is noteworthy that pronunciation modeling for loanwords is enhanced by reflecting phonological knowledge. The loanword pronunciation modeling in Korean proposed in this paper can be used for automatic speech recognition of application interface such as navigation systems and set-top boxes and for computer-assisted pronunciation training for Korean learners of English.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 대한음성학회 2000년도 7월 학술대회지
• /
• pp.241-254
• /
• 2000

The past decade has witnessed the abundant use of computer in testing language skills such as listening and reading. Compared with these language skills, we have experienced little use of computer in testing a speaking skill including pronunciation. This is largely due to limitations of the current computer technology. One of such limitations for testing pronunciation is to store and automatically evaluate what the learner utters. Due to this limitation, the computer simply stores what the learner utters and raters evaluate it afterward on a certain rating continuum. With the advent of voice recognition technology, however, the computer has been able to test pronunciation in a systematic way. This technology enables the computer to identify, visually show, and evaluate the learner's intonation pattern by means of autocorrection. The evaluation is expressed in terms of the degree in which the learner's intonation pattern overlaps with that of the native speaker of the target language. In particular, the degree is numerically displayed on the screen, and this numeral is considered as the score of the learner's utterance under our testing framework.

• 음성과학
• /
• 제8권4호
• /
• pp.215-220
• /
• 2001

This study was done to find out the difference in vowel length between English produced by Americans 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 English low vowels show a foreign accent by comparing vowel lengths in English produced by Americans and KATUSA soldiers. The reason I wanted to deal with English low vowels is that most Koreans have difficulty in pronouncing them. Therefore I selected three English low vowels, /$\{\ae}$, /c/, and/$\alpha$/, 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 and see the foreign accent of English low vowels. I investigated the difference of the English low vowels lengths between Americans and KATUSA soldiers using information gathered from experimental results.

• 음성과학
• /
• 제8권3호
• /
• pp.7-14
• /
• 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.

• 말소리와 음성과학
• /
• 제10권4호
• /
• pp.11-17
• /
• 2018

This study reports on a production experiment designed to investigate how Korean speaking learners of English produce English forms ending in stops. In a repetition experiment, Korean participants listened to English nonce words ending in a stop and repeated what they heard. English speakers were recruited for the same task as a control group. The experimental result indicated that the transcriptions of the Korean productions by English native speakers showed vowel insertion in only 3% of productions although the pronunciation of English final stops showed that noise intervals after the closure of final stops were significantly longer for Korean speakers than for English speakers. This finding is inconsistent with the loanword data where 49% of words showed vowel insertion. It is also not compatible with the perceptual similarity approach, which predicts that because Korean speakers accurately perceive an English final stop as a final consonant, they will insert a vowel to make the English sound more similar to the Korean sound.

• 융합정보논문지
• /
• 제8권1호
• /
• pp.37-42
• /
• 2018

본 연구는 다섯 개의 문장을 선정하여 그 안에 들어있는 다섯 개의 단어와 그 단어 내에 들어있는 모음들을 대상으로 하여 한국인들의 모음발음 길이를 Praat 프로그램을 이용하여 측정한 후에 원어민의 실험결과와 비교분석한 연구이다. 20명의 한국인 피 실험자들이 실험을 위해 실험문장을 읽고 녹음하였으며, 음향적 특질들은 스펙트로그램 등을 활용한 Praat Software 프로그램을 이용하여 측정하여 그 결과를 얻었다. 이러한 과정을 통해 얻어진 결과들은 통계분석 하였다. 분석결과, 단어단위에서는 3개의 단어에서 두 집단 간 차이가 있었으며, 5개의 모음들은 모두 그 차이가 유의미하였다. 또한 두 실험집단 간 단어와 모음발음크기 비율에 관한 비교에서는 모든 단어와 모음들의 발음크기 비율이 두 집단 간 유의미한 차이를 보여주었다. 이러한 실험결과를 통해 영어전설저모음인 /${\ae}$/와 영어이중모음/ai/, 그리고 첫 번째 음절에 영어강세모음이 오는 경우에 그 발음 길이크기를 분석해보면 한국인 피 실험자집단에서는 외국인어투가 존재함을 다시 확인할 수 있었다.

• 영어어문교육
• /
• 제15권2호
• /
• pp.261-280
• /
• 2009

This study focuses on providing the pedagogical implications of stress in English pronunciation teaching since stress is one the most important characteristic factors in English pronunciation (Bolinger, 1976; Brown, 1994; Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 1996; Kreidler, 1989). The author investigated stress production regarding in terms of duration, pitch, and intensity by a group of native speakers of English and a group of low-proficiency South Kyungsang Korean college students for their pre-test. For both of the pre- and post-test, the same stimuli, which consisted of a one-syllable word, two two-syllable words, three three-syllable words, and three four-syllable words, were used along with the various sentence positions: isolation, initial, medial, and final. Soft ware programs, ALVIN and Praat, were used to record and analyze the data. Since Celce-Murcia et al. (1996), Klatt (1975), and Ladefoged (2001) treat duration of the stressed syllable more significantly than other factors, pitch and intensity, with respect to the listener's point of view, the author developed a special method of teaching English stress using a traditional Korean drum to emphasize duration. In addition, the results from the native speakers' production showed that their main strategy to realize stress was through lengthening stressed syllables. After six weeks of stress instruction using the drum, the production of the native speakers and the SK Korean participants from the pre- and post-test were compared. The results from the post-test indicated that the participants showed great improvement not only in duration but also in pitch after the stress instruction. Pitch improvement was unexpected but well-explained by the statement that long vowels receive accent in loan word adaptation in North Kyungsang Korean. The results also showed that the Korean participants' pitch values became more even in their duration values for each syllable as the structure of the word or the sentence became more complex, due to their dependency upon their L1.

• 말소리와 음성과학
• /
• 제3권2호
• /
• pp.3-10
• /
• 2011

This study investigates the role of suprasegmental features with respect to the intelligibility of Korean-spoken English judged by Korean and English raters as being good or bad. It has been hypothesized that Korean raters would have different evaluations from English native raters and that the effect may vary depending on the types of suprasegmental factors. Four Korean and four English native raters, respectively, took part in the evaluation of 14 Korean subjects' English speaking. The subjects read a given paragraph. The results show that the evaluation for 'intelligibility' is different for the two groups and that the difference comes from their perception of L2 English suprasegmentals.

• 음성과학
• /
• 제8권4호
• /
• pp.193-206
• /
• 2001

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate characteristics of English vowels uttered by Korean regional dialect speakers. Ten English mono-syllabic words, and eight Korean mono-syllabic words, were uttered six times by nine female graduate students from three areas: Seoul, Yongnam and Honam. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by the PC Quirer. Results showed that Seoul dialect speakers uttered English vowels more similar to those uttered by English native speakers than did the other dialect speakers. In particular, Yongnam dialect speakers have articulatory problems pronouncing the back vowels(/u/, /$\upsilon$/, /c/), while Honam dialect speakers have problems pronouncing the front vowels(/i/. /I/, /$\varepsilon$/, /$\ae$/). Even though each group has different problems pronouncing English vowels, Korean speakers generally have difficulty in discriminating tense vowels(/i/ and /u/) from the lax vowels(/I/ and /$\upsilon$/). It appears that the width of Korean speakers' articulatory movements is comparatively narrower than those of native English speakers.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 대한음성학회 2005년도 추계 학술대회 발표논문집
• /
• pp.91-95
• /
• 2005

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of postvocalic voicing(Contrasting voiceless fricative and affricate with voiced fricative and affricate) on vowel duration. In particular we focused on the durational differences between vowels followed by voiceless and voiced consonants across three groups of speakers: English speakers, English bilinguals and Korean learners of English. the result of experimental I showed that durations of vowels preceding voiced fricative and affricates as well as voiced stops are significantly longer than those preceding voiceless counterparts. Experiment Ⅱ indicated that as the subjects exposed themselves longer to English speaking society, their pronunciation was increasingly similar to those of English native speakers.