• 제목/요약/키워드: English prosody

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The Application of the Bodysonic System to L2 Learning

  • Suzuki, Kaoru
    • 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 대한음성학회 2000년도 7월 학술대회지
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    • pp.96-104
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    • 2000
  • The Bodysonic system was invented on the basis of 'Bone Conduction Theory,' which states that people feel sounds with their whole body. The Bodysonic system is used for L2 (English) learning at Aichi Women's Junior College. In recent years we have developed some unique methodology related to use of the Bodysonic system. In Japan it is difficult for adult L2 learners to acquire the prosody of a foreign language. A language laboratory using the Bodysonic system has been suggested as one way to eradicate such adult L2 problems. The Bodysonic system changes sounds into vibrations. It makes it easy for learners to acquire the prosody of a foreign language because humans can convey information, through their tactile organs. In addition, this system was originally designed to make people relax, so it can also help minimize learner anxiety. The effect of Bodysonic vibrations on language learning has already been proven by some experiments. The Bodysonic system appears to be an ideal teaching method for adult to learn a foreign language.

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철자 기반과 음절 기반 속도가 한국인 영어 학습자의 발음 평가에 미치는 영향 비교 (Comparing the effects of letter-based and syllable-based speaking rates on the pronunciation assessment of Korean speakers of English)

  • 정현성
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제15권4호
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    • pp.1-10
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    • 2023
  • 본 연구에서는 AI Hub에 구축된 '교육용 한국인의 영어 음성 데이터'에 있는 발음 평가 데이터를 활용하여 철자 기반 발화 속도 및 조음 속도와 음절 기반 발화 속도 및 조음 속도 중 발음 정확성 및 운율 유창성, 합산 점수를 예측하는 모델에 어떤 요소가 더 유의미한 영향을 미치는지 분석하였다. 이를 위해 13세, 19세, 26세 연령별, 성별, 수준별로 이 코퍼스의 훈련 데이터에서 총 900개 발화를 추출하여 데이터에 포함된 다양한 요소를 활용해 평가 점수를 예측하는 선형효과분석을 실행하였다. 선형효과분석에서 최적의 세 개 모델을 통해 예측된 평가 점수를 검증 데이터에서 추출한 총 180개 발화의 평가 점수와 얼마나 상관관계가 있는지도 분석하였다. 분석 결과 발음의 정확성과 운율의 유창성, 합산 점수 예측 모델 모두 철자 기반 발화 속도와 조음 속도보다 음절 기반 발화 속도와 조음 속도가 평가 점수를 예측하는데 더 큰 영향을 주는 것으로 밝혀졌다. 모델에서 예측한 점수와 검정 데이터의 실제 점수와의 상관계수는 .65에서 .68 사이로 각 모델의 평가 점수 예측력이 나쁘지 않았다. 발화 속도와 조음 속도 간에 어떤 요소가 더 큰 영향을 미치는지는 본 연구를 통해 밝혀내지 못하였다.

원어민과 비원어민의 영어 전설 고모음 /i, ɪ/ 발화에 나타나는 운율 강화 현상 (Effects of Prosodic Strengthening on the Production of English High Front Vowels /i, ɪ/ by Native vs. Non-Native Speakers)

  • 김사향;허유나;조태홍
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제5권4호
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    • pp.129-136
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    • 2013
  • This study investigated how acoustic characteristics (i.e., duration, F1, F2) of English high front vowels /i, ɪ/ are modulated by boundary- and prominence-induced strengthening in native vs. non-native (Korean) speech production. The study also examined how the durational difference in vowels due to the voicing of a following consonant (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless) is modified by prosodic strengthening in two different (native vs. non-native) speaker groups. Five native speakers of Canadian English and eight Korean learners of English (intermediate-advanced level) produced 8 minimal pairs with the CVC sequence (e.g., 'beat'-'bit') in varying prosodic contexts. Native speakers distinguished the two vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2, whereas non-native speakers only showed durational differences. The two groups were similar in that they maximally distinguished the two vowels when the vowels were accented (F2, duration), while neither group showed boundary-induced strengthening in any of the three measurements. The durational differences due to the voicing of the following consonant were also maximized when accented. The results are discussed further in terms of phonetics-prosody interface in L2 production.

Evaluation of English speaking proficiency under fixed speech rate: Focusing on utterances produced by Korean child learners of English

  • Narah Choi;Tae-Yeoub Jang
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제15권1호
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    • pp.47-54
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    • 2023
  • This study attempted to test the hypothesis that Korean evaluators can score L2 speech appropriately, even when speech rate features are unavailable. Two perception experiments-preliminary and main-were conducted sequentially. The purpose of the preliminary experiment was to categorize English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) speakers into two groups-advanced learners and lower-level learners-based on the proficiency scores given by five human raters. In the main experiment, a set of stimuli was prepared such that the speech rate of all data tokens was modified to have a uniform speech rate. Ten human evaluators were asked to score the stimulus tokens on a 5-point scale. These scores were statistically analyzed to determine whether there was a significant difference in utterance production between the two groups. The results of the preliminary experiment confirm that higher-proficiency learners speak faster than lower-proficiency learners. The results of the main experiment indicate that under controlled speech-rate conditions, human raters can appropriately assess learner proficiency, probably thanks to the linguistic features that the raters considered during the evaluation process.

Word-final Coda Acquisition by English-Speaking Childrea with Cochlear Implants

  • Kim, Jung-Sun
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제3권4호
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    • pp.23-31
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    • 2011
  • This paper examines the production patterns of the acquisition of coda consonants in monosyllabic words in English-speaking children with cochlear implants. The data come from the transcribed speech of children with cochlear implants. This study poses three questions. First, do children with cochlear implants acquire onset consonants earlier than codas? Second, do children's productions have a bimoraic-sized constraint that maintains binary feet? Third, what patterns emerge from production of coda consonants? The results revealed that children with cochlear implants acquire onset consonants earlier than codas. With regard to the bimoraic-sized constraints, the productions of vowel type (i.e., monomoraic and bimoraic) were more accurate for monomoraic vowels than bimoraic ones for some children with cochlear implants, although accuracy in vowel productions showed high proportion regardless of vowel types. The variations of coda production exhibited individual differences. Some children produced less sonorant consonants with high frequency and others produced more sonorant ones. The results of this study were similar to those pertaining to children with normal hearing. In the process of coda consonant acquisition, the error patterns of prosody-sensitive production may be regarded as articulatory challenges to produce higher-level prosodic structures.

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The Role of Contrast in Prosodically Induced Acoustic Variation

  • Choi, Han-Sook
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제1권3호
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    • pp.29-37
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    • 2009
  • This paper presents results from speech production experiments on English, Korean, and Hindi that compare variation in the acoustic expression of dissimilar phonological laryngeal contrast in stops conditioned by prosodic prominence. Target stops are analyzed from utterance-initial, -medial, and -final positions, with a variation in contrastive focal accent, from the speech data by six male American English speakers, five male Seoul Korean speakers, and five male Delhi Hindi speakers. The results show that prosodic prominence conditions enhanced distinctiveness between contrastive segments in the three languages. The manner in which prosodic prominence and prosodic phrase structure is marked at the level of segmental variation is, however, found to be language-specific to some extent. In addition, a correlation between the size of the phonological inventory and the corresponding acoustic variation was found but the linear correlation was not strongly supported with the findings in the present study.

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한국인 영어학습자의 모음삽입현상에 대한 연구 (An Experimental Study of Vowel Epenthesis among Korean Learners of English)

  • 신동진
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제6권2호
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    • pp.163-174
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    • 2014
  • Korean L2 speakers have many problems learning the pronunciation of English words. One of these problems is vowel epenthesis. Vowel epenthesis is the insertion of vowels into or between words, and Korean learners of English typically do this between successive consonants, either within clusters, or across syllables, word boundaries or following final coda consonants. The aim of this study was to investigate whether individual differences in vowel epenthesis are more closely related to the perception and production of segments (vowels and consonants) and prosody or if they are relatively independent from these processes. Subjects completed a battery of production and perception tasks. They read sentences, identified vowels and consonants, read target words likely to have epenthetic vowels (e.g., abduction) and demonstrated stress recognition and epenthetic vowel perception. The results revealed that Korean second-language learners (L2) have problems with vowel epenthesis in production and perception, but production and perception abilities were not correlated with one another. Vowel epenthesis was strongly related to vowel production and perception, suggesting that problems with segments may be combined with L1 phonotactics to produce epenthesis.

Durational Interaction of Stops and Vowels in English and Korean Child-Directed Speech

  • Choi, Han-Sook
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제4권2호
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    • pp.61-70
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    • 2012
  • The current study observes the durational interaction of tautosyllabic consonants and vowels in the word-initial position of English and Korean child-directed speech (CDS). The effect of phonological laryngeal contrasts in stops on the following vowel duration, and the effect of the intrinsic vowel duration on the release duration of preceding stops in addition to the acoustic realization of the contrastive segments are explored in different prosodic contexts - phrase-initial/medial, focal accented/non-focused - in a marked speech style of CDS. A trade-off relationship between Voice Onset Time (VOT), as consonant release duration, and voicing phonation time, as vowel duration, reported from adult-to-adult speech, and patterns of durational variability are investigated in CDS of two languages with different linguistic rhythms, under systematically controlled prosodic contexts. Speech data were collected from four native English mothers and four native Korean mothers who were talking to their one-word staged infants. In addition to the acoustic measurements, the transformed delta measure is employed as a variability index of individual tokens. Results confirm the durational correlation between prevocalic consonants and following vowels. The interaction is revealed in a compensatory pattern such as longer VOTs followed by shorter vowel durations in both languages. An asymmetry is found in CV interaction in that the effect of consonant on vowel duration is greater than the VOT differences induced by the vowel. Prosodic effects are found such that the acoustic difference is enhanced between the contrastive segments under focal accent, supporting the paradigmatic strengthening effect. Positional variation, however, does not show any systematic effects on the variations of the measured acoustic quantities. Overall vowel duration and syllable duration are longer in English tokens but involve less variability across the prosodic variations. The constancy of syllable duration, therefore, is not found to be more strongly sustained in Korean CDS. The stylistic variation is discussed in relation to the listener under linguistic development in CDS.

School Phonetics and How to Teach Prosody of English in Japan

  • Tsuzuki, Masaki
    • 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 대한음성학회 1997년도 7월 학술대회지
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    • pp.11-25
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    • 1997
  • This presentation will focus on building basic English Prosodic Skills which are very useful and helpful for Japanese learners of English. The focus first will be on recognizing the seven basic nuclear tones, analysing intonation structures, distinguishing intonation patterns and then on the way of improving speaking ability using sufficient verbal contents of intonation (mini-dialogue). My presentation deals mainly with some difficulties which Japanese learners of English have in the field of RP intonation, It is chiefly concerned with identifying, describing and analysing tone-group sequences. It sometimes happens that Japanese learners of English can pronounce isolated bounds correctly and read phonetic symbols sufficiently, bet have difficult problems in carrying out accurate prosodic features. The use of wrong intonation is sometimes the cause of misunderstanding of speaker's attitude, connotation and shades of meaning, etc.. However accurately students can pronounce the nuclear tone or tone-group of English, they have to learn how to connect tone-groups properly for suitable sequences in respect to meaning or implication. We are faced with the complicated theory of RF intonation on the one hand and difficult realization of it on the other. Japanese learners of English have special difficulties in employing "rising tune" and "falling + rising tune". If students are taught pitch movements by indicating dots graphically between two horizontal lines, they can easily understand the whole shape of pitch movements. In this presentation, I illuminate several tone-group sequences which are very useful for Japanese learning English intonation. Among them, four similar Pitch Patterns, such as, (1) (equation omitted)- type, (2) (equation omitted) - type, (3) (equation omitted) - type and (4) (Rising Head) (equation omitted)- type are clarified and other important tone-group sequences aye also highlighted from the point of view of teaching English as a foreign language. The intonation theory, tone marks and technical terms are, in all essentials, those of Intonation of Colloquial English by O'Connor, J. D. and Arnold, G. F., Longman, 2nd ed., 1982. The changes of tone are shown graphically between two horizontal lines representing the ordinary high and low zones of the utterance. A.C.Gimson (1981:314) : The intonation of English has been studied in greater detail and for longer than that of any other language. No definitive analysis, classifying the features of RP intonation, has yet appeared (though that presented by O'Connor and Arnold (1973) provides the most comprehensive and useful account from the foreign learner's point of view).

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Prosodic Strengthening in Speech Production and Perception: The Current Issues

  • Cho, Tae-Hong
    • 음성과학
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    • 제14권4호
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    • pp.7-24
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    • 2007
  • This paper discusses some current issues regarding how prosodic structure is manifested in fine-grained phonetic details, how prosodically-conditioned articulatory variation is explained in terms of speech dynamics, and how such phonetic manifestation of prosodic structure may be exploited in spoken word recognition. Prosodic structure is phonetically manifested in prosodically important landmark locations such as prosodic domain-final position, domain-initial position and stressed/accented syllables. It will be discussed how each of the prosodic landmarks engenders particular phonetic patterns, ow articulatory variation in such locations are dynamically accounted for, and how prosodically-driven fine-grained phonetic detail is exploited by listeners in speech comprehension.

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