• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.111-128
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• 2004

In English, a focused word with new information receives a pitch accent. This paper examines how English native speakers and Korean speakers produce and perceive focus in English yes-no questions. The production experiments show that native speakers realize an appropriate intonation of yes-no questions, in which a focused word has a low pitch accent followed by a high phrasal accent and a high boundary tone. However, Korean speakers usually give a high tone to a focused word. In a like manner, the perception experiments show that English native speakers judge a word with a low tone to be focused, while Korean speakers have difficulty in comprehending a focused word realized as a low tone. And it is found that Korean speakers tend to perceive low tones on sentence initial and final focused words better than those on sentence medial focused words, and they often perceive a word with a relatively high fundamental frequency or a sharp rise of fundamental frequency as a focused word. This paper shows that Korean speakers have trouble to produce and perceive an appropriate tonal pattern of a focused yes-no question, and that can cause confusion in a conversation with native speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.51-59
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to examine the pitch pattern of Korean accentual phrases produced by Chinese Korean-learners in the reading of a Korean text. Korean accentual phrase is determined by a specific F0 contour. And the pitch contour of APs differ depending on their length and the nature of initial segment. In order to examine if Chinese speakers are also aware such a phonetic properties, we have examined the AP pitch contours produced by 15 Chinese speakers differing in proficiency, and compared them to pitch contours produced by six Korean native speakers. The results show that Chinese speakers' pitch errors were observed in initial segment-tone interaction and in type of pitch patterns. However, even though Chines speakers produced the same type of pitch patterns, internal tonal modulation differs from native speakers. Finally, on the basis of theses results, we proposed a teaching method that visualizes the F0 contour.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.67-83
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• 2016

This study investigated the tonal characteristics in Korean emotion words by analyzing the pitch patterns transformed from word utterance. Participants were 30 women, ages 19-23. Each participant was instructed to talk about their emotional experiences using 4-syllable target words. A total of 180 utterances were analyzed in terms of the frequency of each syllable using the Praat. The data were transformed into meantones based on the semi-tone scale. When emotion words were used in the middle of a sentence, the pitch pattern was transformed to A3-A3-G3-G3 for '즐거워서(joyful)', C4-D4-B3-A3 for '행복해서(happy)', G3-A3-G3-G3 for '억울해서(resentful)', A3-A3-G3-A3 for '불안해서(anxious)', and C4-C4-A3-G3 for '침울해서(frustrated)'. When the emotion words were used at the end of a sentence, the pitch pattern was transformed to G4-G4-F4-F4 for '즐거워요(joyful)', D4-D4-A3-G3 for '행복해요(happy)', G3-G3-G3-A3 and F3-G3-E3-D3 for '억울해요(resentful)', A3-G3-F3-F3 for '불안해요(anxious)', and A3-A3-F3-F3 for '침울해요(frustrated)'. These results indicate the differences in pitch patterns depending on the conveyed emotions and the position of words in a sentence. This study presents the baseline data on the tonal characteristics of emotion words, thereby suggesting how pitch patterns could be utilized when creating a melody during songwriting for emotional expression.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.21-35
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• 2007

This paper attempts to investigate phonetic substances of the stress patterns of English compounds and noun phrases, showing that the theoretically derived stress structures are not consistent with the accentual patterns in real utterances. Even though it has been long claimed that compounds have the stress pattern [1 3] and that noun phrases, [2 1] as in Chomsky & Halle (1968), their difference has not been yet explored empirically or phonetically. I present a phonetic experiment conducted to see if there is any difference along the tonal contours, mostly focusing on their pitch accent distribution. 36 different compounds and 36 different noun phrases included in carrier sentences were examined, and they were varied in position within a sentence. Results showed that various accentual patterns were produced, and among them, [H* X] predominantly occurs in all three positions in both compounds and noun phrases, whereas the patterns [X H*] and [X X] appear relatively more frequently in final position than in initial and medial position. Furthermore, the pattern [Ac + No], in which the preceding element is pitch-accented with no accent on the following one, is the major stress pattern in both compounds and noun phrases and in all three sentence positions. This suggests that there seems to be no difference in accentual patterns between compounds and noun phrases, which is not consistent with the hypothesis. The results are interpreted as saying that the preceding element alone tends to be prominent with no accent following it both in compounds and noun phrases, and that therefore, theoretically speculated phonological claims are not always phonetically supported.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.149-163
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• 2001

This paper investigates the manner in which various. syntactic structures with a single meaning implement a consistent intonational pattern by examining English conditional clauses. In the phonetic experiment, we explore the edge tones in three different syntactic clauses which are semantically interpreted as a single conditional meaning (an if-clause, a clause with no if. and a clause with no if but followed by and) and compare them with the edge tone realized in a clause which is not interpreted as a conditional meaning. We also investigate the tonal differences resulting from the semantic difference between conditional and non-conditional meanings. That is, the conditional clauses expressed in three different syntactic structures show a consistent intonational pattern in their clausefinal boundaries; a rising contour (H- or H%) is realized at the edge of the intermediate phrases (ip) or intonational phrases (IP) in 89% of the if-clauses, 72% of the clauses with no if, and 79% of the clauses with no if but followed by and. On the other hand, 82% of the non-conditional clauses have a falling contour (L- or L-L%) in their final edge. Statistically, Chi-Square tests show that these percentages are all significantly higher, which suggests that a conditional meaning implements a consistent intonational pattern though it is expressed through different syntactic structures. Therefore, the result supports Bolinger's (1989) claim that intonation makes an important contribution to discourse interpretation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.85-92
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• 2015

This study aimed to establish characteristics related to voice and speech through the natural base frequency analysis of esophagus vocalization. In the study, 8 subjects were selected for esophagus vocals, and 10 other subjects were selected for a control group. MDVP(Multi-dimensional Voice Program, Model 4800, USA, 2001), Multi Speech(Model 3700, Kaypantax, USA, 2008) were used as experiment equipment. The speech samples selected for evaluation were vowels and sentences (both declarative and interrogative). For acoustic analysis, the intonation form of fo, jitter, energy, shimmer, HNR, and intonation patterns of the speech sample were measured. The results were as follows: First, the natural intrinsic frequency of extended vowels in the esophagus vocal group was lower than the frequency in the normal vocal group. In particular, the intrinsic frequency difference for high vowel /i/ was much greater than the frequency difference for low vowel /a/. Second, the jitter values of the esophagus vocal group were higher than the control group. In particular, there was a large difference between the jitter values for /a/ and /i/, with the jitter values being highest for /i/. Third, there was no significant difference in vocal strength between the esophagus vocal patient group and the control group. Fourth, the shimmer values of the voices in the esophagus vocal group were higher than shimmer values in the control group. In particular, there was a large difference in shimmer values for low vowel /a/. Fifth, the HNR values of the esophagus vocal group were showed significantly lower than the control group. In particular, the largest difference in HNR values between the two groups was for high vowel /i/. Sixth, the pitch contours of interrogative and declarative sentences of the esophagus vocal patient group showed a different form or only had with small differences compared to the pitch contours of the normal vocal group, thus presenting an inconsistent pattern.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.21-30
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• 2008

The current study investigated distributional properties of the Korean Accentual Phrase and their implication to word segmentation. The properties examined were the frequency of various AP tonal patterns, the types of tonal patterns that are imposed upon content words, and the average number and temporal location of content words within the AP. A total of 414 sentences from the Read speech corpus and the Radio corpus were used for the data analysis. The results showed that the 84% of the APs contained one content word, and that almost 90% of the content words are located in AP-initial position. When the AP-initial onset was not an aspirated or tense consonant, the most common AP patterns were LH, LHH, and LHLH (78%), and 88% of the multisyllabic content words start with a rising tone in AP-initial position. When the AP-initial onset was an aspirated or tense consonant, the most common AP patterns were HH, HHLH, and HHL (72%), and 74% of the multisyllabic content words start with a level H tone in AP-initial position. The data further showed that 84.1% of APs end with the final H tone. The findings provide valuable information about the prosodic pattern and structure of Korean APs, and account for the results of a previous study which showed that Korean listeners are sensitive to AP-initial rising and AP-final high tones (Kim, 2007). This is in line with other cross-linguistic research which has revealed the correlation between prosodic probability and speech processing strategy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.65-71
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to examine the prosodic pattern of the children with high functioning autism spectrum disorder(HFASD) according to sentence type. The participants were 18 children aged from 7 - 9 years; 9 children with HFASD and 9 typical development children(TD) of the same chronological age with HFASD children. Sentence reading tasks were conducted in this study. Seven interrogative sentences and 7 declarative sentences were presented to the participants and were asked to read the sentences three times. Mean values of F0, F0 range, intensity, speech rate and pitch contour were measured for each sentence. The results showed that for F0 range, significant main effect and interaction effect were observed in the subject group and sentence type. There were significant differences in intensity, mean F0, speech rate, pitch contour across sentence types. The results of this study indicated that HFASD showed no difference in intonation across sentence types. Speakers' intention may have a negative effect on pragmatic aspects. These results suggest that the assessment and intervention of prosody be important for HFASD.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• autumn
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• pp.369-372
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• 1999

본 연구는 제주방언의 억양 패턴에 대하여 실험음성학적 분석을 하였다. 이전의 제주방언에 대한 음성 음운론적 연구는 거의 분절음 연구에 국한되었다. 억양 패턴 분석은 K-ToBI 레이블링 시스템에서 사용하는 성조기호를 사용하여 수행되었다 제주 방언의 운율구는 서울말, 전남방언과 같이 억양구와, 그 하위 층에 악센트구 두 개로 이루어져 있다. 본 연구는 크게 억양구의 경계성조 유형 연구와 악센트구의 성조 연구를 수행하였다. 억양구 경계성조로는 서울말과 같이 $L\%,\;H\%$를 기본으로 하여 $HL\%,\;LHL\%,\;HLHL\%,\;LHLHL\%,\;LH\%,\;HLH\%,\;LHLH\%,\;HLTLH\%$ 등의 유형과 그 외 제주방언만의 유형 또한 관찰되었다. 악센트구의 성조패턴 연구는 음절수와 억양구내 악센트구의 위치를 변수로 하여 살펴보았다. 제주방언의 악센트구 기본 성조는 'LH'로서 마지막 음절에서 ?'가 실현되는 패턴이다. 음절수가 많아지면 마지막 둘째음절에 아주 완만한 피치상승을 보이긴 하나 'H'로 기술하기에는 부적절하였다 유성음화의 범위는 서울방언에서와 같이 악센트구로 나타났다. 강자음이 악센트구 초에 올 때 ?'성조로 시작이 되었으며 피험자에 따라 'H'성조가 첫째음절에서만 실현되고 바로 하강하던가 또는 둘째음절까지 지속되는 것이 관찰되었다.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.08a
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• pp.87-92
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• 1998

In general, the synthesis unit database was constructed by recording isolated word. In that case, each boundary of word has typical prosodic pattern like a falling intonation or preboundary lengthening. To get natural synthetic speech using these kinds of database, we must artificially distort original speech. However, that artificial process rather resulted in unnatural, unintelligible synthetic speech due to the excessive prosodic modification on speech signal. To overcome these problems, we gathered thousands of sentences for synthesis database. To make a phone level synthesis unit, we trained speech recognizer with the recorded speech, and then segmented phone boundaries automatically. In addition, we used laryngo graph for the epoch detection. From the automatically generated synthesis database, we chose the best phone and directly concatenated it without any prosody processing. To select the best phone among multiple phone candidates, we used prosodic information such as break strength of word boundaries, phonetic contexts, cepstrum, pitch, energy, and phone duration. From the pilot test, we obtained some positive results.