• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.187-200
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• 2002

The purpose of the present study is to see in terms of $F_{0}$ variation in Japanese how discourse focus and the lexical word accent interact with each other in realizing overall intonation patterns. Discourse focus causes prosodic restructuring of phrase structures and, as a result, largely affects pitch contours, whereas the lexical word accent is said to delimit the $F_{0}$ into a certain range. Measurement of $F_{0}$ was made of utterances of Japanese sentences to observe behavior of pitch contours with varied focus assignment and lexical accent specifications. The utterances were obtained in question-answer discourse contexts so that in a sentence, either one NP was always focused or no focus was assigned. I set four points for $F_{0}$ measurement; $F_{1s},F_{1m}, F_{2s}$, and $F_{2m}$, two for each noun phrase corresponding to $F_{0}$ at the beginning of the first syllable and that of the vocalic portion of the second syllable in the two NP's. The results of present study were as follows: (1) for all combination of lexical accent types, the $F_{0}$ rise both in NP1 and NP2 are higher when focused than when not focused. (2) NP2 starts a new accentual phrase when focused, showing even higher $F_{0}$ than NP1, the latter of which implies that in forming a new accentual phrase by focusing, catathesis does not seem to take effect on NP2 preceded by accented NP1. (3) unfocused NP2 preceded by unaccented NP1 has higher $F_{0}$ than those preceded by accented NP1.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.159-165
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose a new pre-selection of candidate units that is suitable for the unit selection based Japanese TTS system. General pre-selection method performed by calculating a context-dependent cost within IP (Intonation Phrase). Different from other languages, however. Japanese has an accent represented as the height of a relative pitch, and several words form a single accentual phrase. Also. the prosody in Japanese changes in accentual phrase units. By reflecting such prosodic change in pre-selection. the qualify of synthesized speech can be improved. Furthermore, by calculating a context-dependent cost within accentual phrase, synthesis speed can be improved than calculating within intonation phrase. The proposed method defines AP. analyzes AP in context and performs pre-selection using accentual phrase matching which calculates CCL (connected context length) of the Phoneme's candidates that should be synthesized in each accentual phrase. The baseline system used in the proposed method is VoiceText, which is a synthesizer of Voiceware. Evaluations were made on perceptual error (intonation error, concatenation mismatch error) and synthesis time. Experimental result showed that the proposed method improved the qualify of synthesized speech. as well as shortened the synthesis time.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.71-78
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Japanese(L1) on the production of Korean accentual phrases(L2). Korean and Japanese have a similar prosodic structure. But different from Korean, Japanese is a pitch accent language. So each word has its own pitch accent. And pitch accents are maintained in the sentence intonation. This difference will have a negative influence on the production of Korean sentence intonation. For this study 4 Korean natives speakers and 10 advanced Japanese learners of Korean participated in the production test. The material analysed constituted 11 Korean sentences, six of which contain formally identical Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese words. The results show that the initial pitch pattern of Korean accentual phrases was affected by Japanese pitch accent types and this interference was greater for formally identical Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese words. But besides initial tones of accentual phrase, some positive interference was observed in the internal tonal pattern of accentual phrase. In the phonetic realization, the internal pitch range and initial pitch rising of accentual phrases was greater for Japanese learners of Korean than native speakers of Korean.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.153-166
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• 2005

This paper attempts to examine the accent implementation and perception of noun phrases and compound nouns in English sentences, arguing that primary stress of noun phrase and compound noun is realized in relative prominence in intonation. The production test examines how the stress patterns of the noun phrases and compound nouns are realized in intonation of the English native speakers' utterances. The perception test investigates English and Korean listeners' comprehension of the intonation of the noun phrases and compound nouns. And the results of this experimental study show that speakers and listeners produce and perceive the primary stress as a relatively prominent accent even if in contrast of English listeners, Korean learners have difficulty in using the cue of pitch accent location and figuring out compound nouns and noun phrases.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.1E
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• pp.10-15
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• 2004

In performing speech conversion from a source speaker to a target speaker, it is important that the pitch contour of the source speakers utterance be converted into that of the target speaker, because pitch contour of a speech utterance plays an important role in expressing speaker's individuality and meaning of the utterance. This paper describes statistical algorithms of pitch contour conversion for Korean language. Pitch contour conversions are investigated at two 1 evels of prosodic phrases: intonational phrase and accentual phrase. The basic algorithm is a Gaussian normalization [7] in intonational phrase. The first presented algorithm is combined with a declination-line of pitch contour in an intonational phrase. The second one is Gaussian normalization within accentual phrases to compensate for local pitch variations. Experimental results show that the algorithm of Gaussian normalization within accentual phrases is significantly more accurate than the other two algorithms in intonational phrase.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.29-38
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• 2022

This study aimed to analyze the speech appearing in the National Institute of Korean Language's Daily Conversation Speech Corpus (2020) and reveal how the speech rate and the frequency of turn-taking affect the change in prosody units. The analysis results showed a positive correlation between intonation phrase, word phrase frequency, and speaking duration as the speech speed increased; however, the correlation was low, and the suitability of the regression model of the speech rate was 3%-11%, which was weak in explanatory power. There was a significant difference in the mean speech rate according to the frequency of the turn-taking, and the speech rate decreased as the frequency of the turn-taking increased. In addition, as the frequency of turn-taking increased, the frequency of intonation phrases, the frequency of word phrases, and the speaking duration decreased; there was a high negative correlation. The suitability of the regression model of the turn-taking frequency was calculated as 27%-32%. The frequency of turn-taking functions as a factor in changing the speech rate and prosodic units. It is presumed that this can be influenced by the disfluency of the dialogue, the characteristics of turn-taking, and the active interaction between the speakers.

• MALSORI
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• no.46
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• pp.127-143
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• 2003

This paper presents segmental labeling conventions proposed by SiTEC (Speech Information Technology Engineering Center) 2002 and proposes a new directions of a revision for a simpler version. The paper also reviews one of the prosody labelling conventions for Korean, K-ToBI convention(ver. 3.1) and proposes a couple of modifications and suggestions.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.143-169
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• 2000

This chapter presents an overview of Korean intonational structure and proposes a revised version of K -ToBI (Korean TOnes and Break Indices), a prosodic transcription convention for Seoul Korean. In the new version of K-ToBI, a tone tier is separated into two tiers: a phonological tone tier and a phonetic tone tier. A phonological tone tier labels tones marking the prosodic structure of an utterance, and a phonetic tone tier labels individual tones of an AP and an IP conforming to the surface pitch contour. Labelling surface tonal patterns will provide us data to test the underlying tonal patterns and to build phonetic implementation rules.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.123-148
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• 2000

This paper investigates prosodic conditions for the epenthetic /n/ in Korean. It has been claimed that an epenthetic /n/ appears across prosodic words (Han 1994, Lee 1996). However, using acoustic data as well as aerodynamic data, I argue that the epenthetic /n/ does not always surface across all prosodic words, but that its appearance is prosodically restricted. I further demonstrate that it appears only across prosodic words within an accentual phrase. This finding provides empirical support for the intonation-based model of Korean prosodic structure studies.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2003.11b
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• pp.195-198
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• 2003

The accuracy of automatic speech recognition system depends on the presence of background noise and speaker variability such as sex, intonation of speech, and speaking rate. Specially, the speaking rate of both inter-speaker and intra-speaker is a serious cause of mis-recognition. In this paper, we propose the compensation method of the speaking rate by the ratio of each vowel's length in a phrase. First the number of feature vectors in a phrase is estimated by the information of speaking rate. Second, the estimated number of feature vectors is assigned to each syllable of the phrase according to the ratio of its vowel length. Finally, the process of feature vector extraction is operated by the number that assigned to each syllable in the phrase. As a result the accuracy of automatic speech recognition was improved using the proposed compensation method of the speaking rate.