• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.41-53
• /
• 2020

A wh-phrase in an embedded sentence may have either an embedded or a matrix scope. Interpretation of a wh-phrase with a matrix scope has tended to be syntactically unacceptable unless the sentence reads with a wh-intonation. Previous studies have found two differences in prosodic characteristics between sentences with matrix and embedded scopes. Firstly, peak F0s in wh-phrases produced with an F0 compression wh-intonation are higher than those in indirect questions, and peak F0s in matrix verbs are lower than those in sentences with embedded scope. Secondly, a substantial F0 drop is found at the end of embedded sentences in indirect questions, whereas no F0 reduction at the same point is noticed in sentences with a matrix scope produced with a high plateau wh-intonation. However, these characteristics were not found in our experiment. This showed that a more compelling difference exists in the values obtained from subtraction between the peak F0s of each word (or a word plus an ending or case marker) and the F0s at the end of the word. Specifically, the gap between the peak F0 in a word composed with an embedded verb and the F0 at the end of the word, which is a complementizer in Korean, is large in embedded wh-scope sentences and low in matrix wh-scope sentences.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.219-234
• /
• 2000

The study of boundary tones in connected speech or dialogues is one of the most underdeveloped areas of Korean prosody. This. paper concerns the boundary tones of intonational phrase-final morphemes which are shown in the speech corpus of dialogues. Results of phonetic analysis show that different kinds of boundary tones are realized, depending on the positions of the intonational phrase-final morphemes in the sentences.. This study has also shown that boundary tone patterning is somewhat related to the sentence structure, and for better speech recognition and speech synthesis, it presents a simple model of boundary tones based on the fundamental frequency contour. The results of this study will contribute to our understanding of the prosodic pattern of Korean connected speech or dialogues.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.139-145
• /
• 2015

The present study investigates the effects of syllable structure and prosodic prominence on the patterns of tonal alignment and scaling of the phrase-initial rise in Seoul Korean. Two syllable structures (Onset (/#CVC.../ as in minsa) vs. No-onset (/#VC.../ as in insa)) and two prominence conditions (Focus vs. Neutral) were considered. Results showed that the alignment of the L and the H tones in the phrase-initial rise was affected by syllable structure but not by prominence. The time of L was before the vowel onset of the first syllable in the Onset condition (i.e., within the onset consonant) and it was after the vowel onset in the No-onset condition. The difference was attributable to the fact that the initial L was anchored at a fixed distance from the phrase boundary, which was about 30ms after the onset of the syllable in both cases. The time of H was also consistently observed about 20ms after the second vowel onset (i.e., /a/ in minsa/insa). Moreover, the rise time (the duration from the L to the H tones) was longer as the local syllable duration became longer due to different syllable structure and prominence conditions. Taken together, the results provide a support for the segmental anchoring hypothesis, which claims that both the beginning and the end of F0 movement are consistently aligned with segmental 'anchor' points with relatively high stability (Ladd et al., 1999). Results also showed that the scaling of the early rise was slightly influenced by syllable structure but not by prominence. The differences between the results of the current study and a previous study (Cho, 2011) are further discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.71-78
• /
• 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
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.7-21
• /
• 2003

Sums-of-Products models were built for segment duration prediction of spoken Korean. An experiment for the modelling was carried out to apply the results to Korean text-to-speech synthesis systems. 670 read sentences were analyzed. trained and tested for the construction of the duration models. Traditional sequential rule systems were extended to simple additive, multiplicative and additive-multiplicative models based on Sums-of-Products modelling. The parameters used in the modelling include the properties of the target segment and its neighbors and the target segment's position in the prosodic structure. Two optimisation strategies were used: the downhill simplex method and the simulated annealing method. The performance of the models was measured by the correlation coefficient and the root mean squared prediction error (RMSE) between actual and predicted duration in the test data. The best performance was obtained when the data was trained and tested by ' additive-multiplicative models. ' The correlation for the vowel duration prediction was 0.69 and the RMSE. 31.80 ms. while the correlation for the consonant duration prediction was 0.54 and the RMSE. 29.02 ms. The results were not good enough to be applied to the real-time text-to-speech systems. Further investigation of feature interactions is required for the better performance of the Sums-of-Products models.

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

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 1996.10a
• /
• pp.574-575
• /
• 1996

The theme of the current study is to study intonation of Taiwanese(Tw.) by comparing the intonation patterns in native language (Ll), target language (L2), and interlanguage (IL). Studies on interlanguage have dealt primarily with segments. Though there were studies which addressed to the issues of interlanguage intonation, more often than not, they didn't offer evidence for the statement, and the hypotheses were mainly based on impression. Therefore, a formal description of interlanguage intonation is necessary for further development in this field. The basic assumption of this study is that native speakers of one language perceive and produce a second language in ways closely related to the patterns of their first language. Several studies on interlanguage prosody have suggested that prosodic structure and rules are more subject to transfer than certain other phonological phenomena, given their abstract structural nature and generality(Vogel 1991). Broselow(1988) also shows that interlanguage may provide evidence for particular analyses of the native language grammar, which may not be available from the study of the native language alone. Several research questions will be addressed in the current study: A. How does duration vary among native and nominative utterances\ulcorner The results shows that there is a significant difference in duration between the beginning English learners, and the native speakers of American English for all the eleven English sentences. The mean duration shows that the beginning English learners take almost twice as much time (1.70sec.), as Americans (O.97sec.) to produce English sentences. The results also show that American speakers take significant longer time to speak all ten Taiwanese utterances. The mean duration shows that Americans take almost twice as much time (2.24sec.) as adult Taiwanese (1.14sec.) to produce Taiwanese sentences. B. Does proficiency level influence the performance of interlanguage intonation\ulcorner Can native intonation patterns be achieved by a non-native speaker\ulcorner Wenk(1986) considers proficiency level might be a variable which related to the extent of Ll influence. His study showed that beginners do transfer rhythmic features of the Ll and advanced learners can and do succeed in overcoming mother-tongue influence. The current study shows that proficiency level does play a role in the acquisition of English intonation by Taiwanese speakers. The duration and pitch range of the advanced learners are much closer to those of the native American English speakers than the beginners, but even advanced learners still cannot achieve native-like intonation patterns. C. Do Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers\ulcorner Ross et. al.(1986) suggests that the presence of tone in a language significantly inhibits the unrestricted manipulation of three acoustical measures of prosody which are involved in producing local pitch changes in the fundamental frequency contour during affective signaling. Will the presence of tone in a language inhibit the ability of speakers to modulate intonation\ulcorner The results do show that Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers. Both advanced (84Hz) and beginning learners (58Hz) of English show a significant narrower FO range than that of Americans' (112Hz), and the difference is greater between the beginning learners' group and native American English speakers.