• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.61-64
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• 2003

In this paper, we introduce a new description method of annotation information of speech database. As one of structured description methods, XML based description which has been standardized by W3C will be applied to represent metadata of speech database. It will be continuously revised through the speech technology standard forum during this year

• MALSORI
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• no.47
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• pp.109-120
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• 2003

This paper presents about the activities of speech database standardization in ETRI. Recently, with the support of government, ETRI and SiTEC have been gathering the large speech corpus for the domestic speech related companies. First, due to the lack of sharing the knowledge of speech database specification, the distributed speech database has a different format. Hence it seems to be needed to have the same format as soon as possible. ETRI and SiTEC are trying to find the better representation format of speech database. Second, we introduce a new description method of the annotation information of speech database. As one of the structured description method, XML based description will be applied to represent the metadata of the speech database. It will be continuously revised through the speech technology standard forum during this year.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.9-22
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• 2017

The purpose of this paper is to report the whole process of developing Korean Standard Speech Database (KSS DB). This project is supported by SPO (Supreme Prosecutors' Office) research grant for three years from 2014 to 2016. KSS DB is designed to provide speech data for acoustic-phonetic and phonological studies and speaker recognition system. For the samples to represent the spoken Korean, sociolinguistic factors, such as region (9 regional dialects), age (5 age groups over 20) and gender (male and female) were considered. The goal of the project is to collect over 3,000 male and female speakers of nine regional dialects and five age groups employing direct and indirect methods. Speech samples of 3,191 speakers (2,829 speakers and 362 speakers using direct and indirect methods, respectively) are collected and databased. KSS DB designs to collect read and spontaneous speech samples from each speaker carrying out 5 speech tasks: three (pseudo-)spontaneous speech tasks (producing prolonged simple vowels, 28 blanked sentences and spontaneous talk) and two read speech tasks (reading 55 phonetically and phonologically rich sentences and reading three short passages). KSS DB includes a 16-bit, 44.1kHz speech waveform file and a orthographic file for each speech task.

• MALSORI
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• v.55
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• pp.77-91
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• 2005

In this paper, we propose an XML based meta-data specification for industrial speech databases. Building speech databases is very time-consuming and expensive. Recently, by the government supports, huge amount of speech corpus has been collected as speech databases. However, the formats and meta-data for speech databases are different depending on the constructing institutions. In order to advance the reusability and portability of speech databases, a standard representation scheme should be adopted by all speech database construction institutions. ETRI proposed a XML based annotation scheme [51 for speech databases, but the scheme has too simple and flat modeling structure, and may cause duplicated information. In order to overcome such disadvantages in this previous scheme, we first define the speech database more formally and then identify object appearing in speech databases. We then design the data model for speech databases in an object-oriented way. Based on the designed data model, we develop the meta-data specification for industrial speech databases.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.139-150
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• 2015

The data accumulated in this database will be used to develop a speaker identification system. This may also be applied towards, but not limited to, fields of phonetic studies, sociolinguistics, and language pathology. We plan to supplement the large-scale speech corpus next year, in terms of research methodology and content, to better answer the needs of diverse fields. The purpose of this study is to develop a speech corpus for standard Korean speech. For the samples to viably represent the state of spoken Korean, demographic factors were considered to modulate a balanced spread of age, gender, and dialects. Nine separate regional dialects were categorized, and five age groups were established from individuals in their 20s to 60s. A speech-sample collection protocol was developed for the purpose of this study where each speaker performs five tasks: two reading tasks, two semi-spontaneous speech tasks, and one spontaneous speech task. This particular configuration of sample data collection accommodates gathering of rich and well-balanced speech-samples across various speech types, and is expected to improve the utility of the speech corpus developed in this study. Samples from 639 individuals were collected using the protocol. Speech samples were collected also from other sources, for a combined total of samples from 1,012 individuals.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.39-51
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• 2017

The current study aims to investigate the effect of sociolinguistic factors such as region, generation and gender on the acoustic properties of Korean high and mid back vowels. We analyzed the vowel productions of one hundred twenty-eight subjects from the Korean Standard Speech Database, chosen to represent the different possible combinations of region, generation, and gender. The results reveal a chain-like shift in the back vowels. Unlike previous studies that have reported /o/-/u/ becoming closer as a result of a decreasing F1 in /o/, we found that the distance between the two vowels is decided more by the changing F2 in /u/. Also, the F2 of /u/ and /ɯ/, and the F2 of /ʌ/ and F1 of /o/ appear to move in tandem. Lastly, this study suggests that the reason the vowel changes differ across gender and regional dialects could be because they are all converging on to the standard Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.27-39
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• 2017

This paper deals with how speech rate in Korean is affected by the sociolinguistic factors such as region, gender and generation. Speech rate was quantified as articulation rate (excluding physical pauses) and speaking rate (including physical pauses), both expressed as the number of syllables per second (sps). Other acoustic measures such as pause frequency and duration were also examined. Four hundred twelve subjects were chosen from Korean Standard Speech Database considering their age, gender and region. The result shows that generation has a significant effect on both speaking rate and articulation rate. Younger speakers produce their speech with significantly faster speaking rate and articulation rate than older speakers. Mean duration of total pause interval and the total number of pause of older speakers are also significantly different to those of younger speakers. Gender has a significant effect only on articulation rate, which means male speakers' speech rate is characterized by faster articulation rate, longer and more frequent pauses. Finally, region has no effect both on speaking and articulation rates.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.67-76
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• 2018

This study was performed to investigate acoustic characteristics of sustained vowels produced by Seoul Korean speakers. For this study, three hundred nine healthy adults were chosen as participants from Korean Standard Speech Database. These subjects were divided into five chronological age groups (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60-70s) and two gender groups (male and female). Fundamental frequency (f0), jitter, shimmer, and NHR (noise-to-harmonics ratio) was measured with 8 Korean vowels (/ɑ/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /e/, /o/, /u/, /ɯ/, /i/) by using Praat. The results showed that the vowel type significantly affected all acoustic parameters. Gender affected f0, jitter, and NHR significantly. The mean female speakers' f0 was greater than the males', and the mean jitter and NHR of male speakers was greater than the females'. Moreover, age affected shimmer and NHR significantly; in particular, the shimmer and NHR of elderly speakers was greater than the young speakers.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.51-64
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to establish the Standard Korean Vocal Sound into Character Conversion Rule (Standard VSCC Rule) by reversely applying the Korean Standard Pronunciation Rule that regulates the way of reading written Hangeul sentences. The Standard VSCC Rule performs a crucially important role in Korean speech recognition. The general method of speech recognition is to find the most similar pattern among the standard voice patterns to the input voice pattern. Each of the standard voice patterns is an average of several sample voice patterns. If the unit of the standard voice pattern is a word, then the number of entries of the standard voice pattern will be greater than a few millions (taking inflection and postpositional particles into account). This many entries require a huge database and an impractically too many comparisons in the process of finding the most similar pattern. Therefore, the unit of the standard voice pattern should be a syllable. In this case, we have to resolve the problem of the difference between the Korean vocal sounds and the writing characters. The process of converting a sequence of Korean vocal sounds into a sequence of characters requires our Standard VSCC Rule. Making use of our Standard VSCC Rule, we have implemented a Korean vocal sounds into Hangeul character conversion system. The Korean Standard Pronunciation Rule consists of 30 items. In order to show soundness and completeness of our Standard VSCC Rule, we have tested the conversion system with various data sets reflecting all the 30 items. The test results will be presented in this paper.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.147-157
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• 2009

The purpose of the study is to develop the normal voice database and to analyze the acoustic characteristics of Korean adults' voices by gender using MDVP. Eight categories in the 34 parameters of MDVP were analyzed in the voices of 170 Korean normal adults taken from /a/ vowel. Among them, Fundamental Frequency Parameters and Frequency Perturbation Parameters were significantly different by gender. In addition, Fundamental Frequency Parameters of our data were remarkably different from the data suggested in the MDVP program which currently used in clinics. Therefore, the data obtained from the current study can be effectively used for the diagnosis of voice disorders of Korean adults as the standard parameter values of MDVP.