• Language and Information
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.1-27
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• 2009

This paper examines the (a)symmetries in the realization of focused subjects and objects in Korean. Through rating experiments, we demonstrate that native speakers' judgments of acceptability of sentences containing case-marked or case-ellipsed subjects and objects are sensitive to the contrastiveness strength and the discourse accessibility of focused arguments. However, our experiments also show that focused subjects exhibit stronger preference for explicit case marking over case ellipsis and that contrastiveness strength and discourse accessibility have weaker influence on the case marking and ellipsis of focused subjects compared to focused objects. We propose an account of variable case marking that is capable of subsuming both the similarities and differences between focused subjects and objects under the universal theory of markedness. In particular, it is shown that the similarities between focused subjects and objects are predicted by the proposed account based on the contrastiveness strength and the discourse accessibility of focused arguments and that the differences between focused subjects and objects follow naturally from the relative markedness of focus as subjects.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.234-239
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to examine the viability of simulating one dialect with the speech segments of another dialect through prosody cloning. The hypothesis is that, among Korean regional dialects, it is not the segmental differences but the prosodic differences that play a major role in authentic dialect perception. This work intends to support the hypothesis by simulating Masan dialect with the speech segments from Seoul dialect. The dialect simulation was performed by transplanting the prosodic features of Masan utterances unto the same utterances produced by a Seoul speaker. Thus, the simulated Masan utterances were composed of Seoul speech segments but their prosody came from the original Masan utterances. The prosodic features involved were the fundamental frequency contour, the segmental durations, and the intensity contour. The simulated Masan utterances were evaluated by four native Masan speakers and the role of prosody in dialect authentication and speech synthesis was discussed.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.48-58
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• 2024

This paper presents the development of language tutoring systems for nonnative speakers by leveraging advanced end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) and proficiency evaluation. Given the frequent errors in non-native speech, high-performance spontaneous speech recognition must be applied. Our systems accurately evaluate pronunciation and speaking fluency and provide feedback on errors by relying on precise transcriptions. End-to-end ASR is implemented and enhanced by using diverse non-native speaker speech data for model training. For performance enhancement, we combine semisupervised and transfer learning techniques using labeled and unlabeled speech data. Automatic proficiency evaluation is performed by a model trained to maximize the statistical correlation between the fluency score manually determined by a human expert and a calculated fluency score. We developed an English tutoring system for Korean elementary students called EBS AI Peng-Talk and a Korean tutoring system for foreigners called KSI Korean AI Tutor. Both systems were deployed by South Korean government agencies.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1997.07a
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• pp.176-178
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• 1997

To make a long story short I made up my mind to experiment with a multimedia approach to my classroom presentations two years ago because my ways of giving instructions bored the pants off me as well as my students. My favorite ways used to be sometimes referred to as classical or traditional ones, heavily dependent on the three elements: teacher's mouth, books, and chalk. Some call it the 'MBC method'. To top it off, I tried audio-visuals such as tape recorders, cassette players, VTR, pictures, and you name it, that could help improve my teaching method. And yet I have been unhappy about the results by a trial and error approach. I was determined to look for a better way that would ensure my satisfaction in the first place. What really turned me on was a multimedia CD ROM title, ELLIS (English Language Learning Instructional Systems) developed by Dr. Frank Otto. This is an integrated system of learning English based on advanced computer technology. Inspired by the utility and potential of such a multimedia system for regular classroom or lab instructions, I designed a simple but practical multimedia language learning laboratory in 1994 for the first time in Korea(perhaps for the first time in the world). It was high time that the conventional type of language laboratory(audio-passive) at Hahnnam be replaced because of wear and tear. Prior to this development, in 1991, I put a first CALL(Computer Assisted Language Learning) laboratory equipped with 35 personal computers(286), where students were encouraged to practise English typing, word processing and study English grammar, English vocabulary, and English composition. The first multimedia language learning laboratory was composed of 1) a multimedia personal computer(486DX2 then, now 586), 2) VGA multipliers that enable simultaneous viewing of the screen at control of the instructor, 3) an amplifIer, 4) loud speakers, 5)student monitors, 6) student tables to seat three students(a monitor for two students is more realistic, though), 7) student chairs, 8) an instructor table, and 9) cables. It was augmented later with an Internet hookup. The beauty of this type of multimedia language learning laboratory is the economy of furnishing and maintaining it. There is no need of darkening the facilities, which is a must when an LCD/beam projector is preferred in the laboratory. It is headset free, which proved to make students exasperated when worn more than- twenty minutes. In the previous semester I taught three different subjects: Freshman English Lab, English Phonetics, and Listening Comprehension Intermediate. I used CD ROM titles like ELLIS, Master Pronunciation, English Tripple Play Plus, English Arcade, Living Books, Q-Steps, English Discoveries, Compton's Encyclopedia. On the other hand, I managed to put all teaching materials into PowerPoint, where letters, photo, graphic, animation, audio, and video files are orderly stored in terms of slides. It takes time for me to prepare my teaching materials via PowerPoint, but it is a wonderful tool for the sake of presentations. And it is worth trying as long as I can entertain my students in such a way. Once everything is put into the computer, I feel relaxed and a bit excited watching my students enjoy my presentations. It appears to be great fun for students because they have never experienced this type of instruction. This is how I freed myself from having to manipulate a cassette tape player, VTR, and write on the board. The student monitors in front of them seem to help them concentrate on what they see, combined with what they hear. All I have to do is to simply click a mouse to give presentations and explanations, when necessary. I use a remote mouse, which prevents me from sitting at the instructor table. Instead, I can walk around in the room and enjoy freer interactions with students. Using this instrument, I can also have my students participate in the presentation. In particular, I invite my students to manipulate the computer using the remote mouse from the student's seat not from the instructor's seat. Every student appears to be fascinated with my multimedia approach to English teaching because of its unique nature as a new teaching tool as we face the 21st century. They all agree that the multimedia way is an interesting and fascinating way of learning to satisfy their needs. Above all, it helps lighten their drudgery in the classroom. They feel other subjects taught by other teachers should be treated in the same fashion. A multimedia approach to education is impossible without the advent of hi-tech computers, of which multi functions are integrated into a unified system, i.e., a personal computer. If you have computer-phobia, make quick friends with it; the sooner, the better. It can be a wonderful assistant to you. It is the Internet that I pay close attention to in conjunction with the multimedia approach to English education. Via e-mail system, I encourage my students to write to me in English. I encourage them to enjoy chatting with people all over the world. I also encourage them to visit the sites where they offer study courses in English conversation, vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, reading, and writing. I help them search any subject they want to via World Wide Web. Some day in the near future it will be the hub of learning for everybody. It will eventually free students from books, teachers, libraries, classrooms, and boredom. I will keep exploring better ways to give satisfying instructions to my students who deserve my entertainment.

• MALSORI
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• no.37
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• pp.87-118
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• 1999

본 논문은 한국인과 일본인이 영어 유음 /l/과 /r/을 발음하는데 있어서 어떤 요소들이 가장 큰 영향을 미치는가를 알아보는데 중점을 두고 있다. Park & Ingram (1995)에서는 한국인과 일본인의 영어 발음인지(perception) 실험을 통해 동 문제에 대해 분석을 해보았는데 본 논문에서는 같은 주제를 발음 실험을 통해 그 해답을 찾고 있다. 실험의 결과는 언어 의존적인 요소인 모국어 음운 체계의 영향뿐만 아니라 언어 독립적인 요소인 화자(speaker), 유음이 나타나는 위치(position), 유음의 유형(type) 그리고 영어 유음을 발음하는 각 개인 등의 요소들이 모두 한국인과 일본인의 영어 유음 /l/과 /r/ 발음에 영향을 미치고 있음을 보여 주고 있다. 이는 인지 실험에서도 드러난 바로 인지와 발음은 서로 밀접한 관계를 맺고 기제가 일어나고 있음을 보여 준다.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.206-206
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• 1996

Previous studies of American English(e.g. Sussman 1991, 1993, 1994) CVC coarticulation with initial consonants representing the labial, alveolar, and velar showed a linear relationship that fits to data points formed by plotting onsets of F2 transition along the y-axis and their corresponding midvowel points along the x-axis. The present study extends the locus equation metric to include the following places of articulation:uvular, pharyngeal, laryngeal, and emphatics. The question of interest is to determine if locus equation could serve as phonetic descriptor for the place of articulation in Arabic. Five male native speakers of Colloquial Egyptian Arabic(CEA) read a list of 204 CVC and CVCC words, containing eight different places of articulation and eight vowels. Average of formant patterns(Fl,F2,F3) onsets, midpoints, and offsets were calculated, using wide band spectrograms obtained by means of the kay spectrograph model(7029), and plotted as locus equations. A summary of the acoustic properties of the place of articulation of CEA will be presented in the frames of bVC and CVb. Strong linear regression relationships were found for every place of articulation.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1793-1801
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• 2016

Speech enhancement is a challenging problem due to the diversity of noise sources and their effects in different applications. The goal of speech enhancement is to improve the quality and intelligibility of speech by reducing noise. Many research works in speech enhancement have been accomplished in English and other European Languages. There has been limited or no such works or efforts in the past in the context of Tamil speech enhancement in the literature. The aim of the proposed method is to reduce the background noise present in the Tamil speech signal by using wavelets. New modified thresholding function is introduced. The proposed method is evaluated on several speakers and under various noise conditions including White Gaussian noise, Babble noise and Car noise. The Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Mean Square Error (MSE) and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) results show that the proposed thresholding function improves the speech enhancement compared to the conventional hard and soft thresholding methods.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.77-81
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• 2006

This paper presents a technique of imposing the prosodic features of a native speaker's utterance onto the same sentence uttered by a non-native speaker. Three acoustic aspects of the prosodic features were considered: the fundamental frequency (F0) contour, segmental durations, and the intensity contour. The fundamental frequency contour and the segmental durations of the native speaker's utterance were imposed on the non-native speaker's utterance by using the PSOLA (pitch-synchronous overlap and add) algorithm [1] implemented in Praat[2]. The intensity contour transfer was also done in Praat. The technique of transferring one or more of these prosodic features was elaborated and its implications in the area of language education were discussed.

• Language and Information
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.103-129
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• 2010

In this paper, I show that anaphora across speakers shows both dynamic and static sides. To capture them all formally, I will adopt semantics based on the assumption that variables range over individual concepts that connect epistemic alternatives. As information increases, a variable can take a different range of possible individual concepts. This is captured by the notion of virtual individual (= vi), a set of individual concepts which are indistinguishable in an information state. The use of a pronoun involves two information states, one for the antecedent, which is always part of the common ground, and the other for the pronoun. Information increase changes vis for variables in the common ground. A pronoun can be used felicitously if there is a unique virtual individual in the information state for the antecedent which does not split in two or more distinctive virtual individuals in the information state for the pronoun. The felicity condition for cross-speaker anaphora can be satisfied in declaratives involving modality, interrogatives and imperatives in a rather less demanding way, because in these cases the utterance does not necessarily require non-trivial personal information for proper use of a pronoun.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1-25
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• 2011

Brand names are often considered as a part of product and important extrinsic cues of product evaluation, when consumers make purchasing decisions. For a company, brand names are also important assets. Building a strong brand name in the Chinese commonwealth is a main challenge for many global companies. One of the first problem global company has to face is how to translate English brand name into Chinese brand name. It is very difficult decision because of cultural and linguistic differences. Western languages are based on an alphabet phonetic system, whereas Chinese are based on ideogram. Chinese speakers are more likely to recall stimuli presented as brand names in visual rather than spoken recall, whereas English speakers are more likely to recall the names in spoken rather than in visual recall. We interpret these findings in terms of the fact that mental representations of verbal information in Chinese are coded primarily in a visual manner, whereas verbal information in English is coded by primarily in a phonological manner. A key linguistic differences that would affect the decision to standardize or localize when transferring English brand name to Chinese brand name is the writing system. Prior Chinese brand naming research suggests that popular Chinese naming translations foreign companies adopt are phonetic, semantic, and phonosemantic translation. The phonetic translation refers to the speech sound that is produced, such as the pronunciation of the brand name. The semantic translation involves the actual meaning of and association made with the brand name. The phonosemantic translation preserves the sound of the brand name and brand meaning. Prior brand naming research has dealt with word-level analysis in examining English brand name that are desirable for improving memorability. We predict Chinese brand name suggestiveness with different translation methods lead to different levels of consumers' evaluations. This research investigates the structural linguistic characteristics of the Chinese language and its impact on the brand name evaluation. Otherwise purpose of this study is to examine the effect of brand concept on the evaluation of brand name. We also want to examine whether the evaluation is moderated by Chinese translation types. 178 Taiwanese participants were recruited for the research. The following findings are from the empirical analysis on the hypotheses established in this study. In the functional brand concept, participants in Chinese translation by semantic were likely to evaluate positively than Chinese translation by phonetic. On the contrary, in the symbolic brand concept condition, participants in Chinese translation by phonetic evaluated positively than by semantic. And then, we found Chinese translation by phonosemantic was most favorable evaluations regardless of brand concept. The implications of these findings are discussed for Chinese commonwealth marketers with respect to brand name strategies. The proposed model helps companies to effectively select brand name, making it highly applicable for academia and practitioner. name and brand meaning. Prior brand naming research has dealt with word-level analysis in examining English brand name that are desirable for improving memorability. We predict Chinese brand name suggestiveness with different translation methods lead to different levels of consumers' evaluations. This research investigates the structural linguistic characteristics of the Chinese language and its impact on the brand name evaluation. Otherwise purpose of this study is to examine the effect of brand concept on the evaluation of brand name. We also want to examine whether the evaluation is moderated by Chinese translation types. 178 Taiwanese participants were recruited for the research. The following findings are from the empirical analysis on the hypotheses established in this study. In the functional brand concept, participants in Chinese translation by semantic were likely to evaluate positively than Chinese translation by phonetic. On the contrary, in the symbolic brand concept condition, participants in Chinese translation by phonetic evaluated positively than by semantic. And then, we found Chinese translation by phonosemantic was most favorable evaluations regardless of brand concept. The implications of these findings are discussed for Chinese commonwealth marketers with respect to brand name strategies. The proposed model helps companies to effectively select brand name, making it highly applicable for academia and practitioner.