• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.149-156
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• 2015

We propose a new method for automatic fluency scoring of English speaking tests spoken by nonnative speakers in a free-talking style. The proposed method is different from the previous methods in that it does not require the transcribed texts for spoken utterances. At first, an input utterance is segmented into a phone sequence by using a phone recognizer trained by using native speech databases. For each utterance, a feature vector with 6 features is extracted by processing the segmentation results of the phone recognizer. Then, fluency score is computed by applying support vector regression (SVR) to the feature vector. The parameters of SVR are learned by using the rater scores for the utterances. In computer experiments with 3 tests taken by 48 Korean adults, we show that speech rate, phonation time ratio, and smoothed unfilled pause rate are best for fluency scoring. The correlation of between the rater score and the SVR score is shown to be 0.84, which is higher than the correlation of 0.78 among raters. Although the correlation is slightly lower than the correlation of 0.90 when the transcribed texts are given, it implies that the proposed method can be used as a preprocessing tool for fluency evaluation of speaking tests.

• 아동학회지
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• 제20권3호
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• pp.199-216
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• 1999

The 121 five-year-old Korean subjects of this study were divided in 3 groups based on their experience in learning a foreign language (English). A battery of tests was administered to measure spoken and written language ability and the 3 metalinguistic domains of phonological, semantic, and syntactic awareness. Spoken language ability was positively correlated with semantic and syntactic awareness. The relative importance of each metalinguistic domain varied with level of written language development. Phonological awareness was the only predictor of decoding. Syntactic awareness and phonological awareness were significant variables in sentence comprehension. Metalinguistic ability was a better predictor of written language development than spoken language ability. Foreign language learning experience had an effect on syntactic awareness: low experience was superior to no experience, but high experience was not superior to low experience.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제11권4호
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• pp.81-87
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• 2019

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the realization of speech rhythm in English as spoken by Korean learners of English. The study particularly aims to examine the rhythm metrics of English read speech by learners who speak Busan or the South Kyungsang dialect of Korean. Twenty-four learners whose L1 is Busan Korean and eight native speakers of English read a passage wherein five sentences were segmented and labeled as vocalic and intervocalic intervals. Various rhythm metrics such as %V, Varcos, and Pairwise Variability Indexes (PVIs) were calculated. The results show that Korean learners read English sentences with significantly more vocalic and consonantal intervals at a slower speech rate than native English speakers. The analyses of rhythm metrics revealed that when the speech rate was not normalized, Korean learners' English showed more variability in the length of consonantal and vocalic intervals. However, speech-rate-normalized rhythm metrics for vocalic intervals indicated that Korean learners transferred their L1 rhythmic structures (a syllable-timed language) into their L2 speech (a stress-timed language). Overall, the results suggest that Korean learners' English reflects the rhythmic characteristics of their L1. The effect of the learners' L1 dialect on the realization of L2 speech rhythm is also speculated.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

본 논문의 목적은 한국어 표준어와 경상 지역 방언의 한국어 모음 발음의 영어 모음 발음에 대한 영향을 연구하는데 있다. 데이터 자료는 한국인의 영어 발음 음성 코퍼스(Korean-Spoken English Corpus, K-SEC)를 활용하였다. 이중 일곱 개의 한국어 단모음이 포함된 단어와 열 개의 영어 단모음이 포함된 단어가 선정되어 분석되었다. 선정된 자료는 외국 거주 경험이 없는 성인 남성 표준어 화자와 경상 지역 방언 화자에 의해 발화되었다. 녹음된 코퍼스 자료의 포먼트 주파수는 음성 분석 프로그램인 Praat에서 제공하는 스펙트로그램을 통해 측정되었다. 녹음된 자료들은 포먼트 구역 그래프로 나타내어 분석되었다. 결과에 의하면, 한국어와 영어 모음의 발화에서 경상 지역 방언 화자가 강한 후설성을 보인 반면에 표준어 화자는 비교적 전설성이 강하게 나타났다. 또한, 표준어와 경상 지역 방언의 한국어 모음 발음 차이 (/으/, /어/)는 대치되는 영어 모음 발음(/ə/, /ʊ/)의 조음 방식에 영향을 미쳤다. 지역 방언의 사용과 무관한 한국인의 일반적인 모음 발음 특징은 영어 원어민 화자보다 조음 구역이 좁다는 것이다. 이에 한국인은 전반적으로 긴장 모음과 이완 모음을 구별하는 데 어려움이 있지만, 영어 원어민 화자는 모음 조음에 명확한 구분이 있다.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.33-37
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• 2018

Korean students with much exposure to the relatively slow and clear speech used in most English classes in Korea can be expected to have difficulty understanding the casual style that is common in the everyday speech of English speakers. This research attempted to investigate an effective way to utilize casual speech in English education, by exploring the way different speech styles (clear vs. casual) affect Korean learners' comprehension of spoken English. Twenty Korean university students and two native speakers of English participated in a listening session. The English utterances were produced in different speech styles (clear slow, casual slow, clear fast, and casual fast). The Korean students were divided into two groups by English proficiency level. The results showed that the Korean students achieved 69.4% comprehension accuracy, while the native speakers of English demonstrated almost perfect results. The Korean students (especially the low-proficiency group) had more problems perceiving function words than they did perceiving content words. Responding to the different speech styles, the high-proficiency group had more difficulty listening to utterances with phonological variation than they did listening to utterances produced at a faster speed. The low-proficiency group, however, struggled with utterances produced at a faster speed more than they did with utterances with phonological variation. The pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in the concluding section.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제46권1호
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• pp.127-136
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• 2024

The Korean language has written (formal) and spoken (phonetic) forms that differ in their application, which can lead to confusion, especially when dealing with numbers and embedded Western words and phrases. This fact makes it difficult to automate Korean speech recognition models due to the need for a complete transcription training dataset. Because such datasets are frequently constructed using broadcast audio and their accompanying transcriptions, they do not follow a discrete rule-based matching pattern. Furthermore, these mismatches are exacerbated over time due to changing tacit policies. To mitigate this problem, we introduce a data-driven Korean spoken-to-written transcription conversion technique that enhances the automatic conversion of numbers and Western phrases to improve automatic translation model performance.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제46호
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• pp.87-102
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• 2003

In this paper, we present an English pronunciation correction system for Korean speakers and show some of experimental results on it. The aim of the system is to detect mispronounced phonemes in spoken words and to give appropriate correction comments to users. There are several English pronunciation correction systems adopting speech recognition technology, however, most of them use conventional speech recognition engines. From this reason, they could not give phoneme based correction comments to users. In our system, we build two kinds of phoneme models: standard native speaker models and Korean's error models. We also design recognition network based on phonemes to detect Koreans' common mispronunciations. We get 90% detection rate in insertion/deletion/replacement of phonemes, but we cannot get high detection rate in diphthong split and accents.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제20권11호
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• pp.378-390
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• 2020

영어 강세는 발화된 영어 단어를 이해하는 데 상당히 중요한 역할을 하며 잘못된 강세의 위치는 의사소통의 실패로 이어질 수 있다. 강세가 없는 것으로 알려진 한국어를 모국어로 둔 영어 학습자는 영어 운율체계를 습득하는 데 어려움을 겪을 것으로 예상된다. 본 연구는 한국어가 단어 수준에서 이러한 강세를 실현하는 것이 영어와 어떻게 다른지 그리고 한국인 영어 학습자의 중간언어가 이 두 언어와 어떻게 다른지 연구하였다. 다음 절로 이루어진 4개의 영어 외래어와 그들의 영어 원어 4개가 실험단어로 사용되었다. 10명의 영어 원어민이 영어 원어를 읽었으며 10명의 한국인 영어 학습자가 먼저 영어 외래어를 한국어로 그리고 나중에는 영어 원어를 영어로 읽었다. 120개의 발화 샘플을 분석한 결과 한국어에는 모든 강세 자질로 (즉, 조음 길이, 조음 크기, 조음의 높이) 실현되는 두드러진 음절이 없었다. 반면에 영어는 모든 강세 자질에 의해 일관되게 실현되는 상대적으로 두드러진 음절을 가지고 있었다. 흥미롭게도 영어 강세 실현에 있어 한국인 영어 학습자의 중간언어는 모국어보다도 영어와 비슷한 특징을 보여 주었다.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제18권3호
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• pp.17-26
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• 1999

We present the first speech coarticulation database of Korean, English and Konglish/sup 3)/ named "SORIDA"/sup 4)/, which is designed to cover the maximum number of representations of coarticulation in these languages [1]. SORIDA features a compact database which is designed to contain a maximum number of triphones in a minimum number of prompts. SORIDA contains all consonantal triphones and vowel allophones in 682 Korean prompts of word length and in 717 English prompt words, spoken five times by speakers of balanced genders, dialects and ages. Korean prompts are synthesized lexicons which maximize their coarticulation variation disregarding any stress phenomena, while English prompts are natural words that fully reflect their stress effects with respect to the coarticulation variation. The prompts are designed differently because English phonology has stress while Korean does not. An intermediate language, Konglish has also been modeled by two Korean speakers reading 717 English prompt words. Recording was done in a controlled laboratory environment with an AKG Model C-100 microphone and a Fostex D-5 digital-audio-tape (DAT) recorder. The total recording time lasted four hours. SORIDA CD-ROM is available in one disk of 22.05 kHz sampling rate with a 16 bit sample size. SORIDA digital audio-tapes are available in four 124-minute-tapes of 48 kHz sampling rate. SORIDA′s list of phonetically-rich-words is also available in English and Korean.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권4호
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• pp.17-26
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• 2014

The present study examined epenthetic vowels produced by Korean learners of English in read sentences, in terms of acoustic measures and extra-phonological factors. The results demonstrated three main findings. First, epenthetic vowels had relatively high F1 values and a wide range of F2 values. Most of the epenthetic vowels were inserted near Korean high central vowels, but some vowels were inserted near front vowels due to co-articulation with surrounding vowels. Second, vowel epenthesis was affected by the context. The results showed that the epenthesis was frequently seen with word junctions between obstruents (e.g., stops-fricatives). Third, Korean learners were not affected by English background and were very weakly affected by orthography. English experience, which is one of the extra-phonological factors, was not related to epenthesis production. However, orthography, the other extra-phonological factor, very weakly affected the amount of epenthesis production. Nine percent of all epenthesis production was affected by the English past-tense suffix '-ed'; approximately 70% of the participants were affected by this suffix. The findings of the present study contributed to understanding vowel epenthesis. First, the study revealed that the epenthetic vowels produced by Korean learners of English were close to the high central vowel, supporting previous studies that the epenthetic vowel is quite close to the shortest vowel. Second, the study examined the various phonetic environments of epenthetic vowels, revealing that vowel epenthesis occurred more frequently in a certain phonetic circumstance.