• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.45-55
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• 2021

This study aims to analyze the acoustic characteristics of Korean affricates produced by dysarthric speakers with cerebral palsy. Korean fricatives and affricates are the consonants that are prone to errors in dysarthric speech, but previous studies have focused only on fricatives. For this study, three affricates /tɕ, tɕ^h, ͈tɕ/ appearing at word initial and intervocalic positions produced by six mild-moderate male speakers of spastic dysarthria are selected from a QOLT database constructed in 2014. The parameters representing the acoustic characteristics of Korean affricates were extracted by using Praat: frication duration, closure duration, center of gravity, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and central moment. The results are as follows: 1) frication duration of the intervocalic affricates produced by dysarthric speakers was significantly longer than that of the non-disordered speakers; 2) the closure duration of dysarthric speakers was significantly longer; 3) in the case of the center of gravity, there was no significant difference between the two groups; 4) the skewness of the dysarthric speakers was significantly larger; and 5) the central moment of dysarthric speakers was significantly larger. This study investigated the characteristics of the affricates produced by dysarthric speakers and differences with non-disordered speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

This study aims to enhance English pronunciation education for Korean students by examining the impact of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect on the articulation of English vowels. Data were obtained through the Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC). Seven Korean words and ten English mono-syllabic words were uttered by adult, male speakers of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect, in particular, speakers with little to no experience living abroad were selected. Formant frequencies of the recorded corpus data were measured using spectrograms, provided by the speech analysis program, Praat. The recorded data were analyzed using the articulatory graph for formants. The results show that in comparison with speakers using standard Korean, those using the Gyeongsang regional dialect articulated both Korean and English vowels in the back. Moreover, the contrast between standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect in the pronunciation of Korean vowels (/으/, /어/) affected how the corresponding English vowels (/ə/, /ʊ/) were articulated. Regardless of the use of regional dialect, a general feature of vowel pronunciation among Korean people is that they show more narrow articulatory movements, compared with that of native English speakers. Korean people generally experience difficulties with discriminating tense and lax vowels, whereas native English speakers have clear distinctions in vowel articulation.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.56-61
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• 2022

In this paper, we classify and present AI algorithms and natural language processing methods used in chatbots. A framework that can be used to implement a chatbot is also described. A chatbot is a system with a structure that interprets the input string by constructing the user interface in a conversational manner and selects an appropriate answer to the input string from the learned data and outputs it. However, training is required to generate an appropriate set of answers to a question and hardware with considerable computational power is required. Therefore, there is a limit to the practice of not only developing companies but also students learning AI development. Currently, chatbots are replacing the existing traditional tasks, and a practice course to understand and implement the system is required. RNN and Char-CNN are used to increase the accuracy of answering questions by learning unstructured data by applying technologies such as deep learning beyond the level of responding only to standardized data. In order to implement a chatbot, it is necessary to understand such a theory. In addition, the students presented examples of implementation of the entire system by utilizing the methods that can be used for coding education and the platform where existing developers and students can implement chatbots.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.67-76
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• 2022

This study aimed to examine Korean listeners' mode of perceiving sound duration as prolongation, whether dichotomous or continuous. Thirty-five Korean participants (17 men and 18 women) listened to the Korean segment /s/, which was lengthened by 0-980ms in 20-ms increments. Then, the participants were asked to rate each version of the sound based on a rating of one to 100 (the closer to 100, the more disfluent). To examine whether listeners perceived durational variations for the fricative segment dichotomously or continuously, a curve was estimated using the best-fitting regression model for the observed data with the highest adjusted R-squared value. The mode of perceiving durational variations for the segment was continuous (or gradient) rather than discontinuous (or dichotomous). No gender difference was found in the mode of perceiving prolongation. However, there was a significant gender difference in that men rated the most disfluent sounds higher than women. The findings of this study were further discussed in relation to the existing literature, and clinical implications for the assessment of stuttering were presented.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.524-539
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• 2022

With the advent of generative artificial intelligence technology, it became possible to create a virtual human, and produce a lecture video only with textual information. It is expected that the virtual human will enhance the efficient production of educational contents and the student's entertainment experience and satisfaction. However, there have been still few studies that have demonstrated the process of how virtual human technology reaches students' satisfaction. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to empirically examine whether the human likeness, which is the main characteristic of a virtual human based on Uncanny Valley theory, affects human experience and satisfaction. In particular, human likeness of the Uncanny Valley theory was subdivided into human likeness in the visual and verbal dimensions, and the process of reaching satisfaction was understood based on the experience economy model. In particular, human similarity in Uncanny Valley theory was classified as similarity in the visual and language levels, and the process of reaching satisfaction based on the experiential economic model was analyzed with a partial least squares structure model equation (PLS-SEM). The survey was conducted online for a panel of office workers at a specialized research institution in China. The results indicate that both the visual and verbal human likeness had a positive effect on experience economy factors (education, entertainment, esthetic, escape), and then these experiential factors had a significant effect on satisfaction. The results also provide some suggestions to consider when designing educational contents by virtual human.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.47-57
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• 2019

The end of the 20th century, along with the popularity of new media technology and the rise of new media art, dance as a visual art, and body language art, has the features of more and more rich and changeful. In today's Internet booming new media environment, many different fields, such as film and theater, computer technology, digital art, etc.) with its commonness and characteristics of all kinds of interaction between the creation, produced a new interdisciplinary research with theoretical model. When cross-border interactions between various areas become a hot topic at the same time, the traditional form of dance performances are also seeking new breakthrough. Canada's famous social psychologist McLuhan believes that modern is retrieving lost over a long period of time "overall" feel, return to a feeling of equilibrium. The audience how to have the characteristics of focus on details of visual art back to the "overall" feel worthy of study. At the same time, the new media in today's digital dance teaching in colleges and universities dancing education remains to be perfect and popular, if continue to use the precept of the traditional teaching way blindly, so it is difficult to get from the development of the current domestic dance overall demand. In this paper, the main body is divided into two parts, the first chapter is the study of image device dance performance art, the second chapter is the research of digital dance teaching application system, thus further perspective of media technology to explore dance art crossover practice under the new media environment and mode of transmission.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.43
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• pp.173-202
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• 2021

During the Korean War, China dispatched 'the Anti-US and Pro-Joseon Comfort' group to North Korea 3 times. The purpose of the comfort group was to comfort the Chinese People's Supporting Soldiers and Joseon People's Army fighting the US imperial forces and at the same time, inform them of China's situation to booster their morale. Another purpose was to promote the socialism construction projects in the new China. Namely, China wanted to propagate various heroic achievements of the Chinese soldiers and accuse the US imperialist soldiers and thereby, inspire Chinese people's international sense and patriotism for the new China to mobilize the people for the war and promote the construction of the new China effectively. The comfort group consisted of diverse classes (laborers, farmers, intellectuals, women, students, soldiers, etc.) in various areas such as politics, military, ethnic, society, culture, education, etc. Their activities were conducted in various forms such as consolation, legwork, meeting and performances. Their activities were full of anger and compassion, sacrifice and emotion, battle and romance, impression and comfort. Such emotion was delivered intact to the Chinese people through the comfort group's propaganda activities back home in China. The Anti-US and Pro-Joseon Comfort' group revealed their identity of socialists New China in terms of their organization and their specific performances. Their identity claimed for democracy and equality, internationalism empathizing world peace and solidarity of the proletariats, and patriotism supporting the communists regime. The comfort group played a role in propagating such identity of new China effectively by crossing the border. It was a political and cultural performance that stipulated the political meaning of the Anti-US and Pro-Joseon Chosun Comfort' group

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.45-56
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• 2022

This paper proposes an optimal methodology for automatically diagnosing and predicting the severity of the chronic kidney disease (CKD) using patients' utterances. In patients with CKD, the voice changes due to the weakening of respiratory and laryngeal muscles and vocal fold edema. Previous studies have phonetically analyzed the voices of patients with CKD, but no studies have been conducted to classify the voices of patients. In this paper, the utterances of patients with CKD were classified using the variety of utterance types (sustained vowel, sentence, general sentence), the feature sets [handcrafted features, extended Geneva Minimalistic Acoustic Parameter Set (eGeMAPS), CNN extracted features], and the classifiers (SVM, XGBoost). Total of 1,523 utterances which are 3 hours, 26 minutes, and 25 seconds long, are used. F1-score of 0.93 for automatically diagnosing a disease, 0.89 for a 3-classes problem, and 0.84 for a 5-classes problem were achieved. The highest performance was obtained when the combination of general sentence utterances, handcrafted feature set, and XGBoost was used. The result suggests that a general sentence utterance that can reflect all speakers' speech characteristics and an appropriate feature set extracted from there are adequate for the automatic classification of CKD patients' utterances.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.37-47
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to research the effects of Korean beginner learners' perception of vocabulary learning and comparison of vocabulary learning methods between the use of vocabulary application Classcard and rote learning with writing. This experiment was conducted by 24 beginner Korean learners who were at the 1st and 2nd level in Institute of Korean Language of D University. These students were dividing into 2 groups for the test - 12 in the control group and 12 in the experimental group. They took the vocabulary tests which were designed for examining the differences between before and after learning. Study results showed that vocabulary learning using the application Classcard significantly improved learners' vocabulary scores which were statistically significant. These results demonstrated that the method using Classcard has a greater learning effect than the method of rote learning with writing. Furthermore, the survey showed that learners did not feel uncomfortable in learning vocabulary using the application Classcard, and they thought it was one of the ways to learn vocabulary easily, which means that vocabulary learning using this application has a positive effect on learners' learning achievement. This study is significant in that it suggested a vocabulary learning method that can increase learners' interest and vocabulary by proving the effect of vocabulary learning using applications.

• East European & Balkan Studies
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.3-30
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• 2019

In order to understand the various cultural interactions caused by the wave of globalization, we need a proper lens that can observe and transmit correctly these phenomena. The result of understanding very differs depending on which lens is used. Translation can be regarded as a lens to communicate with each other in the world where language barriers exist. Literature is a kind of universal cultural heritage combined with the intellectual, artistic and social lifestyle of each society. Introducing this cultural complex, namely literature and impregnating people from other languages with the value of our Korean literature, begin with the correct translation. Translator should act as a literary missionary, not merely a simple communicator. The process of literary translation cannot be achieved by simple linguistic ability because it is a highly human scientific work that requires diverse talents from translators. The right translator for Korean literature in Romania is a person with diverse abilities and social experiences within the cultural framework of Korea and Romania. As the requirements of the translation environment from each country are different, the paradigm of foreign translation literature that Romania wants to accept may be very clear distinctively. With recognizing this characteristic environment of Romania, the value of Korean literature can be effectively spread in Romania. Translators are the creators of another original work. With this in mind, the education of Korean studies in Romania should pay more attention to the nurture of right and capable translators.