• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1994.06c
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• pp.338-341
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• 1994

In this paper we propose a method to generate a multisyllable onsense wordest for the purpose of synthetic speech assessment and applies th ewordest to assess one commercial text-to-speech system. Some results about the experiment is suggested and it is verified that the generated nonsense wordset can be used to assess the intelligibility of the synthesizer in phoneme level or in phonemic environmental level. From the experimental results it is verified that such multi-syllable nonsense wordset can be useful for the assessment of synthesized speech.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.51-58
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• 1994

These times many kinds of man-machine Interfaces using speech signal, speech recognizers or speech synthesizers, are proposed and utilized in practice. Especially speech synthesis system is widely used in our life. But its assessment method is still in its first stage. In this paper we propose a method to generate multi-syllable nonsense wordset for the purpose of synthetic speech assessment and applies the wordset to one commercial text-to-speech system. Some results about the experiment is suggested and it is verified that the method to generate a nonsense wordset can be used to assess the intelligibility of the synthesizer in phoneme level or in phonemic environmental level.

• MALSORI
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• no.31_32
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• pp.195-205
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• 1996

The aim of this paper is to describe the prosodic structure of Korean related to the syllable duration varying with its positional difference. An attempt is made in this study to analyze and describe the concrete correlation between the syllable lengthening and its position in the utterance at the initial and final positions. Using the syllable [na] at the final and initial position of a prosodic phrase in the Korean version of 'the North Wind and the Sun', it has found that the ratio of phrase final versus phrase initial syllable lengthening was approximately 1.8:1 for 4 subjects taking part in the test. In the case of nonsense data, we found that the ratio was approximately 1.6:1 for 2 out of 3 subjects. The results of this study might indicate that Korean tends to have a high rate of final lengthening. We can tentatively classify it, therefore, as a stress-timed language. Still, there is no denying that further studies should be done before we can be absolutely certain about the classification of languages along the dichotomy scale.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.25-51
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• 2017

This study aimed to identify the differences in pitch perception between tonal and non-tonal language listeners. A total of 60 Korean and Chinese listeners participated in the perception test. A two-syllable nonsense word /paba/ was manipulated in five steps. The pitch height or contour on the second syllable was raised or lowered. Both groups were asked to select which of the two syllables had the higher pitch. The findings showed that the majority of Korean listeners (GK) perceived decreased pitch as each peak of the syllable was lowered and perceived increased pitch as it was raised, which means the pitch height is a primary perceptual cue for GK. However, Chinese listeners (GC) perceived sensitive pitch movements as the pitch contour changed. GC's perception may presumably be affected by the L1's tone sandhi. We found it reasonable to assume that language experience has a significant effect on the cross-linguistic perceptual differences between tone and non-tonal language listeners.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.3-14
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• 2011

It has been posited that in English, native listeners use the Metrical Segmentation Strategy (MSS) for the segmentation of continuous speech. Strong syllables tend to be perceived as potential word onsets for English native speakers, which is due to the high proportion of strong syllables word-initially in the English vocabulary. This study investigates whether Koreans employ the same strategy when segmenting speech input in English. Word-spotting experiments were conducted using vowel-initial and consonant-initial bisyllabic targets embedded in nonsense trisyllables in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. The effect of strong syllable was significant in the RT (reaction times) analysis but not in the error analysis. In both experiments, Korean listeners detected words more slowly when the word-initial syllable is strong (stressed) than when it is weak (unstressed). However, the error analysis showed that there was no effect of initial stress in Experiment 1 and in the item (F2) analysis in Experiment 2. Only the subject (F1) analysis in Experiment 2 showed that the participants made more errors when the word starts with a strong syllable. These findings suggest that Koran listeners do not use the Metrical Segmentation Strategy for segmenting English speech. They do not treat strong syllables as word beginnings, but rather have difficulties recognizing words when the word starts with a strong syllable. These results are discussed in terms of intonational properties of Korean prosodic phrases which are found to serve as lexical segmentation cues in the Korean language.

• MALSORI
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• no.21_24
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• pp.43-89
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• 1992

In this thesis, the prominent aspect of word accent in standard Korean is studied by auditory test and acoustic analysis experiment. The definition of 'accent' is, following Hoyoung Lee's discussion(1990), to be described as 'the means whereby a focused part of an utterance is made to stand out in order to concentrate the hearer's attention on it.' That is to say, the ten of 'accent' may be described in terms of phonological phenomenon and the accented syllable can be phonetically prominent as the result of those phonological process. Prosodic features may have different characteristics in different languages whether they contain linguistically important functions or not. Thus the characteristics of word accent in standard Korean will be determined as the content and trait of prosodic features. Following this viewpoint, present study looked over prosodic features which may effect the characteristics of word accent in standard Korean, through systematic experimental procedure. And the result of this experiment has been verified by statistical method, the T-test, for the purpose of identifying the relatedness among prosodic features(parameters). This thesis, therefore, aimed to investigate the intrinsic acoustic and physical qualities of the word accent in standard Korean. Nonsense words composed by 'mal' and 'ma' which can be divided into 'heavy syllable' and 'light syllable' quoted from Hyman(1975) have been classified into 28 types with respect to syllable numbers(2 syl., 3 sy1., 4 syl.) and these words have become the target of auditory test and acoustic experiment. As the result of those experimental Procedures, the word accent in standard Korean may be said that it has a tendency of fixing first two syllables regardless of syllable numbers. The syllable types of HH, HL, LL in the first two syllables may be prominent at first syllable and the type of H may be at second syllable. Various prosodic features(parameters) including duration, intensity, and Fo(purely phonetic terms) were also strengthened in those positions. The result of this experiment can be cleared up like these : 1. The most important feature is proved as 'duration', the feature of intensity resulted in more subsidiary one than the feature of duration. 2. Fo( fundamental frequency) could be observed as having some coherent contour through almost all syllable types(99 ％), that is, in 2 syllable types, it had rising contour, in 2 syllable types, rising-falling contour, and in 4 syllable types, it contained rising-falling-rising contour. The result of auditory test was different with those contour forms of all Fo surveyed. With respect to these results, the discuss for Fo is determined' to be excluded comparing other features. 3. Finally, this thesis resulted in a decision that the word accent in standard Korean may has fixed(somewhat weaker) accent, especially fixed at first two syllables in almost all words. 4. Various kinds of syllable types related with 2,3,4 syllables, therefore, can be reclassified into 4 types of HH, HL, LH, LL following the concept of accent fixing placement(i.e. first two syllables). In these 4 types, the types of HH, HL, LL were prominent at the position of the first syllable , and the type of LH was prominent at the second syllable otherwise.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.95-102
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of the phonological discrimination ability and phonological working memory of 10 typically developing children aged 4, and 10 other children with Specific Language Impairments whose language age is similar. In orders to compare their phonological discrimination ability among phonological awareness, discrimination tasks were conducted at the syllable and phoneme levels. Also, in order to compare their phonological working memory, the subjects repeated nonsense syllables. The research results may be summarized as follows: First, the children with Specific Language Impairments demonstrated a lower performance than the typically developing children in phonological discrimination ability at both syllable and phoneme levels, and the difference between the groups was statistically significant. Second, the children with Specific Language Impairments exhibited a lower phonological working memory performance in all syllables compared with normal children. Although there was no significant difference in 2 and 3 syllables, a significant difference appeared as the length of the syllables became longer from 4 to 6 syllables. It is deemed necessary to conduct research into qualitative and quantitative differences through an formal assessment of the phonological awareness and phonological working memory of children with Specific Language Impairments.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.41-48
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• 2018

This study examined the acoustic characteristics of Korean alveolar fricatives of normal children. Developing children aged 3 and 7, typically produced 2 types of nonsense syllables containing alveolar fricative /sV/ and /VsV/ sequences where V was any one of three corner vowels (/i, a, and u/). Stimuli containing the speech materials used in a production experiment were presented randomly to 12 speech language pathologists (SLPs) for a perception test. The SLPs responded by selecting one of seven alternative sounds. Acoustic measures such as duration of frication noise, normalized intensity, skewness, and center of gravity were examined. There was significant difference in acoustic measures when comparing vowels. Comparison of syllable structures indicated statistically significant differences in duration of frication noise and normalized intensity. Acoustic parameters could account for the perceptual data. Relating the acoustic and perception data by means of logistic regression suggests that duration of frication noise and normalized intensity are the primary cues to perceiving Korean fricatives.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.41-52
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• 2007

Recent experimental studies have shown that language-users' knowledge of the statistical characteristic of their native language plays a key role in their task performance. One specific instance of this that the current study focuses on is the effect of phonotactic probabilities on speakers' wordlikeness judgment of nonwords. In this paper, I explore the question of whether the judgment of Korean speaking subjects as to the wordlikeness of Korean nonsense words is influenced by the degree of association between two-phoneme sequences in Korean. The current results suggest that the objective measure of correlations (expressed by $r_{\phi}$ values) between an onset consonant and a vowel inside Korean syllables play an important role in Korean speakers' nonword processing. The current results additionally indicate an effect of the correlations of two-phoneme sequences including vowels and coda consonants on nonword processing. Implications of these findings for Korean speakers' learning the correlations between adjacent segments inside the syllable are discussed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.175-185
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to investigate the acoustic durations of Korean vowels followed by either voiced or voiceless consonants. Six healthy adult speakers (2 females and 4 males) recorded nonsense syllables in which voiced (/b, d, g/) or voiceless (/p', t', k', $p^{h},t^{h},k^{h}$) consonants follow three different vowels (/i, a, u/) embedded in a carrier phrase. Results showed that vowels preceding voiced consonants (e.g., haba) were significantly longer in duration than those preceding voiceless consonants (e.g., hiP' a or $hip^{h}a$). Also vowels were longer in duration when occurring before velar-stops than before bilabial-stop and dental-stops. Finally, the duration of the low vowel (/a/) was substantially longer than that of the high vowels (/i, u/). These findings may be applicable to speech synthesis or therapy.