• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• 제21권2E호
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• pp.98-104
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• 2002

The present study describes a combination method to recognize the human affective states such as anger, happiness, sadness, or surprise. For this, we extracted emotional features from voice signals and facial expressions, and then trained them to recognize emotional states using hidden Markov model (HMM) and neural network (NN). For voices, we used prosodic parameters such as pitch signals, energy, and their derivatives, which were then trained by HMM for recognition. For facial expressions, on the other hands, we used feature parameters extracted from thermal and visible images, and these feature parameters were then trained by NN for recognition. The recognition rates for the combined parameters obtained from voice and facial expressions showed better performance than any of two isolated sets of parameters. The simulation results were also compared with human questionnaire results.

• 음성과학
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• 제6권
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• pp.119-143
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• 1999

In this paper, the development of English Intonational Phonology is introduced. The existing representation systems of intonation are largely divided into the American structuralist school and the British school, which describe intonation by means of 'levels' and 'configurations' respectively. Both representation systems have some theory-internal problems, however. As for the American school, there is no way to represent pitches much lower than the reference line, while the system of intonation in the British school is limited in that intonation is described in a phonetic impressionistic way rather than from a phonological perspective. Intonational Phonology, a real phonological approach, which has grown out of the basic assumptions of autosegmental-metrical(AM) theory has been suggested by Pierrehumbert(1980). In her approach, an intonational tune is made up of one or more pitch accents, followed by an obligatory phrase accent and an obligatory boundary tone, and interestingly 22 combinations are possible. Intonational Phonology has been revised from Beckman & Pierrehumbert(1986) in developing ToBI(Tones & Break Indices), a proposed standard for labelling prosodic features of digital speech databases in English.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제45호
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• pp.15-22
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• 2003

This study is a kind of a preliminary study to develop naturalness of dialog TTS system. In this study, as major characteristics of politeness in Korean, temporal(total duration of utterances, speech rate and duration of utterance final syllables) and F0(mean F0, boundary tone pattern, F0 range) features were discussed through acoustic analysis of recorded data of semantically neutral sentences, which were spoken by ten professional voice actors under two conditions of utterance type - namely, normal and polite type. The results show that temporal characteristics were significantly different according to the utterance type but F0 characteristics were not.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 2003년도 5월 학술대회지
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• pp.163-167
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• 2003

Intonation as suprasegmental phonetic features conveys meanings on the postlexical or utterance level in a linguistically structured way. It includes three aspects: tunes, relative prominence, and intonational phrasing. In this article, I will treat how prosodic phrasing is functionally related to the listening comprehension of English by analysing the students' errors of listening comprehension. When utterance meaning is conveyed, it is realized to be divided into intonational phrases. The small intonational phrase is regarded as an intermediate phrase which has a primary accent and a phrase tone or audible break. Most students' errors of listening occurred with linking pronunciation in the intermediate phrases of the fast speech. Thus through the smallest unit with tune we can help students improve their pronunciation and listening ability of English.

• 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.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 1997년도 7월 학술대회지
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• pp.11-25
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• 1997

This presentation will focus on building basic English Prosodic Skills which are very useful and helpful for Japanese learners of English. The focus first will be on recognizing the seven basic nuclear tones, analysing intonation structures, distinguishing intonation patterns and then on the way of improving speaking ability using sufficient verbal contents of intonation (mini-dialogue). My presentation deals mainly with some difficulties which Japanese learners of English have in the field of RP intonation, It is chiefly concerned with identifying, describing and analysing tone-group sequences. It sometimes happens that Japanese learners of English can pronounce isolated bounds correctly and read phonetic symbols sufficiently, bet have difficult problems in carrying out accurate prosodic features. The use of wrong intonation is sometimes the cause of misunderstanding of speaker's attitude, connotation and shades of meaning, etc.. However accurately students can pronounce the nuclear tone or tone-group of English, they have to learn how to connect tone-groups properly for suitable sequences in respect to meaning or implication. We are faced with the complicated theory of RF intonation on the one hand and difficult realization of it on the other. Japanese learners of English have special difficulties in employing "rising tune" and "falling + rising tune". If students are taught pitch movements by indicating dots graphically between two horizontal lines, they can easily understand the whole shape of pitch movements. In this presentation, I illuminate several tone-group sequences which are very useful for Japanese learning English intonation. Among them, four similar Pitch Patterns, such as, (1) (equation omitted)- type, (2) (equation omitted) - type, (3) (equation omitted) - type and (4) (Rising Head) (equation omitted)- type are clarified and other important tone-group sequences aye also highlighted from the point of view of teaching English as a foreign language. The intonation theory, tone marks and technical terms are, in all essentials, those of Intonation of Colloquial English by O'Connor, J. D. and Arnold, G. F., Longman, 2nd ed., 1982. The changes of tone are shown graphically between two horizontal lines representing the ordinary high and low zones of the utterance. A.C.Gimson (1981:314) : The intonation of English has been studied in greater detail and for longer than that of any other language. No definitive analysis, classifying the features of RP intonation, has yet appeared (though that presented by O'Connor and Arnold (1973) provides the most comprehensive and useful account from the foreign learner's point of view).

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.39-49
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• 2020

언어의 운율은 억양, 리듬, 강세로 구성되어 있고 운율 요소는 상호 복합적인 작용을 통하여 언어의 고유한 리듬을 형성한다. 자폐범주성 장애 아동은 자연스러운 운율 학습에 어려움이 있어 정확한 의미와 정보 전달에 어려움이 있어 자폐범주성 장애 아동의 운율에 대한 연구가 중요하다. 평서문과 의문문 따라말하기 과제를 통하여 자폐범주성 장애 아동 집단과 일반 아동 집단 간의 운율 특성 차이를 구명하고 어말 길이에 따라 의문문에서의 음도기울기와 청자와의 지각관계를 알아보았다. 7-12세 일반 아동 30명, 자폐범주성 장애 아동 20명을 대상으로 언어 평가 후 20문장 따라말하기 과제를 실시하였다. 청지각 과제로는 115문장이 사용되었다. 자폐범주성 장애 아동이 일반 아동에 비해 음도와 강도가 높고, 발화속도가 느리며 음도 기울기가 낮았다. 자폐범주성 장애 아동은 평서문과 의문문의 산출에서 음도와 강도에 유의한 차이를 보이지 않았다. 자폐범주성 장애 아동은 의문문 1음절에서 평서문과 가장 큰 기울기 차이를 보였으며 5음절 의문문 산출에서 가장 낮은 기울기 값을 보였다. 청지각 평가 결과 청자는 4.3%만 자폐범주성 장애 아동의 의문문을 의문문으로 지각하였다. 결과적으로 평서문과 의문문 따라말하기에서 자폐범주성 장애아동이 일반 아동에 비해 음도와 강도가 높고, 발화속도가 느리며, 낮은 음도기울기를 보였다. 이러한 운율패턴 때문에 청자는 의문문을 평서문으로 인식하였고 원인은 규명되지 않았지만 화용능력이나 다른 자폐적 특징의 결함과 관련이 있다고 할 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 자폐범주성 장애 아동의 이러한 억양 패턴을 확인하였고 운율 개선을 위한 치료 개발의 필요성을 제시했다.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권3호
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• pp.59-73
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• 2012

This study attempts to investigate the contribution of prosody to the foreign accent in Chinese speakers' English production by examining the synthesized speech of crossing native and non-native talkers' prosody and segments. For the stimuli of the foreign accent ratings, we transplanted gender-matched native speakers' prosody onto non-native talkers' segments and vice versa, utilizing the TD-PSOLA algorithm. Eight English native listeners participated in judging foreign accent and comprehensibility of the transplanted stimuli. Results showed that the synthesized stimuli were perceived as stronger foreign accent regardless of speakers' proficiency when English speakers' prosody was crossed with Chinese speakers' segments. This suggests that segments contribute more than prosody to native listeners' evaluation of foreign accent. When transplanted with English speakers' segments, Chinese speakers' prosody showed a difference in duration rather than pitch between high and low proficiency such that stronger foreign accent was detected when low proficient Chinese speakers' duration was crossed with English speakers' segments. This indicated that prosody, more specifically duration, plays a role though the prosodic role is not overall as significant as segments. According to the post acoustic analysis, the temporal features contributing to making the duration parameter prominent as opposed to pitch were found out to be speaking rate, pause duration and pause frequency. Finally, foreign accent and comprehensibility showed no significant correlation such that native listeners had no difficulty listening to highly foreign accented speech.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제2권1호
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• pp.13-21
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to examine the prosody characteristics of sentence-level utterances which contain homographs with context cues in patients with neurogenic communication disorders. Homographs which may be affected by prosody, especially tonic length features, were used to investigate this matter. The characteristics of tone, duration, pitch, and pitch peak were analyzed to examine the characteristics of prosody in patients with lesions in the left or right hemisphere and normal controls. The whole process was recorded using Praat 4.3.14 and for statistical analyses, three-way ANOVA and multiple comparative analyses, Chi-Square tests, and a one-way ANOVA were carried out using SPSS 12.0 for Windows. The conclusions of this study are as follows. First, the length of syllables and vowels in homographs in Korean was different depending on the meaning and was not significant between groups. Second, it was found that patients with lesions in the right hemisphere had significant difference on pitch. Third, it was found that frequency of pitch peak and tone in 'short' tone syllables were different between groups. The conclusion of this study found that the prosody of homographs between groups absolutely was not differentiated. Accordingly, more detailed studies of acoustic parameters and other parameters which the prosody characteristic between groups could be found are needed in the future.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제18권6호
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• pp.84-88
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• 1999

음소별 지속시간의 정확한 예측은 TTS 시스템의 자연성을 향상시키는데 중요한 역할을 한다. 기존의 한국어 음소 지속 시간의 모델링을 위해 사용된 특징 변수에는 음소 문맥 정보, 품사 정보, 운율구 내에서의 위치 정보 등이 있다. 본 논문에서는 음소별 성조 정보 값을 새로운 특징 변수로 정의하여 예측 성능을 향상시키고자 한다. 성조 정보의 표현을 위해 두 개의 비경계 성조와 여섯 개의 경계 성조를 정의한 후, 400문장의 음성 코퍼스에 음절별 표기를 수행하였다. 성조 정보를 이용한 지속 시간 예측을 위해, 출력노드에서 음소의 지속 시간을 실수 형태로 출력하는 신경망을 구성하고 이를 오류 역전파 알고리즘으로 학습시켰다. 실험 결과, 성조 정보를 사용하는 경우 실험 데이터에 대해 예측값과 실제값 사이의 상관계수로 0.863을 얻을 수 있었으며 이는 성조를 사용하지 않는 경우에 비해 향상된 성능을 나타내었다.