• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.119-125
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• 2014

Many studies have reported an age-related decline in the ability to spell words correctly. The aim of this study was to investigate the deterioration on retrieving orthographic knowledge in 64 normal elderly Korean persons. The subjects were 64 in total: they were composed of 22 persons in their 50s, 20 persons in their 60s, and 22 persons in their 70s or older. We instructed them to write from a dictation of 60 words stimuli (20 regular words, 20 irregular words, 20 nonwords). Older adults made more errors than younger adults, and the age-related decline in performance was greater for irregular than regular and nonwords. With respect to the error pattern in the irregular words, the subjects showed more phonological plausible errors than phonological implausible errors. The number of self-correction was high in nonwords. Based on the results, we found that aging differentially affects the retrieval of orthographic knowledge on regular, irregular and nonwords.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.79-87
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• 2016

The purpose of this study aimed to examine the perceptual pattern of the Korean coda consonants by Chinese learners of Korean. Given that Mandarin allows only two nasals (/n, ŋ/) in the coda position, it was predicted that Chinese learners of Korean had difficulty in discriminating Korean coda consonants. In the experiment, the subjects were 21 beginner-level Chinese learners of Korean. They participated in the discrimination task four times a year in which they were asked to choose the right Korean coda consonants after listening the word from Korean native speakers. The results demonstrated that 1) Chinese learners of Korean improved their perception of the Korean coda consonants. 2) But Chinese learners of Korean performed differently according to the type of Korean coda consonants. Korean consonants /n, p, k, m/ showed significant differences, but /l, ŋ, t/ did not.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.223-228
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• 2004

This study investigated the use of grammatical markers of Korean speaking children(from 3 to 8 years old) and adults. Participants had no problem of speech and language. In this paper we examined the usage of grammatical markers were increasing from 3 to 8 years old even though it was still increasing after 8 years old. Specifically, they used subjective marker and adverb marker at all ages in large. A few adjective marker were used at all age group including adults. But the frequency of objective marker is increasing from 3 to adults. The pattern of usage is getting similar to adult's. The present study was also designed to investigate the characteristics of children's errors of grammatical markers. Results showed that there were a little differences among the age-groups. The substitution errors were occurred most frequently in all age-groups.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.06c
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• pp.83-86
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• 1998

This paper describes an overview of the system designed for 500-word speech recognition. The system is based on the triphone models and uses Dynamic Multisection(DMS) technique for pattern matching. The system is very flexible in the sense of the word-dictionary which is changable spontaneously without any training. The vocabulary selected for the experiments is 561 words of province names, district names of Seoul and Pusan. The experimental results which will be shown here are preliminary because only one speaker was involved in the experiments. But the result is satisfactory when we see the performance is 95.1%. The system is designed on the Windows-95 and works in realtime on the Pentium-133 computer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Cognitive Science Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.163-167
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• 2005

Current theories of cross-language speech perception claim that patterns of perceptual assimilation of non-native segments to native categories predict relative difficulties in learning to perceive (and produce) non-native phones. Perceptual assimilation patterns by Japanese listeners of the three-way voicing distinction in Korean syllable-initial obstruent consonants were assessed directly. According to Speech Learning Model (SLM) and Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), the resulting perceptual assimilation pattern predicts relative difficulty in discrimination between lenis and aspirated consonants, and relative ease in the discrimination of fortis. This study compared the effects of two different training conditions on Japanese adults’perceptual categorization of Korean three-way distinction. In one condition, participants were trained to discriminate lenis and aspirated consonants which were predicted to be problematic, whereas in another condition participants were trained with all three classes of 'learnability' did not seem to depend lawfully on the perceived cross-language similarity of Korean and Japanese consonants.

• MALSORI
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• no.66
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• pp.105-116
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• 2008

In this research, we propose a speaker identification system using a kernel method which is expected to model the non-linearity of speech features well. We have been using principal component analysis (PCA) successfully, and extended to kernel PCA, which is used for many pattern recognition tasks such as face recognition. However, we cannot use kernel PCA for speaker identification directly because the storage required for the kernel matrix grows quadratically, and the computational cost grows linearly (computing eigenvector of $l{\times}l$ matrix) with the number of training vectors I. Therefore, we use greedy kernel PCA which can approximate kernel PCA with small representation error. In the experiments, we compare the accuracy of the greedy kernel PCA with the baseline Gaussian mixture models using MFCCs and PCA. As the results with limited enrollment data show, the greedy kernel PCA outperforms conventional methods.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.103-117
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• 1999

This paper suggests that the onset-coda asymmetry found in languages like Korean and others should be dealt with in terms of one acoustic feature rather than other articulatory features, claiming that the acoustic feature involved here is [noise], i.e., 'aperiodic waveform energy'. It determines the structural well-formedness of the languages in question whether a coda ends in [noise] or not, regardless of the intensity, the frequency, and the time duration of the [noise]. Fricatives, affricates, aspirated stops, tense stops, and released stops are all disallowed in the coda position due to the acoustic feature [noise] they, commonly end with if they were, posited in the coda. The proposal implies that the three seemingly separate prohibitions of consonants in the coda position -- i) no fricatives/affricates, ii) no aspirated/tense stops, and iii) no released stops -- are directly correlated with each other. Incorporation of the one acoustic feature [noise] in the feature theory enables us to see that the aspects of onset-coda asymmetry are derived from one single source: ban, of [noise] in the coda.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.7-24
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• 1999

Eleven Korean learners of English took part in an experiment where the production and perception of English /r/ and /l/ in four different word positions was investigated. Overall the subjects made more errors on /l/ in both production and identification tests. The frequency of the subjects' errors was also sensitive to word positions in which the two English liquids occur. Especially the subjects made noticeably fewer errors in intervocalic medial position. It is suggested that the Korean subjects' acquisitional pattern in this particular case of foreign phone learning can be explained more by language particular 'interference' effects rather than 'universal' acoustic arguments such as those given in Dissosway et a1. (1982) and Sheldon and Strange (1982). The results of the experiment also support the minority position among second language educators that in some cases of non-native phone acquisition, learners' production abilities can be developed earlier than their perceptual abilities.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.43-54
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to examine temporal structures of English words beginning with an /s/ plus stop sequence through production experiments with native speakers of Korean learning English and native speakers of English. According to the results of our production experiment, both a beginner and an advanced group of Korean English learners produced /s/ shorter than a following stop, while the opposite pattern was observed in English native speakers' production. An advanced group of Korean English learners were good at producing a stop after /s/ as unaspirated, but their production of a stop following /s/ was different from English native speakers' production in that the closure duration of the stop was much longer.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.47-54
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyse prosodic characteristics of accentual phrases (AP, hereafter) produced by Chinese learners of Korean in Korean text reading. The study is restricted only to the initial APs. Subjects are students who have been studying Korean at a beginner level. The results showed that Chinese learners of Korean tended to make errors in the realization of the tonal patterns of the initial 2 syllables of the initial APs. Also they showed different F0 slopes across the initial and second syllables in the initial APs. Chinese learners of Korean, therefore, need to focus on the prosodic characteristics of the initial 2 syllables of Korean APs to realize fluent Korean intonation.