• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.585-591
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• 2015

In transcription for spoken language research, labeling is a work linking text-represented utterance to recorded speech. Most existing labeling tools have been working manually. Semi-automatic labeling we are proposing consists of automation module and manual adjustment module. Automation module extracts voice boundaries utilizing G.Saha's algorithm, and predicts utterance boundaries using the number and length of utterance which established utterance text. For maintaining existing manual tool's accuracy, we provide manual adjustment user interface revising the auto-labeling utterance boundaries. The implemented tool of our semi-automatic algorithm speed up to 27% than existing manual labeling tools.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.197-216
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• 2012

This study examines spoken interlanguage of Korean learners of English, focusing on the distribution of modal verbs and devices of epistemic modality. (Semi-) spontaneous speech data were collected from four students participating in a self-organized study group for seven months, which produced a corpus of about 55,000 words. The data analysis reveals the following: 1) The frequency of the modal verbs produced by the learners was lower than that of native speakers; 1.99 vs. 2.32 tokens per 100 words. The range of the modal verbs used by the learners was also very limited, with over-reliance on can (43%). 2) The grammatical categories of the devices marking epistemic modality were in the order of adverbs, lexical verbs, and modal verbs, with a high frequency of a few items in each category. 3) Lexical items conveying certainty and modals of obligation were preferred over markers of weaker commitment, resulting in speech characterized by firmer assertions and a more authoritative tone, a potential cause for pragmatic failure. 4) A weak developmental change was observed in the frequency of modal verbs, but not in their functions over the seven month period of data collection. L1 influence, L2 proficiency, mode of communication, and instruction effects are discussed as possible variables involved in the distribution patterns observed.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.9-24
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• 2000

This paper analyzes the distribution and classification of unrealized arguments of a predicate often called zero pronouns. in spoken Korean. Based on the transcript of a one-hour-Iong dialogue. recorded from public radio stations. I present the statistical data on argument ellipsis in Korean with respect to the frequency of zero ronouns as well as the nature of their antecedents. I go further to review some of the previous efforts to identify the discourse- theoretic functions of zero-pronouns in the framework of Centering Theory. and propose that the zero-pronouns in spoken Korean be divided into center-insensitive vs. center-sensitive classes. I also point out a couple of language-particular idiosyncrasies found in Korean, such as morpho-syntactic elements and encyclopaedic knowledge. that interact with center management in on-going discourse and often lead to difficulties in applying the centering rules and constraints to Korean.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.124-130
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: The study investigated vowel context effects on the perception of stop consonants in Malayalam. It also probed into the role of vowel context effects in determining the frequency of occurrence of various consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in Malayalam. Subjects and Methods: The study used a cross-sectional pre-experimental post-test only research design on 30 individuals with normal hearing, who were native speakers of Malayalam. The stimuli included three stop consonants, each spoken in three different vowel contexts. The resultant nine syllables were presented in original form and five gating conditions. The consonant recognition in different vowel contexts of the participants was assessed. The frequency of occurrence of the nine target syllables in the spoken corpus of Malayalam was also systematically derived. Results: The consonant recognition score was better in the /u/ vowel context compared with /i/ and /a/ contexts. The frequency of occurrence of the target syllables derived from the spoken corpus of Malayalam showed that the three stop consonants occurred more frequently with the vowel /a/ compared with /u/ and /i/. Conclusions: The findings show a definite vowel context effect on the perception of the Malayalam stop consonants. This context effect observed is different from that in other languages. Stop consonants are perceived better in the context of /u/ compared with the /a/ and /i/ contexts. Furthermore, the vowel context effects do not appear to determine the frequency of occurrence of different CV syllables in Malayalam.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.124-130
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: The study investigated vowel context effects on the perception of stop consonants in Malayalam. It also probed into the role of vowel context effects in determining the frequency of occurrence of various consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in Malayalam. Subjects and Methods: The study used a cross-sectional pre-experimental post-test only research design on 30 individuals with normal hearing, who were native speakers of Malayalam. The stimuli included three stop consonants, each spoken in three different vowel contexts. The resultant nine syllables were presented in original form and five gating conditions. The consonant recognition in different vowel contexts of the participants was assessed. The frequency of occurrence of the nine target syllables in the spoken corpus of Malayalam was also systematically derived. Results: The consonant recognition score was better in the /u/ vowel context compared with /i/ and /a/ contexts. The frequency of occurrence of the target syllables derived from the spoken corpus of Malayalam showed that the three stop consonants occurred more frequently with the vowel /a/ compared with /u/ and /i/. Conclusions: The findings show a definite vowel context effect on the perception of the Malayalam stop consonants. This context effect observed is different from that in other languages. Stop consonants are perceived better in the context of /u/ compared with the /a/ and /i/ contexts. Furthermore, the vowel context effects do not appear to determine the frequency of occurrence of different CV syllables in Malayalam.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.36
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• pp.149-173
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• 2014

This paper examines language policies of Ghana and Tanzania (former British Colonies) since independence. The view that language use in education is a problem for African countries is evident in the ever changing language in education policies in many African countries. Because of the inevitable multilingual situation in many African countries, there are unavoidable challenges in their quest to adopt a language policy that works for the entire country since it is not practical to adopt all the languages spoken in the country as Media of Instruction. Ghana is not immune to this challenge and has fallen victim to this tendency to change the language in education policy from time to time in an attempt to adopt a satisfactory policy which would yield the intended results. Tanzania, however, is one of the few African countries that have found a sustainable language in education policy since independence. Nonetheless, it has its fair share of challenges as a consequence of the perceived competition between Kiswahili and English as official languages. The paper discusses the challenges that both Ghana and Tanzania face against the background of colonization. The paper also offers a discussion on possible future perspectives for the two countries.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2002.02a
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• pp.1-1
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• 2002

This talk provides an overview of current work in my research group on the syntactic annotation of the T bingen corpus of spoken German and of the German Reference Corpus (Deutsches Referenzkorpus: DEREKO) of written texts. Morpho-syntactic and syntactic annotation as well as annotation of function-argument structure for these corpora is performed automatically by a hybrid architecture that combines robust symbolic parsing with finite-state methods ("chunk parsing" in the sense Abney) with memory-based parsing (in the sense of Daelemans). The resulting robust annotations can be used by theoretical linguists, who lire interested in large-scale, empirical data, and by computational linguists, who are in need of training material for a wide range of language technology applications. To aid retrieval of annotated trees from the treebank, a query tool VIQTORYA with a graphical user interface and a logic-based query language has been developed. VIQTORYA allows users to query the treebanks for linguistic structures at the word level, at the level of individual phrases, and at the clausal level.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.48-58
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• 2024

This paper presents the development of language tutoring systems for nonnative speakers by leveraging advanced end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) and proficiency evaluation. Given the frequent errors in non-native speech, high-performance spontaneous speech recognition must be applied. Our systems accurately evaluate pronunciation and speaking fluency and provide feedback on errors by relying on precise transcriptions. End-to-end ASR is implemented and enhanced by using diverse non-native speaker speech data for model training. For performance enhancement, we combine semisupervised and transfer learning techniques using labeled and unlabeled speech data. Automatic proficiency evaluation is performed by a model trained to maximize the statistical correlation between the fluency score manually determined by a human expert and a calculated fluency score. We developed an English tutoring system for Korean elementary students called EBS AI Peng-Talk and a Korean tutoring system for foreigners called KSI Korean AI Tutor. Both systems were deployed by South Korean government agencies.

• Annual Conference on Human and Language Technology
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• 2003.10d
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• pp.279-283
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• 2003

ETRI가 참여하고 있는 자동 통역 관련 국제 컨소시엄인 C-STAR에서는 여행자 영역의 대규모 다국어 병렬 말뭉치를 공동으로 구축하였고, 현재 각 기관에서는 이를 이용한 대화체 음성 언어 번역 시스템을 개발 중이다. ETRI에서는 핵심어 처리, 통계정보를 이용하는 구 단위 자동 설정, 설정된 구의 자동대응 및 재배치 등을 특징으로 하는 구 기반 직접 번역 방식(PDMT: Phrase-based Direct Machine Translation)의 번역 방법론을 제안하고 관련 연구를 진행하고 있다. 본 논문에서는 ETRI 대화체 음성 언어 번역 시스템의 구성에 대해 알아보고 PDMT 번역 방법론의 등장 배경과 그 구체적인 번역 방법 및 특징에 대해 자세히 논의하기로 한다.

• MALSORI
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• no.49
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• pp.159-174
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• 2004

The development of the durational component of prosody modelling was overviewed and discussed in text-to-speech conversion of spoken English and Korean, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The possibility of integrating linguistic feature effects into the duration modelling of TTS systems was also investigated. This paper claims that current approaches to language timing synthesis still require an understanding of how segmental duration is affected by context. Three modelling approaches were discussed: sequential rule systems, Classification and Regression Tree (CART) models and Sums-of-Products (SoP) models. The CART and SoP models show good performance results in predicting segment duration in English, while it is not the case in the SoP modelling of spoken Korean.