• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.201-207
• /
• 2013

This study is a follow-up study of Han and Kang (2013) and Kang and Han (2013) which examined cross-generational changes in the Korean vowels /o/ and /u/ using acoustic analyses of the vowel formants of these two vowels, their Euclidean distances and the overlap fraction values generated in SOAM 2D (Wassink, 2006). Their results showed an on-going approximation of /o/ and /u/, more evident in female speakers and non-initial vowels. However, these studies employed non-words in a frame sentence. To see the extent to which these two vowels are merged in real words in spontaneous speech, we conducted an acoustic analysis of the formants of /o/ and /u/ produced by two age groups of female speakers while reading a letter sample. The results demonstrate that 1) the younger speakers employed mostly F2 but not F1 differences in the production of /o/ and /u/; 2) the Euclidean distance of these two vowels was shorter in non-initial than initial position, but there was no difference in Euclidean distance between the two age groups (20's vs. 40-50's); 3) overall, /o/ and /u/ were more overlapped in non-initial than initial position, but in non-initial position, younger speakers showed more congested distribution of the vowels than in older speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.55-62
• /
• 2019

This paper investigates the phonological processes of consonants in pronounced words in the Buckeye Corpus and compares the frequency distribution of these processes to provide a clearer understanding of conversational English for linguists and teachers. Both orthographic and pronounced words were extracted from the transcribed label scripts of the Buckeye Corpus. Next, the phonological processes of consonants in the orthographic and pronounced labels were tabulated separately by onsets and codas, and a frequency distribution by consonant process types was examined. The results showed that the majority of the onset clusters were pronounced as the same sounds in the Buckeye Corpus. The participants in the corpus were presumed to speak semiformally. In addition, the onsets have fewer deletions than the codas, which might be related to the information weight of the syllable components. Moreover, there is a significant association and strong positive correlation between the phonological processes of the onsets and codas in men and women. This paper concludes that an analysis of phonological processes in spontaneous speech corpora can contribute to a practical understanding of spoken English. Further studies comparing the current phonological process data with those of other languages would be desirable to establish universal patterns in phonological processes.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2020

This paper investigates the phonological processes of consonants in pronounced words in the Seoul Corpus, and compares the frequency distribution of these processes to provide a clearer understanding of conversational Korean to linguists and teachers. To this end, both orthographic and pronounced words were extracted from the transcribed label scripts of the Seoul Corpus. Next, the phonological processes of consonants in the orthographic and pronounced forms were tabulated separately after syllabifying the onsets and codas, and major consonantal processes were examined. First, the results showed that the majority of the orthographic consonants' sounds were pronounced the same way as their pronounced forms. Second, more than three quarters of the onsets were pronounced as the same forms, while approximately half of the codas were pronounced as variants. Third, the majority of different onset and coda symbols were primarily caused by deletions and insertions. Finally, the five phonological process types accounted for only 12.4% of the total possible procedures. Based on these results, this paper concludes that an analysis of phonological processes in spontaneous speech corpora can improve the practical understanding of spoken Korean. Future studies ought to compare the current phonological process data with those of other languages to establish universal patterns in phonological processes.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.37-45
• /
• 2020

This paper quantitatively calculated the speech frequency of the discourse markers 'a', 'eo', and 'eum' and the speech duration of these discourse markers using the Seoul Corpus, a spontaneous speech corpus. The sound durations were confirmed with Praat, the Seoul Corpus was analyzed with Emeditor, and the results were presented by statistical analysis with R. Based on the corpus analysis, the study investigated whether a particular factor is preferred by speakers of particular categories. The most prominent feature of the corpus is that the sound durations of female speakers were longer than those of men when using the 'eum' discourse marker in a final position. In age-related variables, teenagers uttered 'a' more than 'eo' in an initial position when compared to people in their 40s. This study is significant because it has quantitatively analyzed the discourse markers 'a', 'eo', and 'eum' by gender and age. In order to continue the discussion, more precise research should be conducted considering the context. In addition, similarities can be found in "e" and "ma" in Japanese(Watanabe & Ishi, 2000) and 'uh', 'um' in English(Gries, 2013). afterwards, a study to identify commonalities and differences can be predicted by using the cross-linguistic analysis of the discourse.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.45-53
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this work was to examine the factors affecting the identities of the voiceless plosives, i.e. English [p, t, k] and Korean [p^h, t^h, k^h], from the spontaneous speech corpora. The factors were automatically extracted by a Praat script and the percent correctness of the discriminant analyses was incrementally assessed by increasing the number of factors used in predicting the identities of the plosives. The factors included the spectral moments and tilts of the plosive release bursts, the post-burst aspirations and the vowel onsets, the durations such as the closure durations and the voice onset times (VOTs), the locations within words and utterances and the identities of the following vowels. The results showed that as the number of factors increased up to five, so did the percent correctness of the analyses, resulting in 74.6% for English and 66.4% for Korean. However, the optimal number of factors for the maximum percent correctness was four, i.e. the spectral moments and tilts of the release bursts and the following vowels, the closure durations and the VOTs. This suggests that the identities of the voiceless plosives are mostly determined by their internal and vowel onset cues.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.39-51
• /
• 2021

Based on spontaneous speech data collected in 2020, this study examined the production and perception of Korean lenis, aspirated, and fortis stops. Unlike the controlled experiments of previous studies, lenis and aspirated stops of males in their 30s were not distinguished by voice onset time (VOT) in spontaneous speech. Perceptual experiments were conducted on young females, the leaders of language change. F0 was found to serve as the primary cue for the perception of lenis stops, and then VOT distinguished the aspirated and fortis stops. The fact that the sounds were always perceived as lenis stops when F0 was low, irrespective of whether VOT was short or long, showed that F0 plays an absolute role in the perception of lenis stops. However, in some cases the aspirated and lenis stops were distinguished only by VOT, which does not happen in production. In terms of sound change, disagreement between production and perception systems occurs when sound change is in progress. In particular, when production change precedes perception change, it indicates that the sound change is in its latter stages. Young females still maintain the previous system in perception because the distinction of lenis and aspirated stops by VOT was valid in their parents' generation. In other words, VOT is still used for perception to communicate with other groups.

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

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
• /
• v.4 no.8
• /
• pp.2025-2037
• /
• 1997

The concept-based translation system, which is a part of the Korean spoken language translation system, translates spoken utterances from Korean speech recognizer into one of English, Japanese and Korean in a travel planning task. Our system regulates semantic rather than the syntactic category in order to process the spontaneous speech which tends to be regarded as the one ungrammatical and subject to recognition errors. Utterances are parsed into concept structures, and the generation module produces the sentence of the specified target language. We have developed a token-separator using base-words and an automobile grammar corrector for Korean processing. We have also developed postprocessors for each target language in order to improve the readability of the generation results.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.65-77
• /
• 2003

This study was aimed at clarifying the effects of sibling-involved .language intervention in children with language disorders. Ten subjects were selected and assigned into two groups (language intervention group with sibling-involvement, and language intervention without sibling-involvement). Group 1 consisted of 5 children with language disorders. Group 2 consisted of 5 children with language disorders without sibling-involvement. To investigate the language and communication ability, Picture Vocabulary Test and the subjects's spontaneous speech sample were analyzed. To compare pre-treatment with post-treatment between two the groups, repeated-measures ANOVA and t-test were used. The results were as follows; First, the language intervention with sibling-involvement was not effective compared to without sibling-involvement in improving the picture vocabulary ability of children with language disorders. There was a significant difference between pre-treatment and post-treatment in the picture vocabulary ability of the two .groups. However, there was no significant difference in the post-treatment between the two groups. Second, the language intervention with sibling-involvement was more effective compared to without sibling-involvement in improving the semantic aspects of language of children with language disorders. There was a significant difference between pre-treatment and post-treatment in the number of semantic relations between the two groups in that group 1 showed a higher improvement than group 2. Third, the language intervention with sibling involvement was more effective in improving pragmatic aspects of language of children with language disorders. There was a significant difference between pre-treatment and post-treatment in the number of communicative intentions of the two groups. And there was a significant difference in the post-treatment between the groups in that group 1 showed a higher improvement than group 2.

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.179-188
• /
• 2007

We propose a multi-strategic concept-spotting approach for robust spoken language understanding of conversational Korean in a hostile recognition environment such as in-car navigation and telebanking services. Our concept-spotting method adopts a partial semantic understanding strategy within a given specific domain since the method tries to directly extract predefined meaning representation slot values from spoken language inputs. In spite of partial understanding, we can efficiently acquire the necessary information to compose interesting applications because the meaning representation slots are properly designed for specific domain-oriented understanding tasks. We also propose a multi-strategic method based on this concept-spotting approach such as a voting method. We present experiments conducted to verify the feasibility of these methods using a variety of spoken Korean data.