• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권3호
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• pp.11-20
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to compare the acoustic parameters of English stop consonants at the initial and after-initial-/s/ positions in a message produced by 47 Korean and American speakers in order to provide better pronunciation skills of English stops for Korean learners. A Praat script was developed to obtain voice onset time (VOT), maximum consonant intensity (maxCi), and rate of rise (ROR) from six target words with stops at the positions in the message. Results show that VOT and maxCi were significantly different between the two language groups while ROR wasn't. The Korean speakers generally produced the stop consonants with longer VOTs and higher consonant intensity. From the comparison of consonant groups at the two different positions, the Korean participants did not distinguish them as clearly as the American participants did at the after-initial-/s/ position. Finally a comparison of each language and sex group revealed that the major difference was attributed to stop consonants in the after-/s/ position. The author concluded that Korean speakers should be careful not to produce all the stops with longer VOTs and higher intensity. Further studies would be desirable to examine how Americans evaluate Korean speakers' English proficiency with modified acoustic values of English stops.

• 대한임베디드공학회논문지
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• 제16권3호
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• pp.89-97
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• 2021

Voice interface can not only make daily life more convenient through artificial intelligence speakers but also improve the working environment of the factory. This paper presents a voice-assisted work management system that supports both speech and speaker recognition. This system is able to provide machine control and authorized worker authentication by voice at the same time. We applied two speech recognition methods, Google's Speech application programming interface (API) service, and DeepSpeech speech-to-text engine. For worker identification, the SincNet architecture for speaker recognition was adopted. We implemented a prototype of the work management system that provides voice control with 26 commands and identifies 100 workers by voice. Worker identification using our model was almost perfect, and the command recognition accuracy was 97.0% in Google API after post- processing and 92.0% in our DeepSpeech model.

• 지식경영연구
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• 제20권2호
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• pp.25-42
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• 2019

AI speakers which are wireless speakers with smart features have released from many manufacturers and adopted by many customers. Though smart features including voice recognition, controlling connected devices and providing information are embedded in many mobile phones, AI speakers are sitting in home and has a role of the central en-tertainment and information provider. Many surveys have investigated the important factors to adopt AI speakers and influ-encing factors on satisfaction. Though most surveys on AI speakers are cross sectional, we can track customer attitude toward AI speakers longitudinally by analyzing customer reviews on AI speakers. However, there is not much research on the change of customer attitude toward AI speaker. Therefore, in this study, we try to grasp how the attitude of AI speaker changes with time by applying text mining-based analysis. We collected the customer reviews on Amazon Echo which has the highest share of AI speakers in the global market from Amazon.com. Since Amazon Echo already have two generations, we can analyze the characteristics of reviews and compare the attitude ac-cording to the adoption time. We identified all sub topics of customer reviews and specified the topics for smart features. And we analyzed how the share of topics varied with time and analyzed diverse meta data for comparisons. The proportions of the topics for general satisfaction and satisfaction on music were increasing while the proportions of the topics for music quality, speakers and wireless speakers were decreasing over time. Though the proportions of topics for smart fea-tures were similar according to time, the share of the topics in positive reviews and importance metrics were reduced in the 2nd generation of Amazon Echo. Even though smart features were mentioned similarly in the reviews, the influential effect on satisfac-tion were reduced over time and especially in the 2nd generation of Amazon Echo.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제20권3호
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• pp.15-23
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• 2001

본 논문에서는 임의의 사람이 발성한 음성을 마치 다른 사람이 발성한 것처럼 들리도록 하는 음성변환 기술에 대하여 설명하고, 화자간의 성도 특성과 여기신호 특성 파라미터 변환을 독립적으로 수행하기 위한 변환방법을 실험한다. 성도 특성 파라미터 변환은 입력되는 음성신호에서 LPC (Linear Predictive Cofficient)켑스트럼을 추출하여 선형다변회귀모델에 적용하여 수행하고, 여기신호 특성 파라미터 변환은 잔차신호를 추출하여 LP-PSOLA (Linear Predictive-Pitch Synchronous Overlap and Add) 합성방식을 이용한 화자간의 평균 피치주기 변환으로 수행된다. 실험결과는 선형다변회귀모델과 LP-PSOLA 합성방식을 이용하여 변환된 음성이 대상화자의 음성에 유사함을 보여준다

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제30권3호
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• pp.614-635
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• 2020

This study aims at understanding gender difference in trust and the related factors affecting the intention to purchase voice speakers VS. VS are one of the innovations that are emerging at a fast pace in the market. Although it seems to be widely embraced by both genders, people do not intend to use them in some cases due to a lack of trust and the rumors circling these types of technologies. Nevertheless, there are particular barriers to the acceptance of VS technology between females and males due to unfamiliarity with the effective components of such technologies. Therefore, assuming that increasing the knowledge-based familiarity with an effective technique is essential for accepting it. So far, only little is known about VS and its concepts to increase the familiarity and, as a consequence, the acceptance of effective technology. Technology adoption in gender has been studied for many years, and there are many general models in the literature describing it. However, having more customized models for emerging technologies upon their features seems necessary. This study is based on Theory of Reasoned Action and trust-based acceptance which provides a background for understanding the relationships between beliefs, attitude, intentions, and subject norms and how it's affecting gender trust in VS. The statistical analysis results indicate that perceived system quality and perceived interaction quality have stronger influences on trust for males, while privacy concern and emotional trust have stronger influences on trust for females with the intention of purchase for both genders. Our study can be beneficial for future research in the areas of Perceived risk and Perceived utility and behavioral intention to use and human-technology interaction and psychology.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제51호
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• pp.1-16
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• 2004

The aim of this paper is to analyze vowels in voice imitation and disguised voice, and to find the invariable phonetic features of the speaker. In this paper we examined the formants of monophthongs /a, u, i, o, {$\omega},{\;}{\varepsilon},{\;}{\Lambda}$/. The results of the present are as follows : $\circled1$ Speakers change their vocal tract features. $\circled2$ Vowels /a, ${\varepsilon}$, i/ appear to be proper for speaker recognition since they show invariable acoustic feature during voice modulation. $\circled3$ F1 does not change easily compared to higher formants. $\circled4$ F3-F2 appears to be constituent for a speaker identification in vowel /a/ and /$\varepsilon$/, and F4-F2 in vowel /i/. $\circled5$ Resulting of F-ratio, differences of each formants were more useful than individual formant of a vowel to speaker recognition.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제18권8호
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• pp.68-74
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• 1999

본 연구에서는 남녀 화자 8명의 목소리를 녹음한 후 전신과 얼굴을 촬영하고 100명의 사람들에게 목소리와 사진을 짝짓는 인지실험을 실시하였다. 그 결과, 8명 중 4명 이상의 목소리를 주인공과 올바로 짝을 지었으며, 전신을 보았을 때가 얼굴만 보았을 때보다 정확도가 높았다. 또 좋은 소리는 좋은 인상보다 더 많은 사람들이 동감하는 것을 알 수 있었다.

• 전자공학회논문지S
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• 제35S권4호
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• pp.118-127
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• 1998

In this paper, we propose a voice personality transformation method which makes one person's voice sound like another person's voice. In order to transform the voice personality, vocal tract transfer function is used as a transformation parameter. Comparing with previous methods, the proposed method can obtain high-quality transformed speech with low computational complexity. Conversion between the vocal tract transfer functions is implemented by a linear mapping based on soft clustering. In this process, mean LPC cepstrum coefficients and mean removed LPC cepstrum modeled by the low dimensional vector are used as transformation parameters. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, mapping rules are generated from 61 Korean words uttered by two male and one female speakers. These rules are then applied to 9 sentences uttered by the same persons, and objective evaluation and subjective listening tests for the transformed speech are performed.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.25-32
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• 2017

Besides their effect on the f0 contour of the following vowel, Korean stops are undergoing a sound change in which a partial or complete consonantal merger on voice onset time (VOT) is taking place between aspirated and lax stops. Many previous studies on sound change have mainly focused on group-normative effects, that is, effects that are representative of the population as a whole. Few systematic quantitative studies of change in adult individuals have been carried out. The current study examines whether the sound change holds for individual speakers. It focuses on inter-speaker and intra-speaker variability on sound change in contemporary Korean. Speech data were collected for thirteen Seoul Korean speakers studying abroad in America. In order to minimize the possible effects of speech production, socio-phonetic factors such as age, gender, dialect, speech rate, and L2 exposure period were controlled when recruiting participants. The results showed that, for nine out of thirteen speakers, the consonantal merger is taking place between the aspirated and lax stop in terms of VOT. There were also intra-speaker variations on the merger in three aspects: First, is the consonantal (VOT) merger between the two stops is in progress or not? Second, are VOTs for aspirated stops getting shorter or not (i.e., the aspirated-shortening process)? Third, are VOTs for lax stops getting longer or not (i.e., the lax-lengthening process)? The results of remarkable inter-speaker and intra-speaker variability indicate a synchronous speech sound change of the stop system in contemporary Korean. Some speakers are early adopters or active propagators of sound change whereas others are not. Further study is necessary to see whether the inter-speaker differences exceed intra-speaker differences in sound change.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제46호
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• pp.1-11
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• 2003

This study examines the acoustic characteristics of Korean stops of two dialects, Seoul and Kyungsang, focusing on VOT(Voice Onset Time). 8 speakers of these two dialects were asked to read 590 words which contain the stops of different places of articulation and phonation types. The results showed that overall the VOTs of Kyungsang dialect were shorter than those of Seoul dialect. This was more prominent in lenis stops than in fortis or aspirated stops. It was also shown that there were significant VOT overlapping differences between the two dialects.