• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2013

This study investigated how acoustic characteristics (i.e., duration, F1, F2) of English high front vowels /i, ɪ/ are modulated by boundary- and prominence-induced strengthening in native vs. non-native (Korean) speech production. The study also examined how the durational difference in vowels due to the voicing of a following consonant (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless) is modified by prosodic strengthening in two different (native vs. non-native) speaker groups. Five native speakers of Canadian English and eight Korean learners of English (intermediate-advanced level) produced 8 minimal pairs with the CVC sequence (e.g., 'beat'-'bit') in varying prosodic contexts. Native speakers distinguished the two vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2, whereas non-native speakers only showed durational differences. The two groups were similar in that they maximally distinguished the two vowels when the vowels were accented (F2, duration), while neither group showed boundary-induced strengthening in any of the three measurements. The durational differences due to the voicing of the following consonant were also maximized when accented. The results are discussed further in terms of phonetics-prosody interface in L2 production.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.307-310
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• 2007

In this paper, a packet loss concealment (PLC) algorithm for CELP-type speech coders is proposed to improve the quality of decoded speech under a burst packet loss condition. The proposed algorithm is based on the recovery of voiced excitation using an estimate of the voicing probability and the generation of random excitation by permutating the previously decoded excitation. The voicing probability is estimated from the correlation using the previous correctly decoded excitation and pitch. The proposed algorithm is implemented as a PLC algorithm for G.729 and its performance is compared with PLC employed in G.729 by means of perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and an A-B preference test under the random and burst packet losses with rates of 3% and 5%. It is shown that the proposed algorithm provides better speech quality than the PLC of G.729, especially under burst pack losses.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• spring
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• pp.61-64
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• 1999

기존의 CELP 보코더에서, 무성음에 대한 별도의 처리 없이 유성음과 동일하게 처리하였다. 유성음과 무성음은 발성모델측면에서 임펄스열과 랜덤 잡음으로 각각 다름에 도 불구하고 동일하게 처리함으로써 합성음에서 음질의 저하 및 계산량과 전송률 측면에서 손실을 가져왔다. 또, U/V(Unvoiced /voiced) 분류기를 사용하는 경우에는 U/V 분류기의 성능에 따라 합성음의 음질저하의 정도의 차이가 심하다. 본 논문에서는 에러율과 전처리 계산량을 쳐소로 할 수 있는 U/V 분류기를 사용하여 CELP 보코더에서 전송률을 감소시키는 방법을 제안한다. CELP 보코더에서는 스펙트럼 정보를 LPC 파라미터로 추출한 후 다시 전송형 파라미터인 LSP(Line Spectrum Frequency)로 변환한다 새로운 린/V 분류기는 이 LSP 파라미터를 이용한다. LSP 파라미터의 주파수영역 분포도와 간격정보를 이용하여 U/V를 결정하게 된다 제안한 방법을 5.3kbps ACELP에 적용하여 성능 평가를 실시하였다 실험결과 음질의 저하 없이 $5.6\%$ (280bps)의 전송률을 감소할 수 있었다.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2E
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• pp.8-13
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• 2000

In this paper, we present an adaptive formant tracking algorithm for speech using closed phase WRLS-VFF-VT method. The pitch synchronous closed phase methods is known to give more accurate estimates of the vocal tract parameters than the pitch asynchronous method. However the use of a pitch-synchronous closed phase analysis method has been limited due to difficulties associated with the task of accurately isolating the closed phase region in successive periods of speech. Therefore we have implemented the pitch synchronous closed phase WRLS-VFF-VT algorithm for speech analysis, especially for formant tracking. The proposed algorithm with the variable threshold(VT) can provide a superior performance in the boundary of phone and voiced/unvoiced sound. The proposed method is experimentally compared with the other method such as two channel CPC method by using synthetic waveform and real speech data. From the experimental results, we found that the block data processing techniques, such as the two-channel CPC, gave reasonable estimates of the formant/antiformant. However, the data windows used by these methods included the effects of the periodic excitation pulses, which affected the accuracy of the estimated formants. On the other hand the proposed WRLS-VFF-VT method, which eliminated the influence of the pulse excitation by using an input estimation as part of the algorithm, gave very accurate formant/bandwidth estimates and good spectral matching.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.77-82
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• 1994

In speech signal processing, it is very important to detect the pitch exactly. Although various methods for detecting the pitch of speech signals have been developed, it is difficult to exactly extract the pitch for wide range of speakers and various utterances. Thus we propose a new pitch detection algorithm which takes advantage of the G-peak extraction. It is a method to detect the pitch period of the voiced signals by finding MZCI (maximum zero-crossing interval) of the G-peak which is defined as cut-off bandwidth rate of LPF (low pass filter). This algorithm performs robustly with a gross error rate of 3.63% even in 0 dB SNR environement. The gross error rate for clean speech is only 0.18%. Also it is able to process all courses with high speed.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.247-251
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• 1996

This paper is intended as a preliminary study on phonetic and phonological differences between Polish and Korean languages. In this paper an attempt is made to examine the most conspicious difficulties encountered by Polish learners who begin to speak Korean (and in doing so, 1 would hope that it might be of help to future learners of both languages). Since the phoneme inventory and general phonetic rules for both languages are very different, teaching and learning accurate pronunciation is extremely difficult for both the Poles and Koreans without any previous phonetic training. In the case of Polish and Korean we can see how strong and persistent the influences of the mother-tongue are on the target language. As an example I would like to discuss the basic differences between Polish and Korean consonants. The most important consonantal opposition in Polish is voice-/voicelessness (f. ex.; 〔b〕 / 〔p〕, 〔g〕 / 〔k〕) while in Korean, opposition such as voice-/voicelessness is of secondary importance. Therefore Korean speakers do not perceive the difference between Polish voiced and voiceless consonants. On the other hand, Polish speakers can not distinguish Korean lenis / fortis / aspirated consonants (f. ex.; ㅂ 〔b〕 / ㅃ 〔p〕 / ㅍ〔ph〕, ㄱ 〔g〕 / ㄲ 〔k〕 / ㅋ 〔kh〕)) opposition. The other very important factor is palatalization which is of vital importance in Polish and, because of this, Polish speakers are extremely sensitive to it. In Korean palatalization is not important phonetically and Korean speakers do not distinguish between palatalized and non-palatalized consonants. The transcription used here is based on ' The principles of the International Phonetic Association and the Korean Phonetic Alphabet ' (1981) by Hyun Bok Lee.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.59-63
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• 2011

We present a lattice transversal joint (LTJ) adaptive filter with fixed reflection coefficients to achieve fast convergence with low complexity. The reflection coefficients of the filter are given by the statistics of speech signals, and the proposed order of the lattice predictor is one. Experimental results confirm that as compared to the adaptive transversal filter, the proposed adaptive filter achieves fast convergence with a negligible increase in complexity. The proposed adaptive filter converges around six times faster than the adaptive transversal filter in case of the band-limited voiced signal from the ITU-T G.168 standard.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2008

This paper proposes an adaptive speech enhancement system based on an auditory system to enhance speech that is degraded by various background noises. As such, the proposed system detects voiced and unvoiced sections, adaptively adjusts the coefficients for both the lateral inhibition and the amplitude component according to the detected sections for each input fame, then reduces the noise signal using a time-delay neural network. Based on measuring the signal-to-noise ratio, experiments confirm that the proposed system is effective for speech degraded by various noises.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.11-20
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• 2001

Objective: As early as 1967, professor Endre Mester's group published the first scientific report concerning the effects of low level laser therapy (LLLT) on the skin of rats. After that, there have been some two thousand research reports from many countries in which the biological effects of low level lasers have been demonstrated. We reviewed some theses about LLLT published in Korea recently, and we make a proposal concerning the new method of study using LLLT in Oriental Medicine. Methods: We have selected 12 medical theses about low level laser therapy published in Korean Oriental Medicine journals recently, reviewed them, and investigated their methods. Results and Conclusion: There were several clinical studies in Korea about hyperlipidemia, hypercholesteremia, hyperfibrinogenemia, hyperlipoproteinemia, headache, dizziness, stroke, pain and numbness published from 1996 to 2000 using LLLT. The number of theses of good quality is showing a tendency to increase, recently. Sooner or later LLLT will be a very useful treatment and we believe that it will be an alternative useful method in Oriental Medical fields. There have been some negative public opinions about LLLT voiced in the Korean Oriental Medical society recently, but we expect a positive re-evaluation of this new treatment within Oriental Medicine in the near future.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.113-130
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• 2002

Measurements were made of pressure rise time (PoRT), voice cessation time, flattened peak intraoral air pressure (Po), pressure static time (PoST), pressure-fall time and the duration of oral closure as four English speakers uttered isolated nonsense $V_{1}CV_{2}$ words containing /b/ and /p/ ($V_{1}=V_{2}$ and the V was /$\alpha$/), with stress on either $V_{1}orV_{2}$ alternately. The hypothesis tested was: The tense stop consonant. will be characterized either by a higher Po or a longer PoST, and/or by both against lax. Findings: (1) PoRT was significantly greater in /b/ than /p/, (2) the voiceless stop /p/ produced generally greater mean Po, averaged across five tokens, than its voiced counterpart /b/, but statistically insignificant, and (3) altogether, across stress, tokens and subjects, the difference in the calculated pressure static time (PoSTc), i.e., PoST + PoRT, between /p/ and /b/ was highly significant (p $\leq$ 0.003). Although further investigations remain to be taken, the results strongly supported the linguistic hypothesis of tense-lax distinction, with /b/ being lax and /p/ tense. Airflow resistance at the glottis and supraglottal air volume are assumed to be responsible for much of difference in PoRT between /p/ and /b/. The PoSTc reflecting, although indirectly, the respiratory efforts during the oral closure of a stop, was a convincing phonetic parameter of the consonantal tenseness based on respiratory efforts. The effects of stress on Po and PoSTc were inconsistent, and the shorter PoRT than consonantal constriction interval was always accompanied by Po and PoST.