• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권1호
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• pp.47-58
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to find out how Korean speakers' speech production in English word boundaries differs from English speakers' and to account for what bring about such differences. Seeing two consecutive words as one single cluster, the English speakers generally pronounce them naturally by linking a word-final consonant of the first word with a word-initial vowel of the second word, while this is not the case with most of the Korean speakers; they read the two consecutive words individually. In consequence, phonological processes such as resyllabification and aspiration can be found in the English speakers' word-boundary production, while glottalization, and unreleased stops are rather common phonological process seen in the Korean speakers' word-boundary production. This may be accounted for by Korean speakers' L1 interference, depending on English proficiency.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권4호
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• pp.19-25
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• 2017

The current study focused on the production of geminate nasal consonants across different word boundary types in Korean as a function of speech style to investigate whether temporal properties are preserved across varying speaking rates. Assimilated geminates in Korean, known as true geminates, are produced with distinctively longer consonant duration compared to singletons. Despite a large body of literature for geminates across different languages, geminates in Korean have been relatively less investigated with respect to the durational patterns in relative terms and temporal variabilities. In this study, singletons, word-internal geminates and word-boundary (fake) geminates produced by ten native Seoul Korean speakers were compared in terms of absolute consonant closure duration, preceding vowel duration, the relative ratios (consonant-to-preceding vowel duration) as well as the temporal variabilities in speech production. The results showed that word-internal geminates were produced with longer consonant duration and greater temporal variabilities than singletons and word-boundary geminates in absolute duration, indicating relatively greater flexibility in timing. However, only word-internal geminates were produced with distinctively longer consonant duration with significantly lower variability in relative duration regardless of speech styles. The results provide some insight into the representation of temporal information in the production of Korean geminate consonants.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.45-56
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• 2019

본 연구는 한국어 말소리 단어를 처리할 때, 운율구성성분인 음운구 경계와 어휘변인인 단어빈도가 상호 작용하는지를 알아보았다. 이를 위해 4개의 음운구로 발화된 문장에서 참가자가 목표단어를 찾을 때, 음운구 경계에 걸침 유무에 따라서 생기는 방해효과를 단어찾기 과제(word monitoring task)를 통해서 조사하였다. 목표단어는 2음절의 고빈도와 저빈도 단어들이 실험자 내 조건으로, 4개의 음운구로 발화된 문장에서 각각 음운구 경계 간(목표단어: 대표, 음운구 경계: [이사회의] [반대] [표명이] [있었다]) 조건과 음운구 경계 내(목표단어: 마차, 음운구 경계: [세뱃돈은] [항상] [우리] [엄마 차지였다]) 조건이 실험자 간 조건으로 설계되었다. 실험 결과, 두 변인 중 음운구 경계의 주 효과가 유의미하였으며, 상호작용도 유의미하였다. 사후분석 결과 음운구 경계 내 그룹에서만 고빈도 목표단어를 저빈도 목표단어보다 유의미하게 빠르게 탐색하는 것으로 나타났고 음운구 경계 간 그룹에서는 목표단어의 빈도효과가 나타나지 않았다. 이 결과를 기반으로 음운 단어재인시 단어의 빈도변인이 초기 단계에 영향을 미치는 여부와 한국어 말소리 처리에서 두 변인의 중요성을 논의하였다.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• 제26권1E호
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• pp.21-26
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose a modified Viterbi algorithm to compensate for endpoint detection error during the decoding phase of an isolated word recognition task. Since the conventional Viterbi algorithm explores only the search space whose boundaries are fixed to the endpoints of the segmented utterance by the endpoint detector, the recognition performance is highly dependent on the accuracy level of endpoint detection. Inaccurately segmented word boundaries lead directly to recognition error. In order to relax the degradation of recognition accuracy due to endpoint detection error, we describe an unconstrained search of word boundaries and present an algorithm to explore the search space with efficiency. The proposed algorithm was evaluated by performing a variety of simulated endpoint detection error cases on an isolated word recognition task. The proposed algorithm reduced the Word Error Rate (WER) considerably, from 84.4% to 10.6%, while consuming only a little more computation power.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.77-89
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• 2018

Speech articulators are coordinated for the purpose of segmental constriction in terms of a task. In particular, vertical jaw movements repeatedly contribute to consonantal as well as vocalic constriction. The current study explores vertical jaw movements in conjunction with bilabial constriction in bilabial stop /p/ in the context /a/-to-/a/. Revisiting kinematic data of /p/ collected using the electromagenetic midsagittal articulometer (EMMA) method from seven (four female and three male) speakers of Seoul Korean, we examined maximum vertical jaw position, its relative timing with respect to the upper and lower lips, and lip aperture minima. The results of those dependent variables are recapitulated in terms of linguistic (different word boundaries) and paralinguistic (different speech rates) factors as follows. Firstly, maximum jaw height was lower in the across-word boundary condition (across-word < within-word), but it did not differ as a function of different speech rates (comfortable = fast). Secondly, more reduction in the lip aperture (LA) gesture occurred in fast rate, while word-boundary effects were absent. Thirdly, jaw raising was still in progress after the lips' positional extrema were achieved in the within-word condition, while the former was completed before the latter in the across-word condition. Lastly, relative temporal lags between the jaw and the lips (UL and LL) were more synchronous in fast rate, compared to comfortable rate. When these results are considered together, it is possible to posit that speakers are not tolerant of lenition to the extent that it is potentially realized as a labial approximant in either word-boundary condition while jaw height still manifested lower jaw position in the across-word boundary condition. Early termination of vertical jaw maxima before vertical lower lip maxima across-word condition may be partly responsible for the spatial reduction of jaw raising movements. This may come about as a consequence of an excessive number of factors (e.g., upper lip height (UH), lower lip height (LH), jaw angle (JA)) for the representation of a vector with two degrees of freedom (x, y) engaged in a gesture-based task (e.g., lip aperture (LA)). In the task-dynamic application toolkit, the jaw angle parameter can be assigned numerical values for greater weight in the across-word boundary condition, which in turn gives rise to lower jaw position. Speech rate-dependent spatial reduction in lip aperture may be able to be resolved by means of manipulating activation time of an active tract variable in the gestural score level.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• 제6권11호
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• pp.2800-2812
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine the syllable-word boundary misalignment cost on word segmentation in Korean continuous speech. Previous studies have demonstrated the important role of syllabification in speech segmentation. The current study investigated whether the resyllabification process affects word recognition in Korean continuous speech. In Experiment I, under the misalignment condition, participants were presented with stimuli in which a word-final consonant became the onset of the next syllable. (e.g., /k/ in belsak ingan becomes the onset of the first syllable of ingan 'human'). In the alignment condition, they heard stimuli in which a word-final vowel was also the final segment of the syllable (e.g., /eo/ in heulmeo ingan is the end of both the syllable and word). The results showed that word recognition was faster and more accurate in the alignment condition. Experiment II aimed to confirm that the results of Experiment I were attributable to the resyllabification process, by comparing only the target words from each condition. The results of Experiment II supported the findings of Experiment I. Therefore, based on the current study, we confirmed that Korean, a syllable-timed language, has a misalignment cost of resyllabification.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제10권1호
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• pp.23-31
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• 2018

In this study, we examined how the upper and lower lips articulate to produce labial /p/. Using electromagnetic midsagittal articulography, we collected flesh-point tracking movement data from eight native speakers of Seoul Korean (five females and three males). Individual articulatory movements in /p/ were examined in terms of minimum vertical upper lip position, maximum vertical lower lip position, and corresponding vertical upper lip position aligned with maximum vertical lower lip position. Using linear mixed-effect models, we tested two factors (word boundary [across-word vs. within-word] and speech rate [comfortable vs. fast]) and their interaction, considering subjects as random effects. The results are summarized as follows. First, maximum lower lip position varied with different word boundaries and speech rates, but no interaction was detected. In particular, maximum lower lip position was lower (e.g., less constricted or more reduced) in fast rate condition and across-word boundary condition. Second, minimum lower lip position, as well as lower lip position, measured at the time of maximum lower lip position only varied with different word boundaries, showing that they were consistently lower in across-word condition. We provide further empirical evidence of lower lip movement sensitive to both different word boundaries (e.g., linguistic factor) and speech rates (e.g., paralinguistic factor); this supports the traditional idea that the lower lip is an actively moving articulator. The sensitivity of upper lip movement is also observed with different word boundaries; this counters the traditional idea that the upper lip is the target area, which presupposes immobility. Taken together, the lip aperture gesture is a good indicator that takes into account upper and lower lip vertical movements, compared to the traditional approach that distinguishes a movable articulator from target place. Respective of different speech rates, the results of the present study patterned with cross-linguistic lenition-related allophonic variation, which is known to be more sensitive to fast rate.

• 음성과학
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.37-62
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• 2007

The current study examines the role of post-lexical tonal patterns of a prosodic phrase in word segmentation. In a word spotting experiment, native Korean listeners were asked to spot a disyllabic or trisyllabic word from twelve syllable speech stream that was composed of three Accentual Phrases (AP). Words occurred with various post-lexical intonation patterns. The results showed that listeners spotted more words in phrase-initial than in phrase-medial position, suggesting that the AP-final H tone from the preceding AP helped listeners to segment the phrase-initial word in the target AP. Results also showed that listeners' error rates were significantly lower when words occurred with initial rising tonal pattern, which is the most frequent intonational pattern imposed upon multisyllabic words in Korean, than with non-rising patterns. This result was observed both in AP-initial and in AP-medial positions, regardless of the frequency and legality of overall AP tonal patterns. Tonal cues other than initial rising tone did not positively influence the error rate. These results not only indicate that rising tone in AP-initial and AP_final position is a reliable cue for word boundary detection for Korean listeners, but further suggest that phrasal intonation contours serve as a possible word boundary cue in languages without lexical prominence.

• 한국정보과학회논문지:소프트웨어및응용
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• 제31권9호
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• pp.1171-1179
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• 2004

본 논문에서는 음성인식의 전처리 단계로서 음성 영역과 비음성 영역 사이의 경계를 검출하는 음성경계 추출에 대하여 기술한다. 본 논문에서는 음성경계 추출을 위해 두 가지의 특징벡터를 사용한다. 첫 번째는 백색잡음(white noise)에 강건한 시간 영역의 정보인 정규화된 RMS이고, 두 번째는 주파수 영역의 정보인 정규화된 멜주파수 대역 최대 에너지(met-frequency band maximum energy)이다. 본 논문에서 사용하는 음성경계 추출 알고리즘은 학습을 통해 규칙을 생성하고 음성의 시간 정보를 적용하기 위해 순환노드를 추가한 순환 퍼지연상기억장치이다. 퍼지부의 가중치 학습은 헤비안 학습 방법을 사용하고, 순환부의 가중치 학습을 위해서는 오류 역전파(error back-propagation) 알고리즘을 사용한다. 실험에서는 KAIST에서 제공한 연령과 성별로 구분된 음성 자료를 사용하였다.

• 대한한의학원전학회지
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• 제32권3호
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• pp.47-57
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• 2019

Objectives : We aim to assist in choosing an appropriate method for word extraction when analyzing East Asian Traditional Medical texts based on unsupervised learning. Methods : In order to assign ranks to substrings, we conducted a test using one method(BE:Branching Entropy) for exterior boundary value, three methods(CS:cohesion score, TS:t-score, SL:simple-ll) for interior boundary value, and six methods(BExSL, BExTS, BExCS, CSxTS, CSxSL, TSxSL) from combining them. Results : When Miss Rate(MR) was used as the criterion, the error was minimal when the TS and SL were used together, while the error was maximum when CS was used alone. When number of segmented texts was applied as weight value, the results were the best in the case of SL, and the worst in the case of BE alone. Conclusions : Unsupervised-Learning-Based Word Extraction is a method that can be used to analyze texts without a prepared set of vocabulary data. When using this method, SL or the combination of SL and TS could be considered primarily.