• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.02a
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• pp.157-172
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• 1996

This study aims to suggest some theoretical methodology for analysis of the prosodic patterns in Korean Read Speech. The engineering effort relevant to the phonetic study has focused to the importance of prosodic phrasing which may play a major role in analyzing the phonetic DB. Before establishing the prosodic phrase as the prosodic unit, we should describe the features of the boundary signal in a target sentence. With this in mind, the general characteristics of Read Speech and the ToBI(tones and Break Indices), which has been currently in vogue with respect to the prosodic labelling system were presented as the first step. The concrete analysis was carried out with the fable 'North Wind and the Sun' Korean version, where about 25 prosodic units were discriminated by perceptual approach for 5 subjects. Establishing various informations which can be used for deciding a boundary position systematically, we can proceed to the next, viz. acoustic analysis of prosodic unit. The most important which we primarily study for improving the naturalness of synthetic speech may be, at first, detecting the boundary signals in the speech file and accordingly reestablishment it within the raw text.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.27-36
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• 2020

The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptive aspects of the polysemic sentence final ending "-(eu)lgeol" produced by Chinese Korean learners. "-(Eu)lgeol" has two different meanings, that is, a guess and a regret, and these different meanings are expressed by the different prosodic features of the last syllable of "-(eu)lgeol". To examine how Korean native speakers perceive "-(eu)lgeol" sentences produced by Chinese Korean learners and the most saliant prosodic variable for the semantic discrimination of "-(eu)lgeol" at the perceptive level, we performed a perceptual experiment. The analysed material constituted four Korean sentences containing "-(eu)lgeol" in which two sentences expressed guesses and the other two expressed regret. Twenty-five Korean native speakers participated in the perceptual experiment. Participants were asked to mark whether "-(eu)lgeol" sentences they listened to were (1) definitely regrets, (2) probably regrets, (3) ambiguous, (4) probably guesses, or (5) definitely guesses based on the prosodic features of the last syllable of "-(eu)lgeol". The analysed prosodic variables were sentence boundary tones, slopes of boundary tones, pitch difference between sentence-final and penultimate syllables, and pitch levels of boundary tones. The results show that all the analysed prosodic variables are significantly correlated with the semantic discrimination of "-(eu)lgeol" and among these prosodic variables, the most salient role in the semantic discrimination of "-(eu)lgeol" is pitch difference between sentence-final syllable and penultimate syllable.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.65-80
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• 2007

This experimental study is designed to investigate the acoustic cues produced by English native speakers in order to disambiguate the ambiguous sentences. This study also investigates whether Korean learners of English and English native speakers can perceive the appropriate meanings from the sentences produced with those acoustic cues. In the perception test, English native speakers successfully found out the proper meaning, utilizing the intonational cues, while Korean learners had difficulties in distinguishing the differences in meaning. The break interval was manipulated in order to see whether the pause duration facilitates or interferes with disambiguation. Though phrasing played an important role in disambiguation, the break interval itself did not have influence on it. The result, therefore, suggests that the tonal realization of phrasal accents and boundary tones seem to be more significant than the break interval in the perception of phrasing.

• MALSORI
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• no.63
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• pp.85-100
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• 2007

This paper aims to propose how to extract intonation patterns using Momel, a pitch stylization algorithm, and to present results of analyzing speech corpora in comparison with those in earlier researches. Two speech corpora are used: one is the sound files obtained from the K-ToBI web site, and the other consists of 80 passages pronounced by 4 speakers (2 male and 2 female). The results show that Momel provides significant pitch targets which can be labeled as H and L tones within prosodic units such as Accentual Phrase (AP) and Intonation Phrase (IP). The resulting AP patterns and IP boundary tone patterns correspond to those in earlier researches. Thus, this study will contribute to the study of intonation as well as to the development of automatic intonation labeling systems.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2005.07b
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• pp.514-516
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• 2005

인간을 상대하는 자율장치는 고객의 자발적인 협조를 얻기 위해 암시적인 신호에 포함된 감정과 태도를 인지할 수 있어야 한다. 인간에게 음성은 가장 쉽고 자연스럽게 정보를 교환할 수 있는 수단이다. 지금까지 감정과 태도를 이해할 수 있는 자동시스템은 발성문장의 피치와 에너지에 기반한 특징을 활용하였다. 이와 같은 기존의 감정인식 시스템의 성능은 문장의 특정한 억양구간이 감정과 태도와 관련을 갖는다는 언어학적 지식의 활용으로 보다 높은 향상이 가능하다. 본 논문에서는 한국어 문미억양에 대한 언어학적 지식을 피치기반 특징과 다층신경망을 활용하여 구현한 자동시스템에 적용하여 감정인식률을 향상시킨다. 한국어 감정음성 데이터베이스를 대상으로 실험을 실시한 결과 $4\%$의 인식률 향상을 확인하였다.

• MALSORI
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• no.35_36
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• pp.157-173
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• 1998

This is a pilot study on applying the Rise/Fall/connection(RFC) model to Korean intonation tot speech synthesis. RFC model contains successive intonation events, which can be pitch accents and intonation boundary tones. The intonation contour of RFC model is composed of piecewise linear curves of rise, fall, and connection elements, and each element can have any amplitude and duration. In this paper, elements of RFC model is slightly modified to accommodate the characteristics of Korean intonation. Subjective preference test was conducted to compare the modified RFC model with the original one. The results show that the intonation contour produced by the modified RFC model is perceptually indistinguishable from that of the original RFC model, while the former requires less number of labels than the latter.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.79-85
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• 2005

In this Paper, we are trying to compare the normal speech with emotional speech -happy, sad, and angry states- through the changes of fundamental frequency. Based on the distribution charts of the normal and emotional speech, there are distinctive cues such as range of distribution, average, maximum, minimum, and so on. On the whole, the range of the fundamental frequency is extended in happy and angry states. On the other hand, sad states make the range relatively lessened. Nevertheless, the ranges of the 10 frequency in sad states are wider than the normal speech. In addition, we can verify that ending boundary tones reflect the information of whole speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.139-145
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• 2015

The present study investigates the effects of syllable structure and prosodic prominence on the patterns of tonal alignment and scaling of the phrase-initial rise in Seoul Korean. Two syllable structures (Onset (/#CVC.../ as in minsa) vs. No-onset (/#VC.../ as in insa)) and two prominence conditions (Focus vs. Neutral) were considered. Results showed that the alignment of the L and the H tones in the phrase-initial rise was affected by syllable structure but not by prominence. The time of L was before the vowel onset of the first syllable in the Onset condition (i.e., within the onset consonant) and it was after the vowel onset in the No-onset condition. The difference was attributable to the fact that the initial L was anchored at a fixed distance from the phrase boundary, which was about 30ms after the onset of the syllable in both cases. The time of H was also consistently observed about 20ms after the second vowel onset (i.e., /a/ in minsa/insa). Moreover, the rise time (the duration from the L to the H tones) was longer as the local syllable duration became longer due to different syllable structure and prominence conditions. Taken together, the results provide a support for the segmental anchoring hypothesis, which claims that both the beginning and the end of F0 movement are consistently aligned with segmental 'anchor' points with relatively high stability (Ladd et al., 1999). Results also showed that the scaling of the early rise was slightly influenced by syllable structure but not by prominence. The differences between the results of the current study and a previous study (Cho, 2011) are further discussed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.111-128
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• 2004

In English, a focused word with new information receives a pitch accent. This paper examines how English native speakers and Korean speakers produce and perceive focus in English yes-no questions. The production experiments show that native speakers realize an appropriate intonation of yes-no questions, in which a focused word has a low pitch accent followed by a high phrasal accent and a high boundary tone. However, Korean speakers usually give a high tone to a focused word. In a like manner, the perception experiments show that English native speakers judge a word with a low tone to be focused, while Korean speakers have difficulty in comprehending a focused word realized as a low tone. And it is found that Korean speakers tend to perceive low tones on sentence initial and final focused words better than those on sentence medial focused words, and they often perceive a word with a relatively high fundamental frequency or a sharp rise of fundamental frequency as a focused word. This paper shows that Korean speakers have trouble to produce and perceive an appropriate tonal pattern of a focused yes-no question, and that can cause confusion in a conversation with native speakers.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.03a
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• pp.113-118
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• 2004

This paper presents a two-dimensional edge tone to predict the frequency characteristics of the discrete oscillations of a jet-edge feedback cycle by the finite difference lattice Boltzmann method (FDLBM). We use a new lattice BGK compressible fluid model that has an additional term and allow larger time increment comparing the conventional FDLBM, and also use a boundary fitted coordinates. The jet is chosen long enough in order to guarantee the parabolic velocity profile of the jet at the outlet, and the edge consists of a wedge with an angle of $\alpha=23^0$. At a stand-off distance $\omega$, the edge is inserted along the centreline of the jet, and a sinuous instability wave with real frequency f is assumed to be created in the vicinity of the nozzle and th propagate towards the downstream. We have succeeded in capturing very small pressure fluctuations result from periodically oscillation of jet around the edge. That pressure fluctuations propagate with the sound speed. Its interaction with the wedge produces an irrotational feedback field which, near the nozzle exit, is a periodic transverse flow producing the singularities at the nozzle lips. The lattice BGK model for compressible fluids is shown to be one of powerful tool for computing sound generation and propagation for a wide range of flows.