• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.165-173
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• 2002

Strong compression effects in a stressed vowel due to the addition of syllables have been adopted as evidence for stress-timing. In relation to this, Yun (2002) investigated the compression effects of number of syllables on Korean vowel. The results generally revealed that Korean had neither significant nor consistent anticipatory or backwards compression effects, especially when it came to the sentence level. This led us to claim that Korean would not be a stress-timed language. But the language investigated in the study was only Korean, and further cross-linguistic research was needed to confirm the claim. In this study, Yun's (2002) sentence level data are compared with Fowler's (1981) English data. The comparison reveals that Korean seems to be similar to English in the backwards compression effect, whereas the two languages are markedly different in the anticipatory compression effect. Thus, if English is a stress-timed language and the strong anticipatory compression effect is evidence in favour of stress-timing as is claimed, the present cross-linguistic study confirms Yun's (2002) suggestion-Korean is unlikely to be stress-timed. On the other hand, compression effects are revisited: the differences in vowel compression between English and Korean are discussed from the syntactic and phonological points of view.

• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.5
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• pp.221-264
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• 2003

This paper takes issue with the idea of language as a 'serial-time structure' as opposed to the 'real-time event' of speech, an idea entrenched in Chomskyan model of linguistic theory. The discussion centers around the leitmotif question: Is language constructed entirely from a finite set of apriori discrete symbol types, as the 'competence vs performance' dichotomy implies\ulcorner A set of linguistic patterns examined in this study, largely with regard to phonological considerations, points to the evidence to the contrary. That is, while the patterns may be said to be linguistically distinct, they are not discretely, different, i.e. not different enough to be reliably differentiated. It is demonstrated that much of current research in phonology, including the most recent Optimality Theory, is misdirected in that it falsely presupposes a discrete universal phonetic inventory. The main thrust of the present study is that there is no sharp boundary between 'competence' defined as the formal, symbolic, discrete time domain of language and human cognition on the one hand and 'performance' as the continuous, fuzzy, real-time domain of human physiology on the other.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.89-118
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• 1996

The development and implementation of a real-time, traffic adaptive control scheme based on fuzzy logic through Video Image Detector systems (VIDs) is presented. Through VIDs based image processing, fuzzy logic can be used for a real-time traffic adaptive signal control scheme. Fuzzy control logic allows linguistic and inexact traffic data to be manipulated as a useful tool in designing signal timing plans. The fuzzy logic has the ability to comprehend linguistic instructions and to generate control strategy based on a priori verbal communication. The implementation of fuzzy logic controller for a traffic network is introduced. Comparisons are made between implementations of the fuzzy logic controller and the actuated controller in an isolated intersection. The results obtained from the application of the fuzzy logic controller are also compared with those corresponding to a pretimed controller for the coordinated intersections. Simulation results from the comparisons indicate the performance of the system is between under the fuzzy logic controller. Integration of the aforementioned schemes into and ATMS framework will lead to real-time adjustment of the traffic control signals, resulting in significant reduction in traffic congestion.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.23-36
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• 2004

Many languages show reverse durational variation between preceding vowel and following voiced/voiceless (lax/tense) consonants. This study investigated the likely effects of phoneme type (tense vs. lax) on the timing structure (duration of syllable, word, phrase and sentence) of Korean. Three rates of speech (fast, normal, slow) applied to stimuli with the target word /a-Ca/ where /C/ is one of /p, p', $p^h$/. The type (tense/lax) of /C/ caused marked inverse durational variations in the two syllables /a/ and /Ca/ and highly different durational ratios between them. Words with /p', $p^h$/ were significantly longer than that with /p/, which contrasts with many other languages where such pairs of words have a similar duration. The differentials between words remained up to the phrase and sentence level, but in general the higher linguistic units did not statistically differ within each level. Thus, the phrase is suggested as a compensatory unit of phoneme type effects in Korean. Different rates did not affect the general tendency. Distribution of time variations (from normal to fast and slow) to each syllable (/a/ and /Ca/) was also observed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.7-26
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• 1997

An electromyographic device was used to investigate the relationship between a linguistic hypothesis of tense-lax distinction and muscular activity. Muscle action potentials of the orbicularis oris muscle and the depressor anguli oris muscle were obtained from four subjects using CVCVCV and CVCVC words in English and VCV and CVC words in Korean. Findings: The hypothesis that the speaker may select at least one of muscles involved in the articulation of a phoneme so that the selected muscle could be activated for tense-lax distinction, and either a timing variable or an amplitude variablethe and/or both from the selected muscle distinguish(es) /p/ from /b/ in English and /$p^{h},\;p^{l}$/ from /p/ in Korean, with the English /p/ and the Korean /$p^{h},\;p^{l}$/ being tense, and the Korean unaspirated /p/ and the English /b/ lax, has been verified, except for the case with subject 2 in stressed syllables in English. (2) Thus, the linguistic hypothesis of tense-lax distinction was strongly supported by the muscular activities during the Korean bilabial stops, with /$p^{h}\;and\;p^{l}$/ being tense and /p/ lax. (3) Considering the intermuscle compensation and the interspeaker variabilities in the choice of a muscle or muscles, in English the usability of the feature 'tensity' appeared to be positive rather than negative although further investigations with more subjects remain to take on the muscles associated with the onset/offset of the labial closure, including the respiratory muscles related with the aspiration. The phoneme-sensitive EMG manifestations of stress and possible reasons for the interspeaker variabilities are discussed.

• MALSORI
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• no.49
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• pp.159-174
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• 2004

The development of the durational component of prosody modelling was overviewed and discussed in text-to-speech conversion of spoken English and Korean, showing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The possibility of integrating linguistic feature effects into the duration modelling of TTS systems was also investigated. This paper claims that current approaches to language timing synthesis still require an understanding of how segmental duration is affected by context. Three modelling approaches were discussed: sequential rule systems, Classification and Regression Tree (CART) models and Sums-of-Products (SoP) models. The CART and SoP models show good performance results in predicting segment duration in English, while it is not the case in the SoP modelling of spoken Korean.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.509-536
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• 2001

The traditional typology of English poetic meters makes a binary division between strong-stress (or accentual) meters and accentual-syllabic (or syllable-stress or syllable-accent) meters. According to this typology, Old and Middle English alliterative poetry was composed in strong-stress meter; the iambic pentameter from Chaucer to Yeats and on to the present has been an accentual-syllabic meter. Intersecting with this literary typology is a linguistic typology that classifies languages of the world as stress-timed or syllable-timed or some mix of the two. English is a clear example of a stress-timed language. Whereas most descriptions of strong-stress meter focus on the counting of stresses, the present study focuses on the patterns of unstressed syllables between the stresses (possibly at isochronous intervals). The implications of this analysis suggest a new typology in which certain forms of English verse follow strict grammatical stress (mainly Old and Middle English, but for reasons different from “strong-stress” expectations) and other forms are shaped by a compromise of grammatical stress and the metrical template. Within this later group, iambic pentameter contrasts with trochaic, anapestic, and dipodic meters in lending itself more readily to modulation. Some of this modulation comes from an easy incorporation into iambic pentameter of elements associated with Old and Middle English meters.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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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.