• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.29-41
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• 2008

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese speakers realize Korean prosodic phrases in the reading of Korean texts. Prosodic phrase, in this study, is defined as basic unit of spoken language which can be perceived as purely separate phonetic unit by both hearer and speaker, and is realized with a coherent intonational configuration. Prosodic phrase plays an important role in both speech production and perception. In the second language acquisition, prosody influences the accuracy and fluency of spoken language. The main purpose of this study is to describe the aspect of syntagmatic operation of prosody that produces prosodic phrases. We have specifically examined the relations between the prosodic phrase's boundary and its syntactic status. Furthermore, we examined internal syntactic structure of each prosodic phrase. And the results of each analysis were compared to the aspects of prosodic phrases' formation produced by native Korean speakers. The results show that Chinese speakers tend to coincide the prosodic phrases with syntactic structure more than native Korean speakers.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.27-38
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• 1997

The differences in French Intonation between French and Korean learners can be applied to French intonation education. One native French speaker and three native Korean speakers who learned French language at High school were selected for this study. The subjects spoke test phrases based on the different syntactic structures. High-Speed speech Analysis system(RILP) was used for this experiment. The different intonation curves were showed at the end of phrase and at the beginning of phrase between French and Korean learners. At the end of phrases, French intonation appeared to have increasing and decending pitch contours in the case of wh-question, exclamation and finality. However, Korean learner's intonation showed only increasing pitch contours. At the beginning of phrase, French intonation shows decending pitch contours in the case of minor continuation and command. In contrast, Korean learner's intonation appeared to have increasing pitch contours. The new intonation training system using PC can have great effect on education of French as a second language.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.48-58
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• 2024

This paper presents the development of language tutoring systems for nonnative speakers by leveraging advanced end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) and proficiency evaluation. Given the frequent errors in non-native speech, high-performance spontaneous speech recognition must be applied. Our systems accurately evaluate pronunciation and speaking fluency and provide feedback on errors by relying on precise transcriptions. End-to-end ASR is implemented and enhanced by using diverse non-native speaker speech data for model training. For performance enhancement, we combine semisupervised and transfer learning techniques using labeled and unlabeled speech data. Automatic proficiency evaluation is performed by a model trained to maximize the statistical correlation between the fluency score manually determined by a human expert and a calculated fluency score. We developed an English tutoring system for Korean elementary students called EBS AI Peng-Talk and a Korean tutoring system for foreigners called KSI Korean AI Tutor. Both systems were deployed by South Korean government agencies.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.285-287
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• 2007

The primary goal of this study is to find out how the effect of speaking rate has some influence on the production and perception across languages. Through both experiments of production and perception, an English native speaker changes both production and perception simultaneously. Especially the production of the temporal features changes relatively fast. On the contrary, Chinese and Korean speakers changes their production rather than perception by following the speaking rate.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.369-386
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• 2001

This paper will show that traditional approaches to the derivation of different negative words have been of an essentially hypothetical nature, based on either linguists' intuitions or rather scant evidence, and that native-speaker dictionary entries show meaning potentials (rather than meanings) which are in fact linguistic and cognitive prototypes. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that using a large corpus of natural language can provide better answers to questions about word-formation (i.e., with particular reference to negative prefixation) than any other source of information.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.176-179
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• 2003

This study was conducted to extract the feature set of English writing error for suggesting adequate English writing program and making automated scoring system. The frequent committed error and the error across the level of writing proficiency were reported. Also, It is reported that the correlation between type of error and native speaker's rating score.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.2
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• pp.95-108
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• 1997

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate prosodic characteristics of English as spoken by Koreans. Test materials were four English words, a sentence, and a paragraph. Six female Korean speakers and five native English speakers participated in acoustic and perceptual experiments. Pitch and duration of word syllables were measured from signals and spectrograms made by the Signalize 3.04 software program for Power Mac 7200. In the perceptual experiment, accent position, intonation patterns, rhythm patterns and phrasing were evaluated by the five native English speakers. Preliminary results from this limited study show that prosodic characteristics of Koreans include (1) pitch on the first part of a word and sentence is lower than that of English speakers, but the pitch on the last part is the opposite; (2) word prosody is quite similar to that of an English speaker, but sentence prosody is quite different; (3) the weakest point of sentence prosody spoken by Koreans is in the rhythmic pattern.

• 중국학논총
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• no.66
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• pp.85-103
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• 2020

We use prototypes (also known as referent in semiotics) when we understand the outside world. Different language users use different prototypes to decode the same sound. When we learn Chinese language as a foreign language, during it's sound perceptual process, Korean learners' target language prototypes are different from Chinese native speakers'. The purpose of the paper is to examine the theory of speech perception and the theory of constructivism teaching, and to suggest to the Chinese language teachers to have Cunstructivist approach while they design there teaching course. For this, we concerned three things: First is to review speech perception theory and constructivism teaching theory. Second based on the preceding study, we review that learner's prototypes are different from Chinese native speaker and this cause the error of listening and pronunciation. Finally, we introduced two simple speech visualization programs developed to help us learn pronunciation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.13-20
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• 2023

This study explores the potential of automated speech recognition (ASR) in assessing English learners' pronunciation. We employed ASR technology, acknowledged for its impartiality and consistent results, to analyze speech audio files, including synthesized speech, both native-like English and Korean-accented English, and speech recordings from a native English speaker. Through this analysis, we establish baseline values for the word error rate (WER). These were then compared with those obtained for human raters in perception experiments that assessed the speech productions of 30 first-year college students before and after taking a pronunciation course. Our sub-group analyses revealed positive training effects for Whisper, an ASR tool, and human raters, and identified distinct human rater strategies in different assessment aspects, such as proficiency, intelligibility, accuracy, and comprehensibility, that were not observed in ASR. Despite such challenges as recognizing accented speech traits, our findings suggest that digital tools such as ASR can streamline the pronunciation assessment process. With ongoing advancements in ASR technology, its potential as not only an assessment aid but also a self-directed learning tool for pronunciation feedback merits further exploration.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.63-69
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• 2016

Twenty five English native speakers with two different L2 experienced groups and nineteen native Koreans heard both Korean word-initial nasals (/m/ and /n/) in three vowel contexts (low, mid, and high) produced by a native Korean speaker. The experiment examined the hypothesis that Korean nasals are more likely to be judged or perceived correctly by the L2-experienced English learners of Korean than the unexperienced counterparts. The result showed that L2 experienced group was more sensitive to effects of vowel height in judging the Korean nasals in which the perception of nasals before the high vowels was more subject to it. In addition, place of nasal articulation causes asymmetry relations - bilabial nasal /m/ is more likely to be perceived as plosives rather than alveolar nasal /n/. The study found that the L2 experience has a somewhat limited role in perceiving the nasals correctly in the word-initial position, especially before the high vowels, in that even the L2 experienced English subjects have difficulty in identifying the Korean nasals correctly in this environment. Nevertheless, low L2 proficiency might be accounted for the difficulty in the bilabial nasal identification observed by the L2 experienced group.