• MALSORI
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• no.37
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• pp.73-85
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• 1999

The prosodic characteristics of Korean particles in read speech were examined in this paper based on K-ToBI labeling system in order to see whether they are prosodically weak form like functions words in English. Acoustic measurements and statistical analysis were done focusing on the distribution of particles over a variety of prosodic positions, prosodic positional effects on the phonetic realization of particles, and acoustic strength of particles compared to those of their surrounding syllables. The panicles were distributed rather equally over all 4 prosodic positions with the highest frequency at IP-medial/AP-final position and the lowest at IP-medial/AP-medial position except that topic marker 'Un/nUn' showed preference for IP-final/AP-final position. There was a significant prosodic positional effect on the duration and F0 of the particles. Duration was the longest at IP-final/AP-final position and interestingly, at IP-medial/AP-medial position while F0 was the highest at IP-final/AP-medial Position as expected. The comparison of the acoustic properties of the particles with those of neighbor syllables showed that duration was generally significantly longer and energy also showed larger values, if not significant, in particles suggesting that the particles in Korean are not prosodically weaker like function words in English.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.3-23
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• 2007

King Sejong the Great, his students in Jip-hyeun-jeon school and Choe Sejin, their successor of the sixteenth century, indicated Middle Korean had three distinctive pitches, low, high, and rising (phyeong-, geo-, sang-sheong). Thanks to $Hun-min-jeng-{\emptyset}eum$ as well as its Annotation and side-dots literatures in fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we can compare Middle Korean with Hamgyeong dialect, Gyeongsang dialect, and extant tone dialects with joint preservers of what was probably the tonal system of unitary mother Korean language. What is most remarkable about middle Korean phonetic work is its manifest superiority in conception and execution as anything produced in the present day linguistic scholarship. But at this stage in linguistics, prior to the technology and equipment needed for the scientific analysis of sound waves, auditory description was the only possible frame for an accurate and systematic classification. And auditory phonetics still remains fundamental in pitch description, even though modern acoustic categories may supplement and supersede auditory ones in tonological analysis. Auditory phonetics, however, has serious shortcoming that its theory and practice are too subject to be developed into the present century science. With joint researchers, I am developping a new pitch scale. It is a semiautomatic auditory grade pitch analysis program. The result of our labor will give a significant breakthrough to upgrade our component in linguistics.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.178-178
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• 2000

This paper IS concerned with adults' foreign language aquisition and intends to research the relationship between the mother tongue's phonetic system (L1) and the perception of the foreign language (L2), in this paper Polish and Korean. The questions that are to help to define the aforementioned relationship are I) how Polish perceive Korean vowels, 2) how Koreans perceive Polish vowels, and 3) how Koreans perceive Korean vowels pronounced by Poles. In order to identify L2's vowels, the listeners try to fit them into the categories of their own language (L1). On the one hand, vowels that are the same in both languages and those that are articulated where no other vowel is articulated, have the best rate of recognition. For example, /i/ in both languages is a front close vowel and in both languages there are no other front close vowels. Therefore, vowels /i/ (and /a/) have the best rate of recognition in all three experiments. On the other hand, vowels that are unfamiliar to the listeners do not seem to have the worst rate of recognition. The vowels that have the worst rate of recognition are those, that are similar, but not quite the same as those of L1. This research proves that "equivalence classification prevents L2 learners from producing similar L2 phones, but not new L2 phones, authentically" (Flege, 1987). Polish speakers can pronounce unfamiliar L2 vowels "more authentically" than those similar to L1 vowels. However, the difference is not significant and this subject requires further research (different data, more informants).

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.353-363
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• 2000

The consonant system of English is relatively uniform throughout the English-speaking countries. Accents of English are mainly known to differ in terms of their vowel systems as well as in the phonetic realisations of vowel phonemes. The results of an acoustic study of vowel phonology of Japanese English, Singapore English and Indian English are presented, and an attempt is then made to compare the vowel phonology of these non-native varieties with that of Scottish English and RP. Various native varieties of English are thus shown to differ from each other in major ways, as much, perhaps, as the non-native varieties differ from the native varieties. Nevertheless, native speakers of English appear to be mutually intelligible to a degree that does not extend to non-native varieties. Obviously there are features that various native accents have in common which facilitate their mutual intelligibility, and these features are not shared by non-native accents. It is proposed that the foreign learner adopt certain core features of English in his pronunciation if he is to use English effectively as an international language. The common core that is significant in the communication process will be discussed. In conclusion, some pragmatic implications for the English language education in the new millennium will be articulated.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.167-173
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• 2013

This work examines classification of diphthongs, as part of a distinctive feature-based speech recognition system. Acoustic measurements related to the vocal tract and the voice source are examined, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) results show that vowel duration, energy trajectory, and formant variation are significant. A balanced error rate of 17.8% is obtained for 2-way diphthong classification on the TIMIT database, and error rates of 32.9%, 29.9%, and 20.2% are obtained for /aw/, /ay/, and /oy/, for 4-way classification, respectively. Adding the acoustic features to widely used Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients also improves classification.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.9-17
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• 2020

Changes in the first language (L1) sound system as a result of acquiring a second language (L2) (i.e., phonetic drift) have received considerable attention from a variety of speakers, settings, and environments. Less attention has been given to phonetic drift in adult speakers' L2 learning as their length of residence in America (LOR) increases. This study examines the effects of LOR on voice onset time (VOT) in L1 Korean stops. Three different groups of Korean adult learners of L2 English were compared to assess how malleable their L1 representations are in terms of LOR and whether there is any relationship between L1 change and L2 acquisition. The results showed that the effect of LOR was linguistically unimportant in the production of Korean stops. However, VOT merger as evidence of sound change in Korean stops were robust in the speech production of most of the female speakers across the groups. The results suggest that L2 English may not be the primary cause of L1 sound change. For generalizability, further study is necessary to see whether other acoustic cues show a similar pattern.

• MALSORI
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• no.49
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• pp.77-94
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• 2004

In this paper, new voice message system supporting massive outbound call is proposed. Basic idea of the proposed system is to pre-process all the text-to-speech conversion process, mixing of text and attached music file and to store the results of pre-process in the cache server which is connected to the IVR. New voice message system is optimized for the voice message system supporting massive outbound call by distributing the load of the web server caused by server-side script implementation which is accessing database and generating dynamic Voice XML document over client module and server module of web server. The proposed voice message system was test-deployed in one domestic voice message application service provider and it is shown that proposed voice message system reduced the response latency problem of test-bed voice message system.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.96-104
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• 2000

The Bodysonic system was invented on the basis of 'Bone Conduction Theory,' which states that people feel sounds with their whole body. The Bodysonic system is used for L2 (English) learning at Aichi Women's Junior College. In recent years we have developed some unique methodology related to use of the Bodysonic system. In Japan it is difficult for adult L2 learners to acquire the prosody of a foreign language. A language laboratory using the Bodysonic system has been suggested as one way to eradicate such adult L2 problems. The Bodysonic system changes sounds into vibrations. It makes it easy for learners to acquire the prosody of a foreign language because humans can convey information, through their tactile organs. In addition, this system was originally designed to make people relax, so it can also help minimize learner anxiety. The effect of Bodysonic vibrations on language learning has already been proven by some experiments. The Bodysonic system appears to be an ideal teaching method for adult to learn a foreign language.

• MALSORI
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• no.56
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• pp.185-194
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• 2005

In this paper, we present POSSDM (POSTECH Situation-Based Dialogue Manager) for a spoken dialogue system using a new example and situation-based dialogue management technique for effective generation of appropriate system responses. Spoken dialogue system should generate cooperative responses to smoothly control dialogue flow with the users. We introduce a new dialogue management technique incorporating dialogue examples and situation-based rules for EPG (Electronic Program Guide) domain. For the system response inference, we automatically construct and index a dialogue example database from dialogue corpus, and the best dialogue example is retrieved for a proper system response with the query from a dialogue situation including a current user utterance, dialogue act, and discourse history. When dialogue corpus is not enough to cover the domain, we also apply manually constructed situation-based rules mainly for meta-level dialogue management.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.34-40
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• 2000

In text-dependent speaker verification system, which text choice for speaker to utter is very important factor for performance improvement. In this paper, building a consonant mixture system using classification method of korean phonetic value is proposed. When it is applied to the web-based speaker verification system, it can cope with abrupt change of speaker's voice information and have the optimal performance in speaker verification system.