• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.77-91
• /
• 2001

This paper investigates the timing of Korean spoken in a news-reading speech style in order to improve the naturalness of durations used in Korean speech synthesis. Each segment in a corpus of 671 read sentences was annotated with 69 segmental and prosodic features so that the measured duration could be correlated with the context in which it occurred. A CART model based on the features showed a correlation coefficient of 0.79 with an RMSE (root mean squared prediction error) of 23 ms between actual and predicted durations in reserved test data. These results are comparable with recent published results in Korean and similar to results found in other languages. An analysis of the classification tree shows that phrasal structure has the greatest effect on the segment duration, followed by syllable structure and the manner features of surrounding segments. The place features of surrounding segments only have small effects. The model has application in Korean speech synthesis systems.

• Language and Information
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.77-96
• /
• 2007

This paper investigates syntactic variations in English such as Dative Alternation, Particle Inversion, and Object Postposition (Heavy NP Shift) within the framework of Optimality Theory, and shows that the same set of morphological, informational, and processing constraints affect all these variations. In particular, it shows that the variants that used to be regarded as ungrammatical are in fact used fairly often in reality, especially when processing or informational conditions are met, and therefore, grammatical judgment may not be always categorical but sometimes gradient. It is argued that the notion of distance in constraint ranking in stochastic OT can effectively explain the gradience and variability of grammaticality in the variation phenomena.

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

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.37-62
• /
• 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.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.323-336
• /
• 2006

In this paper, we present a pilot system that can extract paraphrases from a parallel corpus using to-training method. Paraphrases are useful for the applications that should rreate a varied ind fluent text, such as machine translation, question-answering system, and multidocument summarization system. One of the difficulties in extracting paraphrases is to find a rich source from which we can extract paraphrases. The bible is one of the good sources fur extracting paraphrases as it has several Korean versions in which every sentence can be easily aligned by the chapter and the verse. We ran extract not only the lexical-level paraphrases but also the phrasal-level paraphrases from the parallel corpus which consists of the bibles using co-training method.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.141-152
• /
• 2005

This paper shows the tonal patterns of English conjunctive utterances produced by Korean speakers of English, presenting that Korean speakers realize either the H - phrase tone or the H% boundary tone at the phrase-final part of the conjunctive utterances. Based on Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg's (1990) claim that either H- or H% tone indicates that a phrase is related to the following one, Korean speakers seem to produce the satisfactory patterns of edge tones in conjunctive sentences. In the experiment, we made up conjunctive sentences including both coordinate conjunctions such as and, but, or, and so and subordinate conjunctions like if, when and though. We varied the stimuli according to the existence of a comma and the lengths of connecting words and phrases. We also divided the subjects into two levels of English proficiency based on their English written test scores to see if Korean speakers' performance ability of edge tones is related with their general competence of English. Results show that Korean speakers produced 84% of the H- phrase tone in intermediate phrases and H-L% and L-H% boundary tones in intonational phrases. Also, coordinate and subordinate conjunctions show little difference in their tonal contours, and the existence of a comma or the lengths of connecting words and phrases do not affect Korean speakers' production of the H- phrasal tone and the H% boundary tone. This may suggest that pitch accents, rather than edge tones, should be put more focus on in teaching English intonation in Korea as much work has already shown that Korean speakers have serious problem with producing pitch accents in speaking English.

• Language and Information
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.1-14
• /
• 2002

This paper discusses so called the non-DP subject constructions in English. In general, a subject is a DP that bears Nominative case and that occupies 〔Spec, IP〕. However, in some examples under investigation, it looks as if non-DP categories such as Prepositional Phrases(PP), Adjectival Phrases(AP), Adverbial Phrases (AdvP), Small Clauses (PreP or SC), and VP occupy the canonical subject position, 〔Spec, IP〕. Under the framework of Chomsky's (1993, 1995) along with his previous works (Chomsky 1981, 1986), the Case Checking mechanism undoubtedly assumes that only DPs can have Case Therefore, the Case Checking/Agree mechanism is stated such that the strong uninterpretable feature, in this case Case feature (D or NP) feature must be checked off in a certain manner. Therefore, any phrasal categories other than DPs are not included in the considerations. Nonetheless, there are many instances of non-DP categories in English that occupy the seemingly canonical subject position, 〔spec, IP〕. In this paper, it is proposed that the actual position of these non-DP subjects in English is not in Spec of IP. Rather, they occupy 〔Spec, TopP〕 under CP in the sense of Lasnik & Stowell (1991), Rizzi (1997), and Haegeman & Gueron (1999). In its effect, therefore, this paper extends the idea of Stowell (1981) who argues that the clausal subjects in English is not in 〔Spec, IP〕, but in 〔Spec, TopP〕. We further argue that Stowell's version of Case Resistance Principle must be extended in order to accomodate many more occurrences of so called non-DP subjects.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.17-29
• /
• 2021

The current study explores small corpora of critiques written by Chinese and non-Chinese university students and how strategies used by these writers compare with high-rated L1 students. Data collection includes three small corpora of student writing; 20 student critiques in 2017, 23 student critiques from 2018, and 23 critiques from the online Michigan MICUSP collection at the University of Michigan. The researchers employ Text Inspector and Lexical Complexity to identify university students' vocabulary knowledge and awareness of syntactic complexity. In addition, WMatrix4® is used to identify and support the comparison of lexical and semantic differences among the three corpora. The findings indicate that gaps between Chinese and non-Chinese writers in the same university classes exist in students' knowledge of grammatical features and interactional metadiscourse. In addition, critiques by Chinese writers are more likely to produce shorter clauses and sentences. In addition, the mean value of complex nominal and coordinate phrases is smaller for Chinese students than for non-Chinese and MICUSP writers. Finally, in terms of lexical bundles, Chinese student writers prefer clausal bundles instead of phrasal bundles, which, according to previous studies, are more often found in texts of skilled writers. The current study's findings suggest incorporating implicit and explicit instruction through the implementation of corpora in language classrooms to advance skills and strategies of all, but particularly of Chinese writers of English.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.185-200
• /
• 2002

The current study confirmed the existence of an ip prosodic level in French intonation structure, as previously proposed by Sun-Ah Jun & $C\acute{e}cile$cile Fougeron (2000). However, in contrast to the previous suggestion of the plateau realized in an ip in several syntactic structures, the current study supposed that the plateau doesn't come from the different type of syntactic structures but arise from the unspecified syllables without any PA in an ip. Because if we limited ip phrasal tone to the syntactic structure, it would be difficult to find the more general reasons of ip level. Besides /Hi/ and /$H^*$/ we also used /$Hi^*$/ for the focused syllable in the current study. In emphasized sentences, in general, /$Hi^*$/ appeared in the first or second syllable of a leftward AP in an ip and /$H^*$/ in the final syllable of a rightmost AP of an ip, In contrast to these PAs, /$Hi^*$/ might appear in any syllable in an ip, but not to far from /$H^*$/ because the duration time and length t of plateau realized between /$Hi^*$/ and /$H^*$/ or /Hi/ and /$H^*$/ would make an essential harmonious rhythmic unit, Therefore, the current study determined the duration time and the number of syllables realized in each plateau in an ip level composed of more than one AP. As a phrase constituent structure, there is a practical need for intermediate prosodic units to allow for generalization over the many possible combinations of prosodic patterns that can occur. Further evidence is still needed to analyze and relate the different pitch ranges of the plateau of an ip according to the syntactic structure, to identify the considerable character in the French prosodic hierarchy.

• Language and Information
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.33-52
• /
• 2014

This paper proposes a unified structural account of some instances of the English Modals and Semi-auxiliaries. The classification and the syntactic/structural description of the English Modal auxiliary verbs and verb-related elements have long been the center for many proposals in the history of generative syntax. According to van Gelderen (1993) and Lightfoot (2002), it was sometime around 1380 that the Tense-node (T) appeared in the phrasal structures of the English language, and the T-node is under which the English Modal auxiliaries occupy. Closely related is the existing evidence that English Modals were used as main verbs up to the early sixteenth century (Lightfoot 1991, Han 2000). This paper argues for a bi-clausal approach to English Modal auxiliaries with the infinitival particle 'to' such as 'ought to' 'used to' and 'dare (to)' 'need (to)', etc. and Semi-auxiliaries including 'be to' and 'have to'. More specifically, 'ought' in 'ought to' constructions, for instance, undergoes V-to-T movement within the matrix clause, just like 'HAVEAux' and all instances of 'BE', whereas 'to' occupies the T position of the embedded complement clause. By proposing the bi-clausal account, Radford's (2004, 2009) problems can be solved. Further, the historical motivation for the account takes a stance along with Norde (2009) and Brinton & Traugott (2005) in that Radford's (2004, 2009) syncretization of the two positions of the infinitival particle 'to' is no different from the 'boundary loss' in the process of Grammariticalization. This line of argument supports Krug's (2011), and in turn Bolinger's(1980) generalization on Auxiliaryhood, while providing a novel insight into Head movement of V-to-T in Present Day English.