• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제35_36호
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• pp.13-24
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• 1998

This study aims at examining the relationship between tonal events and their related vowel and syllable duration in Korean. Two things were investigated: one is to see if there is a hierarchical relationship in prosodic unit-final-lengthening and the other is to see if accentual phrase initial high tone syllable gets lengthened. Generally, higher prosodic units show larger degree of lengthening of the final vowel and also final syllable duration than the lower ones except for accentual phrase: Mean duration of utterance-final or intonational-phrase-final syllable(and its vowels) was longer than that of accentual-phrase-final or word-final syllable(and its vowels). However, mean duration of accentual phrase final syllable was shorter than that of word final syllable. Mean vowel duration of accentual phrase initial high tone syllable was shorter than that of any other prosodic unit. Its mean syllable duration, however, was longer than that of accentual-phrase-final or word-final syllable, indicating that strong consonants(fortis and aspirated) frequently appear in the accentual phrase initial position and this position is a prosodically strong position showing longer duration as well as high tone.

• 음성과학
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.319-338
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• 2003

The aim of this paper is to examine the sentence final tonal patterns of English wh-questions through phonetic experiments, based on Intonational Phonology, and to explain the meaning of the final phrase tones of English wh-questions. Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990) suggested that it is pitch accents rather than boundary tones which play a crucial role in the meaning of a sentence, and that most of the general questions have H-H% tonal patterns in the sentence final. However, they could not explain why wh-questions had final falling tonal patterns (L-L%). While Bartels (1999) suggested that L phrase tone has the meaning of 'ASSERTION' and it could be applied to the explanation of the meaning of wh-questions' final tonal patterns. However, her suggestions are only theoretical explanation without any experimental support. In this paper, based on Bartels (1999), the data was classified into the following three classes: 1) echo wh-questions, 2) reference questions, and 3) common wh-questions. Using this data, a production test by three English native speakers was conducted. The results show that reference questions and common wh-questions have L phrase tones in the sentence final at a high rate, and echo wh-questions have H phrase tones in the sentence final at a high rate.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제3권3호
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• pp.69-75
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• 2011

This paper investigates phrase positional effects on the timing of F0 (pitch) peaks in Tokyo Japanese disyllabic words with varying accent type (HL or LH) and phrase position (final or non final). The F0 peak timing was normalized by the total word duration ('normalized H timing'). The normalized H timing was significantly affected by accent type and phrase position. The H timing was later in the LH accent type than in the HL accent type, and in non final positions than in final positions. In addition, to examine the validity of the quantitative results, different models of phrase position effects were compared by measuring H timing in two approaches: normalization versus relative distance measures. For the normalization measures, the H timing was measured as the time of the F0 peak divided by the total word duration or by the duration of the tone bearing syllable. For the relative distance measures, the H timing was measured as the distance in milliseconds from the end of the word or from the end of the associated syllable. The best model was the normalization by the total word duration, rather than by the duration of the tone bearing syllable. This means that phrase positional effects on the timing of F0 peaks in Japanese disyllabic words are best modeled in terms of proportion of the total word duration.

• 음성과학
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• 제7권4호
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• pp.219-234
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• 2000

The study of boundary tones in connected speech or dialogues is one of the most underdeveloped areas of Korean prosody. This. paper concerns the boundary tones of intonational phrase-final morphemes which are shown in the speech corpus of dialogues. Results of phonetic analysis show that different kinds of boundary tones are realized, depending on the positions of the intonational phrase-final morphemes in the sentences.. This study has also shown that boundary tone patterning is somewhat related to the sentence structure, and for better speech recognition and speech synthesis, it presents a simple model of boundary tones based on the fundamental frequency contour. The results of this study will contribute to our understanding of the prosodic pattern of Korean connected speech or dialogues.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제31_32호
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• pp.195-205
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• 1996

The aim of this paper is to describe the prosodic structure of Korean related to the syllable duration varying with its positional difference. An attempt is made in this study to analyze and describe the concrete correlation between the syllable lengthening and its position in the utterance at the initial and final positions. Using the syllable [na] at the final and initial position of a prosodic phrase in the Korean version of 'the North Wind and the Sun', it has found that the ratio of phrase final versus phrase initial syllable lengthening was approximately 1.8:1 for 4 subjects taking part in the test. In the case of nonsense data, we found that the ratio was approximately 1.6:1 for 2 out of 3 subjects. The results of this study might indicate that Korean tends to have a high rate of final lengthening. We can tentatively classify it, therefore, as a stress-timed language. Still, there is no denying that further studies should be done before we can be absolutely certain about the classification of languages along the dichotomy scale.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제1권2호
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• pp.75-84
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• 2009

The aim of this paper is to find an adequate method to study declination in Korean. In previous studies of declination in Korean, maximum and minimum pitch values in an accentual phrase were measured. But this method is inadequate when an accentual phrase is located at the intonational phrase. So in order to exclude the final tone of an intonational phrase, we propose to measure pitch values of the first and second tone in an accentual phrase when the tonal pattern of the accentual phrase is 'LHLH'. In this case, the line that connects every first tone of an accentual phrase is the baseline, and the line that connects every second tone of an accentual phrase is the topline. By a comparison of declination between focused and neutral utterances, we will show that the topline of declination is more direct to the speaker's plan than the baseline.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권4호
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• pp.3-15
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• 2014

An articulatory study (using an Electromagnetic Articulography, EMA) was conducted to explore effects of prosodic boundary strength (Intonational Phrase/IP versus Word/Wd), and focus (Focused/accented, Neutral, Unfocused/unaccented) on the kinematic realization of /m/ in the coda (${\ldots}$am#i${\ldots}$) and the onset (${\ldots}$a#mi${\ldots}$) conditions in Korean. (Here # refers to a prosodic boundary such as an IP or a Wd boundary). Several important points have emerged. First, the boundary effect on /m/s was most robustly observed in the temporal dimension in both the coda (IP-final) and the onset (IP-initial) conditions, generally in line with cross-linguistically observable boundary-related lengthening patterns. Crucially, however, in contrast with boundary-related slowing-down effects that have been observed in English, both the IP-final and IP-initial temporal expansions of Korean /m/s were not accompanied by an articulatory slowing down. They were, if anything, associated with a faster movement in the lip opening (release) phase (into the vowel). This suggests that the mechanisms underlying boundary-related temporal expansions may differ between languages. Second, observed boundary-induced strengthening effects (both spatial and temporal expansions, especially on the IP-initial /m/s) were remarkably similar to prominence (focus)-induced strengthening effects, which is again counter to phrase-initial strengthening patterns observed in English in which boundary effects are dissociated from prominent effects. This suggests that initial syllables in Korean may be a common focus for both boundary and prominence marking. These results, taken together, imply that the boundary-induced strengthening in Korean is different in nature from that in English, each being modulated by the individual language's prosodic system. Third, the coda and the onset /m/s were found to be produced in a subtly but significantly different way even in a Wd boundary condition, a potentially neutralizing (resyllabification) context. This suggests that although the coda may be phonologically 'resyllabified' into the following syllable in a phrase-medial position, its underlying syllable affiliation is kinematically distinguished from the onset.

• 음성과학
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.37-62
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• 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.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제15권6호
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• pp.26-32
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• 1996

본 논문은 자연스러운 여성 합성음을 위한 피치 변화 법칙을 세웠다. 피치 변화 법칙이 적용되는 기본 단위, 즉 억양구는 주로 어절(들)로 이것의 첫번째, 두번째, 마지막 음절의 피치값을 연결해 피치 변화 곡선을 형성하였는데, 첫번째, 두번째 음절의 피치값은 각 음절의 초성에 따라, 마지막 음절의 피치값은 기능어의 종류에 따라 결정되었다. 억양구 사이에는 '쉼(pause)이 있는 경계' 또는 '쉼이 없는 경계'가 오며, 쉼이 있는 경계에는 relaxation이 있다. 이러한 억양구의 피치 변화 곡선, 경계 현상들이 모여 한 문장의 피치 턴을 만들었다.

• 음성과학
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.141-152
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• 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.