• MALSORI
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• no.66
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• pp.117-130
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• 2008

This paper presents a method for automatically detecting Korean prosodic boundaries using both acoustic and grammatical information for the performance improvement of speech information processing systems. While most of previous works are solely based on grammatical information, our method utilizes not only grammatical information constructed by a Maximum-Entropy-based grammar model using 10 grammatical features, but also acoustical information constructed by a GMM-based acoustic model using 14 acoustic features. Given that Korean prosodic structure has two intonationally defined prosodic units, intonation phrase (IP) and accentual phrase (AP), experimental results show that the detection rate of AP boundaries is 82.6%, which is higher than the labeler agreement rate in hand transcribing, and that the detection rate of IP boundaries is 88.7%, which is slightly lower than the labeler agreement rate.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.137-150
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• 2004

This paper investigates the prosodic characteristics of discourse boundaries in spontaneous conversation. In this study, the term 'conversation' is taken to refer to a kind of talk in which two or more participants alternate in speaking about particular topics. Such a definition implies that there are at least two sorts of structures in the conversation: textual structure and interactive structure. This requires us to consider not just the textual influences on prosody but also the impact of interactive context. The aim of this study is to find out the acoustic-prosodic means used by speakers to signal discourse boundaries in conversational interaction. The results show that the conflict between the structural level and the interactive level obliges the speakers to reorganize the prosodic variables according to the type of discourse boundaries.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.9-16
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• 1999

Generally, a speaker structures utterances very clearly by grouping words into phrases. This facilitates the listener's recovery of the meaning of the utterance and the speaker's intention. To this purpose, a speaker uses, among other things, prosodic information such as intonation pause, duration, intensity, etc. The research described here is concerned with the relationship between the strength of prosodic boundaries in spoken utterances as perceived by untrained listeners(Perceptual boundary strength, PBS)-In this paper, the preceptual boundary strength is used as the same meaning of the prosodic boundary strength-and prosodic information. We made a rule determinating the prosodic boundaries and verified the usefulness of the prosodic phrase as a recognition unit. Experiments results showed that the performance of speech recognition(SR) is improved in aspect of recognition rate and time compared with that using sentences as recognition unit. In the future we will suggest the methods that estimate more appropriate boundaries and study more various methods of prosody assisted SR.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.249-267
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• 2012

Individual differences in working memory predict qualitative differences in language processing. High span comprehenders are better able to integrate probabilistic information such as plausibility and animacy, the use of which requires the computation of real world knowledge in syntactic parsing (e.g.,[1]). However, it is unclear whether similar individual differences exist in the use of informative prosodic cues. This study examines whether working memory modulates the use of prosodic boundary information in attachment ambiguity resolution. Prosodic boundaries were manipulated in globally ambiguous relative clause sentences. The results show that high span listeners are more likely to be sensitive to the distinction between different types of prosodic boundaries than low span listeners. The findings suggest that like high-level constraints, the use of low-level prosodic information is resource demanding.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.181-195
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• 1999

This study proposes a method of recognizing postpositions and suffixes in Korean spoken language, using prosodic information. We detect grammatical boundaries automatically at first, by using prosodic information of the accentual phrase, and then we recognize grammatical function words by backward-tracking from the boundaries. The experiment employs 300 sentential speech data of 10 men's and 5 women's voice spoken in standard Korean, in which 1080 accentual phrases and 11 postpositions and suffixes are included. The result shows the recognition rate of postpositions in two cases. In one case in which only correctly detected boundaries are included, the recognition rate is 97.5%, and in the other case in which all detected boundaries are included, the recognition rate is 74.8%.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.29-41
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• 2006

This study investigates the degree to which various prosodic cues at the boundaries of prosodic phrases in Korean contribute to word segmentation. Since most phonological words in Korean are produced as one Accentual Phrase (AP), it was hypothesized that the detection of acoustic cues at AP boundaries would facilitate word segmentation. The prosodic characteristics of Korean APs include initial strengthening at the beginning of the phrase and pitch rise and final lengthening at the end. A perception experiment utilizing an artificial language learning paradigm revealed that cues conforming to the aforementioned prosodic characteristics of Korean facilitated listeners' word segmentation. Results also indicated that duration and amplitude cues were more helpful in segmentation than pitch. Nevertheless, results did show that a pitch cue that did not conform to the Korean AP interfered with segmentation.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.114-118
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• 2007

The current study investigates the degree to which various prosodic cues at the boundaries of a prosodic phrase in Korean (Accentual Phrase) contributed to word segmentation. Since most phonological words in Korean are produced as one AP, it was hypothesized that the detection of acoustic cues at AP boundaries would facilitate word segmentation. The prosodic characteristics of Korean APs include initial strengthening at the beginning of the phrase and pitch rise and final lengthening at the end. A perception experiment revealed that the cues that conform to the above-mentioned prosodic characteristics of Korean facilitated listeners' word segmentation. Results also showed that duration and amplitude cues were more helpful in segmentation than pitch. Further, the results showed that a pitch cue that did not conform to the Korean AP interfered with segmentation.

• MALSORI
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• no.33_34
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• pp.23-42
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• 1997

This study has two main purposes. One is to explore the relationship between syntactic aspects and prosodic aspects in Standard Korean. The other is to provide speech synthesis with the information about such relationship. This study will focus on the prosodic behavior of subjective particles'-i/-ga', '-eun/-neun'. The prosodic features of subjective particles are described respectively. How do the elements such as the position of particles in a sentence, the sentence constituents, the length of the sentence and the rhythmic boundaries influence on the prosodic behavior are also investigated.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.1E
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• pp.27-31
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• 1999

Recent linguistic researches have brought into focus the relations between prosodic structures and syntactic, semantic or phonological structures. Most of them prove that prosodic information is available for understanding syntactic, semantic and discourse structures. But this result has not been integrated yet into recent Korean speech recognition or understanding systems. This study, as a part of integrating prosodic information into the speech recognition system, proposes an automatic detection technique of Korean accentual phrase boundaries by using one-stage DP, and the normalized pitch pattern. For making the normalized pitch pattern, this study proposes a method of modified normalization for Korean spoken language. For the experiment, this study employs 192 sentential speech data of 12 men's voice spoken in standard Korean, in which 720 accentual phrases are included, and 74.4% of the accentual phrase boundaries are correctly detected while 14.7% are the false detection rate.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.117-119
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• 2006

This paper discusses the importance of silent pauses in the perception of prosodic boundaries in Korean speech. It is suggested that in speech in general, and in particular in spontaneous speech, silent pauses are neither necessary nor sufficient for the perception of prosodic boundaries. In read speech, however, there is a high correlation between the presence of a pause and the perception of a boundary. An experiment was carried out to determine whether removing the silent boundary from an extract of speech had a significant effect on the perception of boundaries in Korean read speech. Results suggest that while the presence of a silent boundary slightly reinforces the perception of a prosodic boundary, subjects are in general capable of perceiving the boundary without the silent pause.