• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.27-36
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• 2020

The aim of this study is to investigate the perceptive aspects of the polysemic sentence final ending "-(eu)lgeol" produced by Chinese Korean learners. "-(Eu)lgeol" has two different meanings, that is, a guess and a regret, and these different meanings are expressed by the different prosodic features of the last syllable of "-(eu)lgeol". To examine how Korean native speakers perceive "-(eu)lgeol" sentences produced by Chinese Korean learners and the most saliant prosodic variable for the semantic discrimination of "-(eu)lgeol" at the perceptive level, we performed a perceptual experiment. The analysed material constituted four Korean sentences containing "-(eu)lgeol" in which two sentences expressed guesses and the other two expressed regret. Twenty-five Korean native speakers participated in the perceptual experiment. Participants were asked to mark whether "-(eu)lgeol" sentences they listened to were (1) definitely regrets, (2) probably regrets, (3) ambiguous, (4) probably guesses, or (5) definitely guesses based on the prosodic features of the last syllable of "-(eu)lgeol". The analysed prosodic variables were sentence boundary tones, slopes of boundary tones, pitch difference between sentence-final and penultimate syllables, and pitch levels of boundary tones. The results show that all the analysed prosodic variables are significantly correlated with the semantic discrimination of "-(eu)lgeol" and among these prosodic variables, the most salient role in the semantic discrimination of "-(eu)lgeol" is pitch difference between sentence-final syllable and penultimate syllable.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.67-81
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• 2008

The accuracy rate of P2G (Phoneme-to-Grapheme) is one of the important factors determining the quality of unlimited voice recognition (VR) systems. Few studies were, however, conducted to reduce ambiguities of a phoneme string which can be segmented into a variety of different linguistic units (i.e. morphemes, words, eo-jeols), thus be transformed into more than one grapheme string. This paper is a preliminary research for building a large knowledge base of those homonymic & heterographic units(HHUs), which will provide unlimited Korean VR systems with more accurate P2G information. This paper analyzes 2 main factors generating HHUs: (1) boundary determination of the prosodic unit; (2) its segmentation into linguistic units. In this paper, linguistic characteristics determining variable boundaries of a prosodic unit are investigated, and the ambiguity types of HHUs are classified in accordance with their morphological and syntactic structures as well as with the phonological rules governing them.

• MALSORI
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• no.47
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• pp.15-29
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• 2003

When intonation in French is analysed in terms of a multi-dimentional and hierarchical structure, each of the prosodic units such as accent phrases(having different combinations of the basic tonemes L and H), pre-sentencial and post-sentencial long pauses, intonation phrases(containing boundary intonation), as well as intermediate phrases can be considered being realized on a separate tier. Unlike on the tiers where accent phrases and intonation phrases occur, an intonation rhythm consisting of plateaus is realised on that of intermediate phrases. This intonation rhythm consisting of plateaus is one of the significant factors that lead a basic French metrical rhythm. This paper first shows the types of combinations of the basic tonemes L and H found in French accent phrases. Secondly, this paper examines the roles intermediate phrases and plateaus play in French. Finally, this paper argues that intermediate phrases are the metrical units actually adopted as real utterance units in French.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.23-42
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• 2006

This paper reports a preliminary result of an acoustic study on the stress and intonational system in Lakhota, a native American language. It investigates how the stress and intonation in Lakhota are phonetically manifested; and how the stress interacts with other prosodic factors. The results preliminarily obtained from one native Lakhota speaker suggest that the primary cue of the stress is relatively high F0 which is often accompanied by higher intensity (for the vowel) and longer VOT (for aspirated stops). The results also indicate that stress is not reliably marked by duration. The stress system, however, interacts with the intonational pattern, such that, for example, intonational peak falls on the stressed syllable with a general pattern of L+H* and that it interacts with the boundary tone L%, resulting in mid tone utterance-finally. This paper can be viewed largely as a qualitative study on an understudied native American language, Lakhota and as forming a basis for further development of its stress and intonation system whose acoustic properties of its prosodic system have not been investigated before.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.87-90
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• 2005

The aim of this paper is to investigate the prosodic characteristics of Korean distant speech. 36 2-syllable words of 4 speakers (2 males and 2 females) produced in both distant-talking and normal environments were used. The results showed that ratios of second syllable to first syllable in vowel duration and vowel energy were significantly larger in the distant-talking environment compared to the normal environment and f0 range also bigger in the distant-talking environment. In addition, 'HL%' contour boundary tone in the second syllable and/or 'L +H' contour tone in the first syllable were used in the distant-talking environment.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.53-62
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• 2016

In this study, we examined whether Chinese learners of Korean can correctly produce the phonological process on the lexical and post-lexical level. For this purpose 4 Korean native speakers and 10 advanced and 10 intermediate Chinese learners of Korean participated in the production test. The materials analyzed constituted 10 Korean sentences in which nasalization can be applied on the syllable boundary, word boundary(w-boundary) as well as accentual phrase boundary(AP-boundary). The results show that for Korean speakers, nasalization was applied 100% at all level whereas for Chinese speakers, the rate of application of nasalization is different according to prosodic constituents and Korean proficiency. Nasalization was more frequently applied at the lexical level than the post-lexical level, and it is more frequent in the w-boundary conditions than in the AP-boundary conditions. However, the rate of nasalization in the w-boundary is close to the lexical level. The pronunciation errors were committed either as non application of nasalization or coda obstruent ommission. In the case of non application of nasalization, Chinese learners of Korean produced the target syllables as underling forms, which were not transformed as surface forms. In addition, we can observe the ommission of coda obstruents in 'lenis obstruents+nasal sound' sequences. As a result, nasalization is blocked by this omission.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.89-101
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• 2003

This paper investigates edge effects on the relationship between the underlying tonal sequence and its surface realization in the IP-final Accentual Phrase within the Optimality Theoretic framework. I will examine the way in which AP tones are aligned with their associated syllables in IP-final position. In Korean. Jun's (1996) 'see-saw effect' does not allow any two identical tones if they are marking a boundary of a prosodic group. A phonetic experiment conducted in this paper suggests that the 'see-saw effect' only apply to H boundary tones. Furthermore, it will be shown that the timing of tonal peaks is determined through the ranking of a set of violable constraints. The AP tonal realization is achieved through the access to the global intonation in a complicated way. In the course of discussion, pitch patterns in IP-medial Accentual Phrase will also be discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.91-98
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• 2013

This paper investigated Korean prosody as it relates to graded internal structure in an identification function. Within Korean prosody, variants regarded as dialectal variations can appear as different prosodic scales, which contain the range of within-category variations. The current experiment was intended to show how the prosodic scale corresponding to the range of within-category differences relates to f0 contours for speakers of two Korean dialects, North Kyungsang and South Cholla. In an identification task, participants responded by selecting an item from two answer choices. The probability of choosing the correct response from the two choices was computed by a logistic regression analysis using intercepts and slopes. That is, the correct response between two choices was used to show a linear line with an s-shape presentation. In this paper, to investigate the graded internal structure of labeling, 25%, 50%, and 75% of predicted probability were assessed. Listeners from North Kyungsang showed progressive variations, whereas listeners from South Cholla revealed random patterns in the internal structure of the identification function. In this paper, the results were plotted using scatterplot graphs, applying the range of within-category variation and predicted probability obtained from the logistic regression analyses. The scatterplot graphs showed the different degree of the responses for f0 scales (i.e., variations within categories). The results demonstrate that the gradient structures of native pitch accent users become more progressive in response to f0 scales.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.119-143
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• 1999

In this paper, the development of English Intonational Phonology is introduced. The existing representation systems of intonation are largely divided into the American structuralist school and the British school, which describe intonation by means of 'levels' and 'configurations' respectively. Both representation systems have some theory-internal problems, however. As for the American school, there is no way to represent pitches much lower than the reference line, while the system of intonation in the British school is limited in that intonation is described in a phonetic impressionistic way rather than from a phonological perspective. Intonational Phonology, a real phonological approach, which has grown out of the basic assumptions of autosegmental-metrical(AM) theory has been suggested by Pierrehumbert(1980). In her approach, an intonational tune is made up of one or more pitch accents, followed by an obligatory phrase accent and an obligatory boundary tone, and interestingly 22 combinations are possible. Intonational Phonology has been revised from Beckman & Pierrehumbert(1986) in developing ToBI(Tones & Break Indices), a proposed standard for labelling prosodic features of digital speech databases in English.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.43-60
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• 2008

Instrumental studies (e.g., aerodynamic, EPG, and EMMA) have shown that the first of two stops in sequence can be articulatorily reduced in time and space sometimes; either gradient or categorical. The current EMMA study aims to examine possible factors_linguistic (e.g., speech rate, word boundary, and prosodic boundary) and paralinguistic (e.g., natural context and repetition)_to induce gradient reduction of $C_1$ in /pk/ cluster sequences. EMMA data are collected from five Seoul-Korean speakers. The results show that gradient reduction of lip aperture seldom occurs, being quite restricted both in speaker frequency and in token frequency. The results also suggest that the place assimilation is not a lexical process, implying that speakers have not fully developed this process to be phonologized in the abstract level.