• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.71-81
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• 2011

This paper investigated how prosodic position and word type affect the phonetic structure of Korean coronal stops. Initial segments of prosodic domains were known to be more strongly articulated and longer relative to prosodic domain-medial segments. However, there are few studies examining whether the properties of prosodic domain-initial segments are affected by the information content of words (real vs. nonsense words). In addition, since the scope of domain-initial effect was known to be local to the initial consonant and the effects on the following vowel have been found to be limited, it is thus worth examining whether the prosodic domain-initial effect extends into the vowel after the initial consonant in a systematic way across different prosodic domains. The acoustic properties of Korean coronal stops (lenis /t/, aspirated /$t^h$/, and tense /t'/) were compared across Intonational Phrase, Phonological Phrase and Word-initial positions both in real and nonsense words. The durational intervals such as VOT and CV duration were cumulatively lengthened for /t/ and /$t^h$/ in the higher prosodic domain-initial positions. However, tense stop /t'/ did not show any variation as a function of prosodic position and word type. The domain-initial lenis stop showed significantly longer duration in nonsense words than in real words. But the prosodic domain-initial effect was not found in the properties of F0 and [H1-H2] of the vowel after initial stops. The present study provided evidence that speakers tend to enhance speech clarity when there is less contextual information as in prosodic domain-initial position and in nonsense words.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.13-23
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• 2002

This study examines the effect of laryngeal consonants of Korean on prosodic domain-initial strengthening. Keating, Cho, Fougeron & Hsu (1999), Fougeron & Keating (1996), and Hsu & Jun (1998) found that consonants at the beginnings of larger phrases are more constricted than consonants at the beginnings of smaller phrases. Korean laryngeal consonants pose a counter-example to the general pattern of domain-initial strengthening since tense and aspirated consonants are longer word-medially than word-initially. Previous work on domain-initial strengthening focused on domain-initial consonants at different prosodic domains. This study shows that acoustic cues that are not domain-edge also function to demarcate prosodic structure when the domain-initial consonant is laryngeal: VOT for an aspirated consonant and duration of V2 for a tense consonant.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.7-24
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• 2007

This paper discusses some current issues regarding how prosodic structure is manifested in fine-grained phonetic details, how prosodically-conditioned articulatory variation is explained in terms of speech dynamics, and how such phonetic manifestation of prosodic structure may be exploited in spoken word recognition. Prosodic structure is phonetically manifested in prosodically important landmark locations such as prosodic domain-final position, domain-initial position and stressed/accented syllables. It will be discussed how each of the prosodic landmarks engenders particular phonetic patterns, ow articulatory variation in such locations are dynamically accounted for, and how prosodically-driven fine-grained phonetic detail is exploited by listeners in speech comprehension.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.13-21
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• 2011

The present study investigated the effects of two different sources of prosodic strengthening, i.e., boundary and accent, in the articulation of English high front vowels, /i/ and /I/. The vowels were investigated in vowel-initial ('eat' vs. 'it'), /h/-initial ('heat' vs. 'hit') and /p/-initial words ('Pete' vs. 'pit'), which were placed in varying prosodic conditions. Using Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA), the tongue dorsum positions in the x and y dimensions, the lip opening and the jaw opening (lowering) were measured. With respect to the boundary-induced strengthening, results showed that /i/ and /I/ in vowel-initial words ('eat' - 'it') are produced with a higher tongue position in the domain-intial than domain-medial positions. The fact that the vowels only in the vowel-initial condition showed the domain-intial strengthening (DIS) effect suggests that the DIS effect is localized mainly to the initial position (the locality account). As for the accent-induced strengthening, vowels were produced with a more fronted tongue position and larger lip opening in accented than unaccented positions. This suggests that the presence of accent increases overall sonority of the vowels in various prosodic contexts, and enhances primarily the frontedness of the front high vowels. Taken together, the results indicate that the two types of prosodic strengthening are articulatorily realized differently, supporting the view that they are encoded separately in the speech planning process. The present study also showed the distinction between the two high front vowels in the tongue position (in both the frontedness and the height dimensions), while the jaw did not seem to contribute to the distinction robustly, suggesting that the tongue contributes more in distinguishing the two vowels than the jaw does.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.7-21
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• 2004

The present study aims to investigate domain-initial strengthening phenomenon, which refers to strengthening of articulatory gestures at the initial positions of prosodic domains. More specifically, this paper presents the result of an experimental study of initial syllables with onset consonants (initial-syllable vowels henceforth) of various prosodic domains in English and Hamkyeong Korean, a pitch accent dialect spoken in the northern part of North Korea. The durations of initial-syllable vowels are compared to those of second vowels in real-word tokens for both languages, controlling both stress and segmental environment. Hamkyeong Korean, like English, tuned out to strengthen the domain-initial consonants. With regard to vowel durations, no significant prosodic effect was found in English. On the other hand, Hamkyeong Korean showed significant differences between the durations of initial and non-initial vowels in the higher prosodic domains. The theoretical implications of the findings are as follows: The potentially universal phenomenon of initial strengthening is shown to be subject to language specific variations in its implementation. More importantly, the distinct phonetics- phonology model (Pierrehumbert & Beckman, 1998; Keating, 1990; Cohn, 1993) is better equipped to account for the facts in the present study.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.21-31
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• 2001

The effects of focus on prosodic phrasing, F0, and duration are investigated paying attention not only to the target of focus but also to the constituents that are outside the domain of focus in Korean. We find that the constituents preceding and following the focused word tend to be dephrased. Dephrasing does not always cover up to the Intonation Phrase boundary contrary to Jun's (1993) claim. Dephrasing caused by focus determines F0 and durational difference between focused and neutral sentences. Syntactic constituency is also shown to playa role in prosodic phrasing.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.47-63
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• 2010

This study provides a description of the glottal characteristics of the word-initial low vowels /a, $\ae$/ in terms of a set of acoustic parameters and discusses glottal configuration as their acoustic correlates. Furthermore, it examines the effect of prosodic boundary on the glottal properties of the vowels, seeking an account of the possible role of prosodic structure based on prosodic theory. Acoustic parameters reported to indicate glottal characteristics were obtained from the measurements made directly from the speech spectrum on recordings of Korean and English collected from 45 speakers. They consist of two separate groups of native Korean and native English speakers, each including both male and female speakers. Based on the three acoustic parameters of open quotient (OQ), first-formant bandwidth (B1), and spectral tilt (ST), comparisons were made between the speech of males and females, between the speech of native Korean and native English speakers, and between Korean and English produced by native Korean speakers. Acoustic analysis of the experimental data indicates that some or all glottal parameters play a crucial role in differentiating the speech groups, despite substantial interspeaker variations. Statistical analysis of the Korean data indicates prosodic strengthening with respect to the acoustic parameters B1 and OQ, suggesting acoustic enhancement in terms of the degree of glottal abduction and the glottal closure during a vibratory cycle.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.02a
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• pp.41-46
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• 1996

Within the framework of prosodic phonology (or the theory of phonology-syntax connection), the rhythm unit is not regarded as a domain of phonological rules. But I argue in this paper that the rhythm unit functions as a domain of phonological rules in Korean. I discuss five phonological rules whose domain of application is the rhythm unit.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics C
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• v.35C no.7
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• pp.59-68
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• 1998

This paper is to develop an algorithm for the unlimited korean speech synthesis. We present the results controlled of prosodic factors with isolated words as aynthesis basis unit int he time domain. With a new pitch-synchronous and parametric speech synthesis mehtod in the time domain here we mainly present the results of controlled prosody factors such a spitch periods, energy envelops and durations and the evaluaton of synthetic speech qualities. In the case of synthesis, it is possible ot synthesize connected words by controlling of a continuous unified prosody that makes to improve the naturalities. In the results of experiment, it also has been to be improved uncontinuities of pitch and zeroing of energy in the junction parts of speech waveforms. Specially it has been to be possible to synthesize speeches with unlimitted durations and tones. So on it makes the noisiness and the clearness better by improving the degradation effects from the phase distortion due to the discontinuities in the waveform connection parts.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.35-47
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• 1999

This paper describes procedures to model and synthesize emotional speech in a multimedia environment. At first, procedures to model the visual representation of emotional speech are proposed. To display the sequences of the images in synchronized form with speech, MSF(Multimedia Speech File) format is proposed and the display software is implemented. Then the emotional speech sinal is collected and analysed to obtain the prosodic characteristics of the emotional speech in limited domain. Multi-emotional sentences are spoken by actors. From the emotional speech signals, prosodic structures are compared in terms of the pseudo-syntactic structure. Based on the analyzed result, neutral speech is transformed into a specific emotinal state by modifying the prosodic structures.