• 한국언어정보학회지:언어와정보
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.47-70
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• 2010

This study investigates the semantic and prosodic properties of the so-called contrastive topic. We posit two informational primitives, namely, topical feature [+-T] and focal feature [+-F], from which four different informational categories, i.e., [+T, +F], [+T, -F], [-T, +F], and [-T, -F], are yielded. It is proposed that the informational category of contrastive topic has focal property [+F] as well as topical property [+T]. Based on the semantic approach that regards the function of [+F] as identificational predication and that of [+T] as forming a semantic conditional clause, it is shown that the semantic function of contrastive topic, which is specified as [+T, +F], is the combination of these two functions, i.e., identificational predication in a semantic conditional clause. This is supported by a scrutinized exploration of the prosodic pattern of English contrastive topic.

• 한국음향학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국음향학회 1998년도 제15회 음성통신 및 신호처리 워크샵(KSCSP 98 15권1호)
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• pp.105-109
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• 1998

법칙 합성 시스템은 합성 단위, 합성기, 합성방식 등 여러 가지 다양한 시스템이 있으나 순수한 법칙 합성 시스템이 아니고 기본 합성 단위를 연결하여 합성음을 발생시키는 연결 합성 시스템은 연결 단위사이 그리고 문장 단위에서의 매끄러운 합성 계수의 변화를 구현하지 못해 자연감이 떨어지는 실정이다. 자연감에 영향을 끼치는 주요 원인중의 하나가 운율 법칙의 부정확한 구현이므로 자연음으로부터 추출한 운율에 관한 법칙을 알고리듬화하는 대신 신경망으로 하여금 이 운율 법칙을 학습하도록 하여 좀더 자연음의 운율에 근접한 운율을 발생시키고자 하였다. 신경망으로 운율을 발생시키기 위해 먼저 운율에 영향을 주는 요소들을 정해 신경망 입력 패턴을 선정해야 한다. 먼저 분절요인에 의한 영햐응ㄹ 고려해주기 위해 전후 3음소를 동시에 입력시키고 문장내에서의 구문론적인 영향을 고려해주기 위해 해당 음소의 문장내에서의 위치, 운율구에 관한 정보등을 신경망의 입력 패턴으로 구성하였다.

• 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.

• 음성과학
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.7-23
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• 2008

This paper investigates tonal patterns of the prosodic constituents of an AP and a PWD in Korean and their relation with the morphological/syntactic structure. Specifically, this paper asks the following questions: First, if there are more than one PWD in an AP, how is each PWD specified in terms of tones? Secondly, in case that there is only one PWD in an AP that consists of several morphemes, is there any preference of the association between tones and the morphemes that constitute that PWD? Thirdly, if an AP dominates a PWD and if a PWD contains at least one morpheme of the lexical category, it follows that an AP should contain at least one morpheme of the lexical category. Can this be verified with the experimental data? In order to answer these questions, Experiment I and II were conducted with the target material consisting of a stem and suffixes that varied in length. The results of this preliminary test show that as the number of syllables in the target material increases, the more number of an AP tonal pattern occurs in it and as a result, in some cases, an AP consisting of suffixes only may occur.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.31-38
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• 2016

The purpose of the current study was to examine the acquisition of the second language prosody by Korean learners of English. Specifically, this study investigated Korean learners' patterns of prosodic phrasing and their use of edge tones (i.e., phrase accents and boundary tones) in English, and then compared the patterns with those of native English speakers. Eight Korean learners and 8 native speakers of English read 5 different English passages. Both groups' patterns of tones and prosodic phrasing were analyzed using the Mainstream American English Tones and Break Indices (MAE_ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that the Korean learners chunked their speech into prosodic phrases more frequently than the native speakers did. This frequent prosodic phrasing pattern was especially noticeable in sentence-internal prosodic phrases, often where there was no punctuation mark. Tonal analyses revealed that the Korean learners put significantly more High phrase accents (H-) on their sentence-internal intermediate phrase boundaries than the native speakers of English. In addition, compared with the native speakers, the Korean learners used significantly more High boundary tones (both H-H% and L-H%) for the sentence-internal intonational phrases, while they used similar proportion of High boundary tones for the sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the results suggested that Korean learners of English successfully acquired the meanings and functions of prosodic phrasing and edge tones in English as well as that they are able to efficiently use these prosodic features to convey their own discourse intention.

• 한국음향학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국음향학회 1994년도 FIFTH WESTERN PACIFIC REGIONAL ACOUSTICS CONFERENCE SEOUL KOREA
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• pp.984-990
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• 1994

In this paper a new speech synthesis method in the time domain using mono-syllables is proposed. It is to overcome the degradation of the synthetic speech quality by the synthesis method in the frequency domain and to develop an algorithm in the time domain for the prosodic control. In particular when we use a method in a time domain with mono-syllable as a synthesis unit it will be the main issues which are to control th pitch period and to smooth the energy pattern. As a solution to the pitch control, a method using Lagrange interpolation is suggested. As a solution to the other problem, an algorithm which can control the amplitude envelop shape of mono-syllable is proposed. As the results of experiments it was possible to synthesize unlimited Korean speeches including the prosody control. Accoding to the MOS evaluation the quality and the naturality in them was improved to be a good level.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제2권3호
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• pp.101-113
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• 2010

The present study investigated how the kinematics of the /a/-to-/i/ tongue movement in Korean would be influenced by prosodic boundary. The /a/-to-/i/ sequence was used as 'transboundary' test materials which occurred across a prosodic boundary as in /ilnjəʃ$^h$a/ # / minsakwae/ ('일년차#민사과에' 'the first year worker' # 'dept. of civil affairs'). It also tested whether the V-to-V tongue movement would be further influenced by its syllable structure with /m/ which was placed either in the coda condition (/am#i/) or in the onset condition (/a#mi). Results of an EMA (Electromagnetic Articulagraphy) study showed that kinematical parameters such as the movement distance (displacement), the movement duration, and the movement velocity (speed) all varied as a function of the boundary strength, showing an articulatory strengthening pattern of a "larger, longer and faster" movement. Interestingly, however, the larger, longer and faster pattern associated with boundary marking in Korean has often been observed with stress (prominence) marking in English. It was proposed that language-specific prosodic systems induce different ways in which phonetics and prosody interact: Korean, as a language without lexical stress and pitch accent, has more degree of freedom to express prosodic strengthening, while languages such as English have constraints, so that some strengthening patterns are reserved for lexical stress. The V-to-V tongue movement was also found to be influenced by the intervening consonant /m/'s syllable affiliation, showing a more preboundary lengthening of the tongue movement when /m/ was part of the preboundary syllable (/am#i/). The results, together, show that the fine-grained phonetic details do not simply arise as low-level physical phenomena, but reflect higher-level linguistic structures, such as syllable and prosodic structures. It was also discussed how the boundary-induced kinematic patterns could be accounted for in terms of the task dynamic model and the theory of the prosodic gesture ($\pi$-gesture).

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권2호
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• pp.61-70
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• 2012

The current study observes the durational interaction of tautosyllabic consonants and vowels in the word-initial position of English and Korean child-directed speech (CDS). The effect of phonological laryngeal contrasts in stops on the following vowel duration, and the effect of the intrinsic vowel duration on the release duration of preceding stops in addition to the acoustic realization of the contrastive segments are explored in different prosodic contexts - phrase-initial/medial, focal accented/non-focused - in a marked speech style of CDS. A trade-off relationship between Voice Onset Time (VOT), as consonant release duration, and voicing phonation time, as vowel duration, reported from adult-to-adult speech, and patterns of durational variability are investigated in CDS of two languages with different linguistic rhythms, under systematically controlled prosodic contexts. Speech data were collected from four native English mothers and four native Korean mothers who were talking to their one-word staged infants. In addition to the acoustic measurements, the transformed delta measure is employed as a variability index of individual tokens. Results confirm the durational correlation between prevocalic consonants and following vowels. The interaction is revealed in a compensatory pattern such as longer VOTs followed by shorter vowel durations in both languages. An asymmetry is found in CV interaction in that the effect of consonant on vowel duration is greater than the VOT differences induced by the vowel. Prosodic effects are found such that the acoustic difference is enhanced between the contrastive segments under focal accent, supporting the paradigmatic strengthening effect. Positional variation, however, does not show any systematic effects on the variations of the measured acoustic quantities. Overall vowel duration and syllable duration are longer in English tokens but involve less variability across the prosodic variations. The constancy of syllable duration, therefore, is not found to be more strongly sustained in Korean CDS. The stylistic variation is discussed in relation to the listener under linguistic development in CDS.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제12권1호
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• pp.19-31
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• 2020

이 연구의 목적은 성인 화자의 휴지 단위와 호흡 단위의 실현 양상을 관찰하여, 이것이 인지적 차이나 사회 언어적 변수 간 차이를 어떻게 반영하고 있는지 고찰하는 것이다. 이러한 차이를 고찰하기 위해 과제, 세대, 성별에 따른 발화 길이와 호흡 단위의 실현을 살펴보았다. 이를 위해 청·장년층 남녀 화자 48명의 문단 낭독 발화와 자유 발화를 분석하였다. 과제와 성별 변수는 휴지 단위와 호흡 단위 실현에 모두 영향을 주었다. 발화 길이는 낭독 발화에서, 여성의 발화에서 더 길었고, 호흡 단위의 길이는 자유 발화와 남성의 발화에서 더 길게 나타났다. 한편 세대 변수는 발화 길이 실현에는 영향을 주지 못했지만, 음절 수와 어절 수 실현에는 영향을 주었다. 발화 과제에 따른 차이는 인지적 부담량을 반영한다. 발화 계획이 빈번하게 이뤄져야 하는 자유 발화는 상대적으로 더 짧은 발화 길이를 보인다. 호흡 단위의 길이가 낭독 발화에서 더 짧았던 이유는 낭독 발화의 문장 길이에 영향을 받은 것이다. 성별에 따른 차이는 남성과 여성의 발화 내 휴지 패턴 차이에서 기인하였다. 호흡 단위의 경우 남성이 여성보다 더 긴 길이를 보였는데, 이는 남성과 여성의 폐활량 차이에서 비롯한 것으로 보인다. 세대는 음절 수와 어절 수 실현에만 영향을 주었는데, 이는 세대 간 발화속도 차이에서 기인한 결과로 해석할 수 있다.

• 한국컴퓨터정보학회논문지
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• 제17권9호
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• pp.75-84
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• 2012

HMM 기반 음성합성시스템은 성능향상을 위해 일반적으로 대용량 음성 DB로부터 생성된 문맥의존 tri-phone을 이용한다. 그리고 대용량 DB의 경량화를 위해서 문맥의존정보를 이용하여 결정트리 방식으로 발화특성이 유사한 문맥의존음소들을 군집화한다. 군집화에 사용하는 문맥의존정보는 음소열 뿐만 아니라 운율정보도 포함하는데 이는 합성음의 자연성이 끊어 읽기, 억양패턴, 음의 장단과 같은 운율에 의해 크게 좌우되기 때문이다. 그러나 복잡한 운율정보를 사용할 경우 훈련과정에 포함되지 않은 문맥의존음소는 하나의 대표값으로 평활화되며 이로 인해 합성음의 자연성이 크게 저하된다. 본 논문에서는 합성음의 자연성을 향상시키기 위해 복잡한 운율정보 대신 억양 변화를 상승, 평탄, 하강으로 구분함으로써 운율정보표현을 간소화시킨 운율경계정보를 포함하는 문맥의존정보에 대한 문맥질의, 그리고 해당 질의의 패턴을 정의하는 방법을 제안하였다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 세 가지 운율경계정보를 포함한 문맥의존정보를 이용하여 합성음을 생성하고 MOS평가를 수행한 결과 운율경계정보를 이용한 HMM기반 한국어 TTS 합성음의 자연성이 향상됨을 확인하였다.