• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.73-85
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• 2009

This paper introduces the technique of synthesizing and evaluating human utterances with exaggerated or atypical prosody. Prosody exaggeration can be implemented by manipulating either the fundamental frequency (F0) contour, the segmental durations, or the intensity contour of an utterance. Of these three prosodic elements, two or more can be exaggerated at the same time. The algorithms of synthesis and evaluation were suggested. Learner utterances exaggerated in each of the three prosodic features were evaluated with respect to their original native versions in terms of the differences in their F0 contours, the segmental durations, and the intensity contours. The measure of differences was the Euclidean distance metric between the matching points in their F0 and intensity contours. The measure was calculated after the exaggerated learner utterances were aligned by the segments and rendered identical to their native version in terms of their segmental durations. For the evaluation of the segmental durations, no prior modifications were made in durations and the same measure was used. The results from the pilot experiment suggest the viability of this measure in the evaluation of learner utterances with atypical prosody with respect to their native versions.

• MALSORI
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• no.62
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• pp.19-32
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• 2007

This study investigated the perception of emotional voices by transplanting some or all of the prosodic aspects, i.e. pitch, duration, and intensity, of the utterances produced with emotional voices onto those with normal voices and vice versa. Listening evaluation by 24 raters revealed that prosodic effect was greater than segmental & vocal quality effect on the preception of the emotion. The degree of influence of prosody and that of segments & vocal quality varied according to the type of emotion. As for fear, prosodic elements had far greater influence than segmental & vocal quality elements whereas segmental and vocal elements had as much effect as prosody on the perception of happy voices. Different amount of contribution to the perception of emotion was found among prosodic features with the descending order of pitch, duration and intensity. As for the length of the utterances, the perception of emotion was more effective with long utterances than with short utterances.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.312-320
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• 2000

This presentation aims to explore some possibility of non-segmental phonetics usually ignored in phonetics education. In pedagogical phonetics, especially ESL/EFL oriented phonetics speech sounds tend to be classified in two criteria 1) 'pronunciation' which deals with segments and 2) 'prosody' or 'suprasegmentals', a criterion that deals with non-segmental elements such as stress and intonation. However, speech involves more dynamic processing. It is non-linear and multi-dimensional in spite of the linear sequence of symbols in phonetic/phonological transcriptions. No word is without pitch or voice quality apart from segmental characteristics whether it is spoken in isolation or cut out from continuous speech. This simply tells the dichotomy of pronunciation and prosody is merely a useful convention. There exists some room to consider dynamic non-segmental phonetics. Examples of non-segmental phonetic investigation, some of the analyses conducted within the frame of Firthian Prosodic Analysis, especially of the relation between vowel variants and foot types, are examined and we see what kind of auditory phonetic training is required to understand impressionistic transcriptions which lie behind the non-segmental phonetics.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.234-239
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to examine the viability of simulating one dialect with the speech segments of another dialect through prosody cloning. The hypothesis is that, among Korean regional dialects, it is not the segmental differences but the prosodic differences that play a major role in authentic dialect perception. This work intends to support the hypothesis by simulating Masan dialect with the speech segments from Seoul dialect. The dialect simulation was performed by transplanting the prosodic features of Masan utterances unto the same utterances produced by a Seoul speaker. Thus, the simulated Masan utterances were composed of Seoul speech segments but their prosody came from the original Masan utterances. The prosodic features involved were the fundamental frequency contour, the segmental durations, and the intensity contour. The simulated Masan utterances were evaluated by four native Masan speakers and the role of prosody in dialect authentication and speech synthesis was discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.25-31
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• 2009

The purpose of this paper is to examine the viability of synthesizing Masan dialect with Seoul dialect and to examine the role of prosody in the authentication of the synthesized Masan dialect. The synthesis was performed by transferring one or more of the prosodic features of the Masan utterance onto the Seoul utterance. The hypothesis is that, given an utterance composed of the phonemes shared by both dialects, as more prosodic features of the Masan utterance are transferred onto the Seoul utterance, the Seoul utterance will be identified as more authentic Masan utterance. The prosodic features involved were the fundamental frequency contour, the segmental durations, and the intensity contour. The synthesized Masan utterances were evaluated by thirteen native speakers of Masan dialect. The result showed that the fundamental frequency contour and the segmental durations had main effects on the perceptual shift from Seoul to Masan dialect.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.199-206
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• 2004

This paper attempts to provide a substantial explanation of different prosodic implementations on segments in English and Spanish, arguing that the phonetic modification invoked by prosody may effectively reflect phonological structure. In English, a high front vowel in accented syllables is acoustically realized as higher F1 and F2 frequencies than in unaccented syllables, due to its more peripheral and sonorous articulation (Harrington et al. 1999). In this paper, an acoustic experiment was conducted to see if such a manner of segmental modification invoked by prosody in English extends to other languages such as Spanish. Results show that relatively more prominent syllables entail higher F1 values as a result of their more sonorous articulation in Spanish, but either front or back vowel does not show a higher F2 or a lower F2 frequency. This is interpreted as an indication that a prosodically prominent syllable entails its vocalic enhancement in both horizontal and vertical dimensions of articulation in English. In Spanish, however, only the vertical dimensional articulation is maximized, resulting in a higher F1. I suggest that this difference may be attributed to the different phonological structures of vowels in English and Spanish, and that sonority expansion alone would be sufficient in the articulation of prosodic prominence as long as the phonological distinction of vowels is well retained.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.47-59
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• 2009

The purpose of this paper is to propose an automatic evaluation technique for the prosodic aspect of an English sentence uttered by Korean speakers learning English. The underlying hypothesis is that the consistency of the manual prosody scoring is reflected in an imaginary space of prosody evaluation model constructed out of the three physical properties of the prosody considered in this paper, namely: the fundamental frequency (F0) contour, the intensity contour, and the segmental durations. The evaluation proceeds first by building a prosody evaluation model for the sentence. For the creation of the model, utterances from native speakers of English and Korean learners for the target sentence are manually scored by either native teachers of English or Korean phoneticians in terms of their prosody. Multiple native utterances from the manual scoring are selected as the "model" native utterances against which all the other Korean learners' utterances as well as the model utterances themselves can be semi-automatically evaluated by comparison in terms of the three prosodic aspects [7]. Each learner utterance, when compared to the multiple model native utterances, produces multiple coordinates in a three-dimensional space of prosody evaluation, each axis of which corresponds to the three prosodic aspects. The 3D coordinates from all the comparisons form a prosody evaluation model for the particular sentence and the associated manual scores can display regions of particular scores. The model can then be used as a predictive model against which other Korean utterances of the target sentence can be evaluated. The model from a Korean phonetician appears to support the hypothesis.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.91-98
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• 2013

This study investigates the difference in the evaluation of foreign-accentedness of English pronunciation across subject groups, evaluated accents, and compared components. This study independently evaluates the prosody and segmentals of the foreign-accented English sentences by pairwise difference rating. Using the prosody swapping technique, segmentals and prosody of the English sentences read by native speakers of American English (one male and one female) were combined with the corresponding segmentals and prosody of the English sentences read by male and female native speakers of Chinese, Japanese or Korean (one male and one female from each native language). These stimuli were evaluated by 4 different subject groups: native speakers of American English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. The results showed that the Japanese subject group scored higher in prosody difference than in segmental difference while the other groups scored the other way around. This study is significant in that the attitude toward the difference in segmentals and prosody of the foreign accents of English varies with the native language of the subject group. In other words, for native speakers of some languages, the difference in prosody could have a greater influence on the foreign-accentedness than the difference in segmentals, while for native speakers of other languages the other way around.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.117-128
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• 2015

This paper investigates the acoustic-perceptual relation between Korean dent-alveolar fricatives and the English voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in varied prosodic contexts (e.g., stress, accent, and word initial position). The denti-alveolar fricatives in Korean show a two-way distinction, which can be referred to as either plain (lenis) /s/ or fortis /$s^*$/. The English alveolar voiceless fricative /s/ that corresponds to the two Korean fricatives would be placed in a one-to-two non-native phoneme mapping situation when Korean listeners hear English /s/. This raises an interesting question of how the single fricative of English perceptually maps into the two-way distinction in Korean. This paper reports the acoustic-perceptual mapping pattern by investigating spectral properties of the English stimuli that are heard as either /s/ or /$s^*$/ by Korean listeners, in order to answer the two questions: first, how prosody influences fricatives acoustically, and second, how the resultant properties drive non-native listeners to interpret them as segmental features instead of as prosodic information. The results indicate that Korean listeners' responses change depending on the prosodic context in which the stimuli are placed. It implies that Korean speakers interpret some of the information provided by prosody as segmental one, and that the listeners take advantage of the information in their judgment of non-native phonemes.

• MALSORI
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• no.46
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• pp.127-143
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• 2003

This paper presents segmental labeling conventions proposed by SiTEC (Speech Information Technology Engineering Center) 2002 and proposes a new directions of a revision for a simpler version. The paper also reviews one of the prosody labelling conventions for Korean, K-ToBI convention(ver. 3.1) and proposes a couple of modifications and suggestions.