• 음성과학
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.67-76
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• 2001

This study is targeted at introducing the three aspects of speech timing (articulatory, acoustic and auditory) and discussing their strong and weak points in describing speech timing. Traditional (extrinsic) articulatory timing theories exclude timing representation in the speaker's articulatory plan for his utterance, while the (intrinsic) articulatory timing theories headed by Fowler incorporate time into the plan for an utterance. As compared with articulatory timing studies with crucial constraints in data collection, acoustic timing studies can deal with even several hours of speech relatively easily. This enables us to perform suprasegmental timing studies as well as segmental timing studies. On the other hand, perception of speech timing is related to psychology rather than physiology and physics. Therefore, auditory timing studies contribute to enhancing our understanding of speech timing from the psychological point of view. Traditionally, some theories of speech timing (e.g. typology of speech rhythm: stress-timing; syllable-timing or mora-timing) have been based on our perception. However, it is problematic that auditory timing can be subjective despite some validity. Many questions as to speech timing are expected to be answered more objectively. Acoustic and articulatory description of timing will be the method of solving such problems of auditory timing.

• 음성과학
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• 제7권3호
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• pp.87-98
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• 2000

Timing in speech is determined by many factors. In this paper, we introduce and discuss some factors that have generally been regarded as important in speech timing. They include stress, syllable structure, consonant insertion or deletion, tempo, lengthening at clause, phrase and word boundaries, preconsonantal vowel shortening, and compensation between segments or within phonological units (e.g., word, foot), compression due to the increase of syllables in word or foot level, etc. and each of them may playa crucial role in the structuring of speech timing in a language. But some of these timing factors must interact with each other rather than be independent and the effects of each factor on speech timing will vary from language to language. On the other hand, there could well be many other factors unknown so far. Finding out and investigating new timing factors and reinterpreting the already-known timing factors should enhance our understanding of timing structures in a given language or languages.

• 음성과학
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.95-112
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• 2005

We investigate Korean learners' speech-timing of English before and after instruction in comparison with native speech, in an attempt to resolve disagreements in the literature as to whether speech-timing is measurable (Lehiste, 1977; Roach, 1982; Dauer, 1983 vs. Low et al., 2000; Yun 2002; Jian, 2004). We measured the pair-wise variability between the adjacent stressed and unstressed syllables within a foot as well as that among adjacent feet in approximately 555 English sentences, which were read by 29 native speakers and 41 Korean learners in the intermediate proficiency level. The results show that in comparison with native American English, Korean learner speech is before instruction significantly (p<.001) smaller for the pair-wise variability between the adjacent stressed and unstressed syllables within a foot; and significantly (p=.01) bigger for the variability among adjacent feet within the utterance. The learner speech after instruction showed significant (p=.01) improvement in the pair-wise variability of syllable sequence toward native speech values. The variability among adjacent feet was progressively smaller for learner speech before and after instruction and for native speech (p=.03). We thus conclude that the speech timing difference between Korean English and American English is measurable in terms of the duration. of stressed and unstressed syllables and that the latter is stress-timed and the former is syllable-timing interfered.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• 제34권6호
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• pp.741-747
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• 2007

Purpose: In order to determine the differences in speech outcome based on timing of operation in submucous cleft palate, we have reviewed our experiences in the Furlow palatoplasty over the last 11 years. Methods: From March 1996 to March 2006, 38 submucous cleft palate patients received Furlow palatoplasty. 10 developmentally delayed patients were excluded and 5 patients were lost to follow up. The rest 23 patients were reviewed. Speech was evaluated preoperatively and postoperatively, and speech therapy was performed accordingly. Perceptual speech assessment included hypernasality, nasal emission and articulation disorder. Cinefluorography was performed to aid perceptual assessment. Based on timing of operation, the patients were divided into 3 groups as following: Group A under 24 months(8 patients), Group B from 25 to 48 months(6 patients), and Group C over 49 months (9 patients). Except 1 patient under speech therapy yet, resultant speech was compared. 200707Results: The rate of abnormal speech was higher in Group C(3/9, 33.3%) than in Group A(0%) or B(0%). All 3 patients who had been discontinued of speech therapy from the parent's judgment had abnormal speech. The reason for the discontinuation was that the regular speech therapy was a burden at school age. Any patients who had continued speech therapy had normal speech. Conclusion: The results of our study shows that operative timing is associated with speech development. Maintenance of speech therapy was an important factor for normal speech development. It will be helpful to perform a palatoplasty before 48 months of age to complete speech therapy before the school age.

• 음성과학
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.77-91
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• 2001

This paper investigates the timing of Korean spoken in a news-reading speech style in order to improve the naturalness of durations used in Korean speech synthesis. Each segment in a corpus of 671 read sentences was annotated with 69 segmental and prosodic features so that the measured duration could be correlated with the context in which it occurred. A CART model based on the features showed a correlation coefficient of 0.79 with an RMSE (root mean squared prediction error) of 23 ms between actual and predicted durations in reserved test data. These results are comparable with recent published results in Korean and similar to results found in other languages. An analysis of the classification tree shows that phrasal structure has the greatest effect on the segment duration, followed by syllable structure and the manner features of surrounding segments. The place features of surrounding segments only have small effects. The model has application in Korean speech synthesis systems.

• 음성과학
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• 제3권
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• pp.167-176
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• 1998

Conventional time-scale modification methods have the problem that as the modification rate gets higher the time-scale modified speech signal becomes less intelligible, because they ignore the effect of articulation rate on speech characteristics. Results of research on speech perception show that the timing information of transient portions of a speech signal plays an important role in discriminating among different speech sounds. Inspired by this fact, we propose a novel scheme for modifying the time-scale of speech. In the proposed scheme, the timing information of the transient portions of speech is preserved, while the steady portions of speech are compressed or expanded somewhat excessively for maintaining overall time-scale change. In order to identify the transient and steady portions of a speech signal, we employ a simple method using LPC cepstral distance between neighboring frames. The result of the subjective preference test indicates that the proposed method produces performance superior to that of the conventional SOLA method, especially for very fast playback case.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 2006년도 춘계 학술대회 발표논문집
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• pp.59-62
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• 2006

Young children's speech is compared to adult-to-adult speech and adult-to-child speech by measuring durations and variability of each segment in CVC words. The results demonstrate that child speech exhibits an inconsistent timing relationship between consonants and vowels within a word. In contrast, consonant and vowel durations in adult-to-adult speech and adult-to-child speech exhibit significant relationships across segments, despite variability of segments when speaking rate is decreased. The results suggest that temporal patterns of young children are quite different from those of adults, and provide some evidence for lack of motor control capability and great variance in articulatory coordination.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제3권3호
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• pp.69-75
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• 2011

This paper investigates phrase positional effects on the timing of F0 (pitch) peaks in Tokyo Japanese disyllabic words with varying accent type (HL or LH) and phrase position (final or non final). The F0 peak timing was normalized by the total word duration ('normalized H timing'). The normalized H timing was significantly affected by accent type and phrase position. The H timing was later in the LH accent type than in the HL accent type, and in non final positions than in final positions. In addition, to examine the validity of the quantitative results, different models of phrase position effects were compared by measuring H timing in two approaches: normalization versus relative distance measures. For the normalization measures, the H timing was measured as the time of the F0 peak divided by the total word duration or by the duration of the tone bearing syllable. For the relative distance measures, the H timing was measured as the distance in milliseconds from the end of the word or from the end of the associated syllable. The best model was the normalization by the total word duration, rather than by the duration of the tone bearing syllable. This means that phrase positional effects on the timing of F0 peaks in Japanese disyllabic words are best modeled in terms of proportion of the total word duration.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 1996년도 10월 학술대회지
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• pp.430-431
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• 1996

Among the scholars of second language (L2) acquisition who have used prosodic considerations in syntactic analyses, pausing and intonation contours have been used to define utterances in the speech of second language learners (e.g., Sato, 1990). In recent research on conversational analysis, it has been found that lexically marked causal clause combining in the discourse of native speakers can be distinguished as "intonational subordination" and "intonational coordination(Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, forthcoming.)". This study uses Pienemann's Processability Theory (1995) for an analysis of the speech of native speakers of Japanese (L1) learning English. In order to accurately assess the psycholinguistic stages of syntactic development, it is shown that pitch, loudness, and timing must all be considered together with the syntactic analysis of interlanguage speech production. Twelve Japanese subjects participated in eight fifteen minute interviews, ninety-six dyads. The speech analyzed in this report is limited to the twelve subjects interacting with two different non-native speaker interviews for a total of twenty-four dyads. Within each of the interviews, four different tasks are analyzed to determine the stage of acquisition of English for each subject. Initially the speech is segmented according to intonation contour arid pauses. It is then classified accoding to specific syntactic units and further analysed for pitch, loudness and timing. Results indicate that the speech must be first claasified prosodic ally and lexically, prior to beginning syntactic analysis. This analysis stinguishes three interlanguage lexical categories: discourse markers, coordinator $s_ordinators, and transfer from Japanese. After these lexical categories have been determined, the psycholinguistic stages of syntactic development can be more accurately assessed.d.

• 음성과학
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• 제11권3호
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• pp.23-36
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• 2004

Many languages show reverse durational variation between preceding vowel and following voiced/voiceless (lax/tense) consonants. This study investigated the likely effects of phoneme type (tense vs. lax) on the timing structure (duration of syllable, word, phrase and sentence) of Korean. Three rates of speech (fast, normal, slow) applied to stimuli with the target word /a-Ca/ where /C/ is one of /p, p', $p^h$/. The type (tense/lax) of /C/ caused marked inverse durational variations in the two syllables /a/ and /Ca/ and highly different durational ratios between them. Words with /p', $p^h$/ were significantly longer than that with /p/, which contrasts with many other languages where such pairs of words have a similar duration. The differentials between words remained up to the phrase and sentence level, but in general the higher linguistic units did not statistically differ within each level. Thus, the phrase is suggested as a compensatory unit of phoneme type effects in Korean. Different rates did not affect the general tendency. Distribution of time variations (from normal to fast and slow) to each syllable (/a/ and /Ca/) was also observed.