• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 1994.06c
• /
• pp.323-327
• /
• 1994

There have been three contrastive claims over the classification of Korean. To answer the classification question, timing variables which would determine the durations of syllable, word and foot were investigated with various words either in isolation or in sentence contexts using Soundcoup/16 on Macintosh P.C., and a total of 284 utterances, obtained from six Korean speakers, were used. It was found 1) that the durational pattern for words tended to maintain in utterances, regardless of position , subjects and dialects 2) that the syllable duration was determined both by the types of phoneme and by the number of phonemes, the word duration both by the syllable complexity and by the number of syllables, and the foot duration by the word complexity, 3) that there was a constractive relationship between foot length in syllables and foot duration and 4) that the foot duration varied generally with word complexity if the same word did not occur both in the first foot and in the second foot. On the basis of these, it was concluded that Korean is a word timed language where, all else being equal, including tempo, emphasis, etc., the inherent durational pattern for words tends to maintain in utterances. The main difference between stress timing, syllable timing and word timing were also discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.129-140
• /
• 2009

The purpose of the present study is to investigate frequency related information and syllable structure constraints on Sino-Korean. Previous studies on Sino-Korean have mostly investigated the historical change of sounds and reviewed archaic features of Chinese language in Sino-Korean. Unfortunately, there is little study on the sounds of contemporary Sino-Korean in terms of syllable structure constraints. For the purpose of the present study, sounds of 7,742 Chinese characters used in Sino-Korean (7,795 syllables) were investigated and syllable matrices made based on the results of frequency related information. As a result, 483 syllable types were observed and the most frequently observed syllables were as follows: /ku/ (103) > /ki/ (100) > /ju/ (87) > /pi/ (86). Only 16 out of 19 consonants are used for Sino-Korean. /$t^{\ast}$/ and /$p^{\ast}$/ are never used in Sino-Korean and /kh, $s^{\ast}$, $k^{\ast}$/ occur only a few times (3, 2, 1 respectively). /k/ (17.5%) shows the highest frequency and /n, ${\eta}$, 1, tc, m/ occupied the next rankings. Among 20 vowel types, /a/ showed the highest frequency and /o, u, i, $j{\Lambda}$, ${\Lambda}$/ occupied the next rankings. Based on the syllable matrices, gaps were observed and classified into accidental or systematic ones. Onset and nucleus, nucleus and coda, onset and coda, and other syllable structure constraints of Sino-Korean were listed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
• /
• v.31B no.1
• /
• pp.11-22
• /
• 1994

For the conventional systme based on word, it is very difficult to enlarge the number of vocabulary. To cope with this problem, we must use more fundamental units of speech. For example, syllables and phonemes are such units, Korean speech consists of initial consonants, middle vowels and final consonants and has characteristic that we can obtain syllables from speech easily. In this paper, we show a speech recognition system with the advantage of the syllable characteristics peculiar to the Korean speech. The algorithm of recognition system is the Time Delay Neural Network. To recognize many recognition units, system consists of initial consonants, middle vowels, and final consonants recognition neural network. At first, our system recognizes initial consonants, middle vowels and final consonants. Then using this results, system recognizes isolated words. Through experiments, we got 85.12% recognition rate for 2735 data of initial consonants, 86.95% recognition rate for 3110 data of middle vowels, and 90.58% recognition rate for 1615 data of final consonants. And we got 71.2% recognition rate for 250 data of isolated words.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.23-27
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this study was to find how English vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ affect the production of English labials /p, b, f, v/ by Korean learners of English. Sixty syllables were composed by five vowels and four labials in the syllable types CV, VC, and VCV. The nonsense syllables were produced three times by nine subjects. The major results show that (1) in inter-vocalic position, the subjects had higher scores in producing /v/ composed with /a, e, o/ and /u/, while subjects had lower scores in producing /p/ with /i/ and /o/, (2) in post-vocalic position, the subjects had higher scores in producing /v/ and /f/ with /a, e/, and /o/, while subjects had lower scores in producing /b/ with /e/ and /i/, and (3) in pre-vocalic position, the subjects had higher scores in producing /v/ with /e, o, u/ and /f/ with /u/, while subjects had lower scores in producing /b/ with /e/, /i/ and /u/. The results suggest that on the whole, Korean learners of English have much difficulty in producing /p/ with /i/ in inter-vocalic condition and /b/ with /i, /e/ in pre-vocalic position.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.177-182
• /
• 2003

In this study, we research the robust speech recognition for the syllables and phoneme units with the feature parameter including the voiced-unvoiced measures for the confusable words. In order to make it possible, we propose the measure representing the voiced-unvoiced degree by using the HPS(Harmonic Product Spectrum) information, used on pitch detection. We proposed this measures with the sharpnes, peak count and height measure of HPS. We reconstructed the feature parameter including this measures, then we performs the speech recognition experiments and compared with the typical feature parameters under the CVC type confusable syllables DB.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.264-269
• /
• 2008

When English disyllabic words are borrowed into the Korean language, the loanwords tend to have extra syllables. The purpose of this paper is to find the syllable increase conditions in loanword adaptation and further to provide an algorithm to predict the syllable numbers of English disyllabic loanwords. There are three syllable augmentation conditions. The presence of diphthongs and the existence of consonant clusters guarantee the increase of the syllable numbers in the English loanwords. Further, the quality of the final consonant (and the preceding vowel) sometimes trigger the increase of the syllable numbers. Based on the conditions, an algorithm composed of 4 rules are proposed in order to predict the number of syllables in English disyllabic loanwords.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.95-101
• /
• 2013

Aging is related to anatomical and physiological changes in respiratory and phonation organs. These changes influence articulation which leads to inaccurate speech and slow articulatory diadochokinesis(DDK). DDK indicates the range, rate, regularity, accuracy, and agility of articulation that reflect motor speech function. The purpose of this study is to investigate the rates and regularities of DDK in healthy Korean elderly through passive acoustic analysis (Praat). Thirty subjects between the ages of 65 and 94 participated in this study. Rate was observed for 5 seconds, while regularity was calculated based on the standard deviation on the following: 1) syllable duration of each task; 2) gap duration between syllables. Then, simple regression analysis was conducted in order to examine the effect of age on performance. The result showed that the slow rate was not a significant factor in terms of advancing age. Furthermore, regularity indicated a significant difference in the following: 1) /pʌ/, /kʌ/ and /pʌtʌkʌ/ in syllable duration; 2) /kʌ/ duration in the gap between syllables. In conclusion, articulatory coordination is reduced with the onset of aging. In particular, /kʌ/ would be a sensitive task for articulatory coordination.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.63-69
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the maximum and optimal listening speed of Korean TTS for the blind. Five blind participants took part in this study. The instruments used in this study were 17 sentence sets (2 sets for an excercise, 10 sets for a repeated test, and 5 sets for a random test), with short meaningful sentences (the same sentences for the repeated test, different sentences for the random test) with 15 differentiated speeds (Range=0.8-3.6, SD=0.2). Each participant's maximum and quickest listening speeds were calculated by objective recall accuracy (determined by the number of correctly recalled syllables/the total number of syllables in a sentence X 100) and subjective recall accuracy (recall accuracy judged by each participant's subjective evaluation). The results showed that the participants' recall accuracy had a tendency to increase as the TTS speed decreased. Participants' subjective recall accuracy was higher than objective recall accuracy in the repeated tests and vice versa in the random tests. The results also revealed that the participants' sentence familiarity had an influence on their Korean TTS listening speed.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 1996.10a
• /
• pp.343-348
• /
• 1996

This paper examines the contribution of vocalic information (after the onset of voicing) to the perception of Korean alveolar stops: the aspirated /$t^{h}$/, the lenis /t/, and the fortis /$t^{*}$/. These stops have been analyzed as differing in VOT (Abramson & Lisker, 1964), the glottal width or aspiration (Kim, 1970), and F0 and intensity build-up (Han & Weitzman, 1970). These studies focused on the articulatory and acoustic qualities of the consonants and often assumed that the consonantal portion before the onset of voicing plays the main role in maintaining the three-way distinction. In contrast, the role of the following vowels was given less attention. In order to investigate the contribution of the following vowels, a perceptual study was conducted using stimuli cross-spliced from three naturally produced syllables [$t^{h}al$] 'mask', [tal] 'moon', and [$t^{*}al$]) 'daughter'. Stimuli were presented to 12 Korean listeners for identification. Each subject responded to a total of 486 tokens. The results show that vowels play the primary role when the cut occurs at the star of voicing. Even with cuts at 10 ms and 40 ms into voicing, the following vowel still plays a clear role. This suggests that vowels carry the important information for distinguishing the three stops.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 1996.10a
• /
• pp.245-245
• /
• 1996

When language A borrows words, it borrows them according to its own phonetic rules. In other words, language B, where borrowed words coming from, has to comply with the phonetic requirements of language A. It may be added that language A only borrows the elements, the types of syllables and accentuation that already exist in its own phonetic struture and rejects all the rest that are not compatible. It operates exactly like a sieve. That is why borrowed words offer an excellent observation post to notice how react in phonetic contexts. The Japanese language has borrowed and is borrowing extensively from other languages and cultures, mainly from the English ones in the fields of sports, medicine, industry, commerce, and natural sciences. Relatively very few new words are created using the ancient Chinese or native backgrounds. This presentation will look for the rules of borrowing and try to show that this way of borrowing represents an organized system of its own. Three levels would be particularly studied : - the phonemic level - the syllable level and - the accentual level. This last point would be specially targeted with the question of syllable tension-relaxation. Such a study of languages in phonetics contacts could shed some new light on the phonetic charaCteristics of Japanese language and will confirm or weaken some conclusion already demonstated otherwise. We will be aming specially at the endings of the borrowed words where, it seems, Japanese language manifests itself very strongly.