• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.11-22
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• 2010

The present study attempts to investigate declination in Korean and its relevant aspects to the length of utterance, the clause boundary, and focus. More specifically, I examine the relation of declination with the length of utterance, the declination reset at the clause boundary, and the effect of focus on declination. Results showed that the length of utterance had no relation with the first and last pitch values of the utterance but that they were consistent regardless of the length of utterance. However, the declination slope changed to be relatively gentle from the fourth accentual phrase to the end of the whole intonational phrase. There was a reset of declination in such a way that the first pitch in the second phrase was always lower than that of the first phrase, but the first pitch in the third phrase was not always lower than that of the second phrase when the whole utterance was composed of three phrases. Finally, the pitch values of the focusing words decreased as their position went back in a sentence. One declination line was formed in the case of focused utterance, but in the case of an utterance that contained a clause boundary, a new declination line was formed at the start of each new clause. These findings can be applied to developing a Korean speech synthesizer that contains natural prosody; they can be also utilized for teaching Korean prosody.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.554-559
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• 1996

An utterance is normally divided into two or more intonation groups. Bach intonation group has its intonation pattern. Pitch movement of Spanish utterance is basically determined by a combination of two factors: position of the stressed syllables and the intonation pattern. The pitch of a syllable can be affected by that of preceding syllables. This is rather a physiological effect than a phonological one.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.137-152
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• 1997

The objectives of this paper are to see how the declination is realized in the different positions/lengths of the utterance, to see if the $F_0$ value throughout the utterance changes in a predictable way, and if so, to find out the best quantitative model which fits the declination. The experiment results are as follows. First, the peak value over the utterance can be affected by the position of the peak and length of the utterance. Second, the choice of quantitative models is dependent on the different list lengths. Third, in everyone's speech, there is a baseline (the lowest $F_0$ value a speaker can use), and the $F_0$ will not fall below the baseline. Forth, the peak $F_0$ of the last word in each list shows little variation in pitch value (target $F_0$) while the number of words in the list affects the starting $F_0$ values.

• Korean Linguistics
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• v.81
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• pp.245-265
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to prepare the basis for a more objective evaluation of oral fluency by analyzing Korean native speaker's utterance. Traditionally, fluency evaluation tended to rely on the evaluators' experience and subjective idea. Therefore, there has been a need of setting the evaluation standard in numeric form that is easily measurable. In this study, I will analyze Korean native speaker's utterance in focus of pause. Total number of 875 pauses were extracted from the 21st Century Sejong Korean spoken corpus, and the elements before and after the pauses were annotated. From the analysis results, the pauses were divided between fluent pauses and influent pauses. If the length of fluent pauses do not exceed reasonable length of pause for native Korean speakers, there was no point reduction. On the other hand, if the influent pauses are made more frequently than the native Korean speakers, then it is subject to point reduction.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.143-148
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• 2002

This study examined the foreign accent of Korean speakers of English concerning vowel length and utterance position. It then attempts to explain the foreign accent of Koreans when they speak English. The method was to measure the sentence-initial and sentence-final vowels as spoken by Koreans. I chose these two positions, sentence-initial and sentence-final, in order to know if Korean speakers of English, compared with native English speakers, show a difference in sentence stress. I chose English diphthongs, because most Koreans have difficulty pronouncing these sounds. I found that Korean speakers of English as a second language do not know English sentence stress patterns and show a foreign accent, especially when using diphthongs.

• Korean Linguistics
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• v.81
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• pp.267-297
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• 2018

Vowel raising in Korean has been primarily treated as a phonological, categorical change. This study aims to show how the Korean connective suffix {-go} is realized in various environments, and propose a principle of vowel raising based on both acoustic and perceptual data. To that end, we used a corpus of spoken Korean to analyze the types of syntactic constructions, the realization of prosodic boundaries (IP and PP), and the types of boundary tone associated with {-go}. It was found that the vowel tends to be raised most frequently in utterance-final position, while in utterance-medial position the vowel was raised more when the syntactic and prosodic distance between {-go} and the following constituent was smaller. The results for boundary tone also showed a correlation between vowel raising and the discourse function of the boundary tone. In conclusion, we propose that vowel raising is not simply an optional phenomenon, but rather a type of phonetic reduction related to the comprehension of the following constituent.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.33-44
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• 2019

This paper dealt with how realization of pauses in utterance is affected by speech style, gender, and generation. For this purpose, we analyzed the frequency and duration of pauses. Pauses were categorized into four types: pause with breath, pause with no breath, utterance medial pause, and utterance final pause. Forty-eight subjects living in Seoul were chosen from the Korean Standard Speech Database. All subjects engaged in reading and spontaneous speech, through which we could also compare the realization between the two speech styles. The results showed that utterance final pauses had longer durations than utterance medial pauses. It means that utterance final pause has a function that signals the end of an utterance to the audience. For difference between tasks, spontaneous speech had longer and more frequent pauses because of cognitive reasons. With regard to gender variables, women produced shorter and less frequent pauses. For male speakers, the duration of pauses with breath was significantly longer. Finally, for generation variable, older speakers produced more frequent pauses. In addition, the results showed several interaction effects. Male speakers produced longer pauses, but this gender effect was more prominent at the utterance final position.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2017

The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of utterance internal pause in English speaking evaluation. To avoid possible confusion with other errors caused by segmental and prosodic inaccuracy, stem utterances with two different length obtained from a native speaker were manipulated to make a set of stimuli tokens through insertion of pauses whose length and position vary. After a total of 90 participants classified into three proficiency groups rated the stimuli, the scored data set was statistically analyzed in terms of the mixed effects model. It was confirmed that predictors such as pause length, pause position and utterance length significantly influence raters' evaluation scores. Especially, a dominating effect was found in such a way that raters gradually deducted scores in accordance with the increase of pause duration. In another experiment, a tree-based statistical learning technique was utilized to check which of the significant predictors played a more influential role than others. The findings in this paper are expected to be practically informative for both the test takers who are preparing for an English speaking test and the raters who desire to develop more objective rubric of speaking evaluation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.85-91
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to investigate phonetic realization of flap [r], one of the allophones of Korean /l/. Phonetic realization of a segment is affected by not only its neighboring segments but also its prosodic position in an utterance. This study examined how various prosodic positions affect the phonetic realization of [r]. Effects of the four prosodic positions on the phonetic realization of [r] were examined: utterance initial, Intonation Phrase initial, Accentual Phrase initial, and Accentual Medial positions. Word positional effect was also examined: word initial, medial, and final positions. Acoustic and statistical analyses showed that flap [r] was realized in a variety of phonetic forms: from sonorant(the most reduced form) to short stop(the least reduced form). It was shown that generally. word-initial position is stronger than word-medial position. It was also shown that in many cases, utterance-initial position and intonation-phrase-initial position are stronger than accentual-phrase-initial and accentual-phrase-medial positions. Sonorants were observed more often in the prosodically weaker portions. VOT duration was also shorter in accentual-phrase-initial and accentual-phrase-medial positions.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.187-201
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• 2000

This study was done to investigate the English vowels in relation to the foreign accent. In this study, I also tried to find out the foreign accent of the English diphthong /o/ and front low vowel /${\ae}$/ when Koreans speak English. The reason why I chose these vowels is that these vowels, /o/ and /${\ae}$/, are difficult for Koreans to discern and pronounce. Koreans show a foreign accent in their pronunciation. In order to find out the reason for a Korean foreign accent, experiments were carried out with the help of acoustic instruments. According to the results of the experiment, Koreans showed a foreign accent in their English pronunciation of vowels in relation to their utterance positions. Americans showed a final lengthening effect but Koreans showed a final shortening effect. This means that Koreans showed a foreign accent in the final stressed syllable of a sentence. In addition to this, the duration of two English vowels, /o/ and /${\ae}$/, showed considerably different features between Koreans and Americans. In fact, in the pronunciation of the diphthong /o/, the tongue moves from one position to another. The two articulations of a diphthong can be described as the nucleus plus a glide. However, most Koreans have no idea of this phenomenon and pronounce the diphthongs like two separate monophthongs. This causes a great difference in the lengths of English diphthong /o/ between Koreans and Americans.