Phonetics and Speech Sciences (말소리와 음성과학)

Korean Society of Speech Sciences (한국음성학회)
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Classification of nasal places of articulation based on the spectra of adjacent vowels

모음 스펙트럼에 기반한 전후 비자음 조음위치 판별

  • Jihyeon Yun (Department of Linguistics, Chungnam National University) ;
  • Cheoljae Seong (Department of Linguistics, Chungnam National University)
  • Received : 2023.02.16
  • Accepted : 2023.03.20
  • Published : 2023.03.31
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Abstract

This study examined the utility of the acoustic features of vowels as cues for the place of articulation of Korean nasal consonants. In the acoustic analysis, spectral and temporal parameters were measured at the 25%, 50%, and 75% time points in the vowels neighboring nasal consonants in samples extracted from a spontaneous Korean speech corpus. Using these measurements, linear discriminant analyses were performed and classification accuracies for the nasal place of articulation were estimated. The analyses were applied separately for vowels following and preceding a nasal consonant to compare the effects of progressive and regressive coarticulation in terms of place of articulation. The classification accuracies ranged between approximately 50% and 60%, implying that acoustic measurements of vowel intervals alone are not sufficient to predict or classify the place of articulation of adjacent nasal consonants. However, given that these results were obtained for measurements at the temporal midpoint of vowels, where they are expected to be the least influenced by coarticulation, the present results also suggest the potential of utilizing acoustic measurements of vowels to improve the recognition accuracy of nasal place. Moreover, the classification accuracy for nasal place was higher for vowels preceding the nasal sounds, suggesting the possibility of higher anticipatory coarticulation reflecting the nasal place.

본 연구에서는 한국어 비음의 조음위치 변별을 위한 지표로서 모음 음향 특성의 활용 가능성을 타진하였다. 비음에 인접한 /ㅏ/ 모음 시료를 대용량 한국어 자연발화 말소리 자료에서 추출하여 모음 구간의 25%, 50%, 75% 시점에서 음향 매개변수를 측정하였다. 이 스펙트럼 및 지속시간 변수를 이용하여 판별분석을 수행하고 이를 바탕으로 선행 또는 후행 비자음의 조음위치 분류정확도를 추정하였다. 또한 조음위치 공조음(coarticulation)의 관점에서 순행적 공조음과 역행적 공조음의 영향을 확인하기 위하여 측정 대상 모음에 비음이 선행하는 경우와 후행하는 경우로 나누어 비교하였다. 분석 결과, 전후 비자음의 조음위치 분류정확도는 약 50%-60%로 나타났다. 모음의 음향 매개변수 측정값만으로 비음의 조음위치를 예측·분류하기에는 어려움이 있으나, 공조음 정도가 가장 약할 것으로 예상되는 모음 정중 구간에서 측정된 음향 변수만으로도 위와 같은 정확도를 얻었다는 점에서 비음 구간의 분석결과와 함께 모음 측정치를 활용함으로써 비음 조음위치 인식률 향상에 기여할 수 있을 것으로 기대한다. 한편 측정 대상 모음에 선행 또는 후행하는 비음 조건 간에 비교하였을 때, 후행 비음 조음위치의 분류정확도가 더 높게 나타났다는 점에서 역행적 조음위치 공조음의 영향이 더 클 가능성이 확인되었다.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5B5A17089563).

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