• MALSORI
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• no.35_36
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• pp.13-24
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• 1998

This study aims at examining the relationship between tonal events and their related vowel and syllable duration in Korean. Two things were investigated: one is to see if there is a hierarchical relationship in prosodic unit-final-lengthening and the other is to see if accentual phrase initial high tone syllable gets lengthened. Generally, higher prosodic units show larger degree of lengthening of the final vowel and also final syllable duration than the lower ones except for accentual phrase: Mean duration of utterance-final or intonational-phrase-final syllable(and its vowels) was longer than that of accentual-phrase-final or word-final syllable(and its vowels). However, mean duration of accentual phrase final syllable was shorter than that of word final syllable. Mean vowel duration of accentual phrase initial high tone syllable was shorter than that of any other prosodic unit. Its mean syllable duration, however, was longer than that of accentual-phrase-final or word-final syllable, indicating that strong consonants(fortis and aspirated) frequently appear in the accentual phrase initial position and this position is a prosodically strong position showing longer duration as well as high tone.

• MALSORI
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• no.60
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

This paper investigated AV benefit of Korean and Japanese EFL learners' perception of the liquid contrast in English. In a perception experiment, the two English consonants /l/ and /r/ were embedded in initial and medial position in nonsense words in the context of the vowels /i, a, u/. Singletons and clusters were included in the speech material. Audio and video recordings were made using a total of 108 items. The items were presented to Korean and Japanese learners of English in three conditions: audio-alone (A), visual-alone (V) and audio-visual presentation (AV). The results showed that there was no evidence of AV benefit for the perception of the /l/-/r/ contrast for either Korean or Japanese learners of English. The results suggest that increasing auditory proficiency in identifying a non-native contrast is linked with an increasing proficiency in using visual cues to the contrast.

• MALSORI
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• no.61
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• pp.1-14
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between segmental correctness and speech intelligibility in adults with hearing impairment. Segmental correctness was measured by percentage of correct vowels(PCV) and percentage of correct consonants(PCC). The results were shown as follows: First, PCV and PCC could predict speech intelligibility with statistical significance. Second, in consonant classes divided by place and manner of articulation, the PCC of plosives and alveolar sounds were significant predicting variables in each group ($R^{2}=50%;\;59%$). According to this study, the importance of segmental correctness on speech intelligibility of adults with hearing impairment was confirmed. Also correctness of plosive sounds in manner and alveolar sounds in place were significant factors to speech intelligibility.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.1213-1219
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• 2014

Keypad used in the portable terminal based on the touch screen such as current smart phones is complex on the input method because of placement for use a small screen on a character or number button and is inconvenient. In this paper, we propose a combination method for the Hangul through touch and drag. First, only keypad for consonants is displayed, if a single consonant is selected by touch, then the keypad for vowels will be displayed around the consonant. Dragging in the keypad is combined into a vowel by depending on the drag path. This method can input Hangul by rapid and intuitive process compared to conventional methods. Simulation results show that the proposed method is very efficient in terms of speed and convenience compared to the conventional methods.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.25-53
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• 2018

This study examined the influence of lexical factors on verbal Eojeol recognition. To meet the goal, forty-five L2 Korean learners and twenty-two Korean native speakers took Eojeol decision tasks measured with the lexical factors such as 'number of strokes', 'number of consonants and vowels', 'number of syllables', 'number of morphemes', 'whole Eojeol frequency', 'root frequency', 'first-syllable-sharing frequency', and 'number of dictionary meanings.' As a result, 'whole Eojeol frequency' was the most effective factor to predict Eojeol recognition reaction time for native speakers and L2 learners, which supports the full-list model. Other lexical factors influencing Eojeol recognition reaction time in L2 learners were different following their proficiency level.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.24
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• pp.112-119
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• 2011

This study presents experiments which examined the role of amplitude and fundamental frequency (f0) in the phonetic perception of short versus long stop length contrasts in Japanese (e.g., [t] vs. [tt]). Stop length contrasts are normally characterized by differences in the duration of stop closures. However, closure duration can be unreliable as a perceptual cue when one considers variability in the rate at which people speak. Acoustically, the amplitude and f0 of the vowel following stop consonants are known to covary with the length distinction of stops in Japanese. Given this fact, the current study examined amplitude and f0 as potential secondary cues to the distinction. The results indicate that even though both amplitude and f0 are robust correlates, Japanese listeners do not use these cues in categorizing short versus long stops.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.339-368
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• 2014

In Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, phoneme-based pronunciation teaching such as tone, consonants, vowels is the most common teaching methods. Based on main character of Chinese grammar: 'lack of morphological change' in a narrow sense, was proposed by Lv Shuxiang and Zhu Dexi, I designed 'Communicative oriented Chinese pronunciation teaching method'. This teaching method is composed of seven elements: one kind is the 'structural elements': phoneme, word, phrase, sentence; another kind is the 'functional elements': listening, speaking and translation. This pronunciation teaching method has four kinds of practice methods: 1) phoneme learning method; 2) word based pronunciation practice; 3) phrase based pronunciation practice; 4) sentence based pronunciation practice. When the teachers use these practice methods, they can use the dialogue and Korean-Chinese translation. In particular, when the teachers use 'phoneme learning method', they must use Korean and Chinese phonetic comparison results. When the teachers try to correct learner's errors, they must first consider the speech communication.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.738-741
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• 2009

This research is concerned for improving the result of speech recognition under the noisy speech. We knew that spectral subtraction and recovery of valleys in spectral envelope obtained from noisy speech are more effective for the improvement of the recognition. In this research, the averaged spectral envelope obtained from vowel spectrums are used for the emphasis of valleys. The vocalic spectral information at lower frequency range is emphasized and the spectrum obtained from consonants is not changed. In simulation, the emphasis coefficients are varied on cepstral domain. This method is used for the recognition of noisy digits and is improved.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 2021

Voice onset time (VOT) is known to be a primary acoustic cue that differentiates voiced from voiceless stops in the world's languages. While much attention has been given to the sound change of Korean stops, little attention has been given to that of English stops. This study examines VOT of stop consonants as produced by English speakers in comparison to Korean speakers to see whether there is any VOT change for English stops and how the effects of stop, place, gender, and individual on VOT differ cross-linguistically. A total of 24 native speakers (11 Americans and 13 Koreans) participated in this experiment. The results showed that, for Korean, the VOT merger of lax and aspirated stops was replicated, and, for English, voiced stops became initially devoiced and voiceless stops became heavily aspirated. English voiceless stops became longer in VOT than Korean counterparts. The results suggest that, similar to Korean stops, English stops may also undergo a sound change. Since it is the first study to be revealed, more convincing evidence is necessary.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.57-61
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• 2020

Previous research has indicated that the patterns of phonetic modulations induced by prominence are not consistent across languages but are conditioned by sound systems specific to a given language. Most studies examining the prominence effects in Korean have been restricted to segments in word-initial and phrase-initial positions. The present study, thus, set out to explore the prominence effects for Korean stop consonants in word-medial intervocalic positions. A total of 16 speakers of Seoul Korean (8 males, 8 females) produced word-medial intervocalic lenis and aspirated stops with and without prominence. The prominence was induced by contrast focus on the phonation-type contrast, that is, lenis vs. aspirated stops. Our results showed that F0 of vowels following both lenis and aspirated stops became higher when the target stops received focus than when they did not, whereas voice onset time (VOT) and voicing during stop closure for both lenis and aspirated stops did not differ between the focus and no-focus conditions. The findings add to our understanding of diverse patterns of prominence-induced strengthening on the acoustic realizations of segments.