• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2009

We investigated the perceptual structure of Korean consonants by analyzing the confusion among consonants in various vowel contexts. The 36 CV syllable types combined by 18 consonants and 2 vowels (/i/ and /u/) were presented with masking noises or in degraded intensity. The confusion data were analyzed by the INDSCAL (Individual Difference Scaling), ADCLUS (Additive Clustering) and the probability of the transmitted information. The results were compared with those of a previous study with /a/ vowel context (Bae and Kim, 2002). The overall results showed that the laryngeal features-aspiration, lax and tense-are the most salient features in the perception of Korean consonant regardless of vowel contexts, but the perceptual saliency of place features varies across vowel conditions. In high vowel (front and back vowel) contexts, sibilant consonants were perceptually salient compared to in low vowel contexts. In back vowel contexts, grave (labial and velar) consonants were perceptually salient. These findings imply that place features and vowel features strongly interact in speech perception as well as in speech production. All statistical measures from our confusion data ensured that the perceptual structure of Korean consonants correspond to the hierarchical structure suggested in the feature geometry (Clements, 1991). We discuss the link between speech perception and production as the basis of phonology.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.71-81
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• 2011

This paper investigated how prosodic position and word type affect the phonetic structure of Korean coronal stops. Initial segments of prosodic domains were known to be more strongly articulated and longer relative to prosodic domain-medial segments. However, there are few studies examining whether the properties of prosodic domain-initial segments are affected by the information content of words (real vs. nonsense words). In addition, since the scope of domain-initial effect was known to be local to the initial consonant and the effects on the following vowel have been found to be limited, it is thus worth examining whether the prosodic domain-initial effect extends into the vowel after the initial consonant in a systematic way across different prosodic domains. The acoustic properties of Korean coronal stops (lenis /t/, aspirated /$t^h$/, and tense /t'/) were compared across Intonational Phrase, Phonological Phrase and Word-initial positions both in real and nonsense words. The durational intervals such as VOT and CV duration were cumulatively lengthened for /t/ and /$t^h$/ in the higher prosodic domain-initial positions. However, tense stop /t'/ did not show any variation as a function of prosodic position and word type. The domain-initial lenis stop showed significantly longer duration in nonsense words than in real words. But the prosodic domain-initial effect was not found in the properties of F0 and [H1-H2] of the vowel after initial stops. The present study provided evidence that speakers tend to enhance speech clarity when there is less contextual information as in prosodic domain-initial position and in nonsense words.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.228-233
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• 2011

This paper presented the method about the Implementation of Speech Recognition based on phoneme considering the phonological characteristic for Korean Subway Station Names. The Pronunciation dictionary considering PLU set and phonological variations with four Case in order to select the optimum PLU used for Speech Recognition based on phoneme for Korean Subway Station Names was comprised and the recognition rate was estimated. In the case of the applied PLU, we could know the optimum recognition rate(97.74%) be shown in the triphone model in case of considering the recognition unit division of the initial consonant and final consonant and phonological variations.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2009

This study examines how young speakers of Seoul Korean produce tri-consonantal clusters /1kt/ and /1pt/ as in palk-ta ('to be bright') and palp-ta ('to step on'). Production data were collected from 20 speakers of Seoul Korean. The results of narrow transcription of the data showed that simplification is not obligatory as some speakers often preserve all three consonants. When simplified, there was a clear asymmetry between /1kt/ and /1pt/. Speakers showed no clear preference for either C1 preservation (C1=/1/) or C2 preservation (C2=/k/ in /1kt/ and /p/ in /1pt/) in production of /1kt/, but in production of /1pt/, strong preference was found for C1-preserved to C2-preserved variant. When compared with production data in Cho (1999), simplification patterns appear to have changed over the past 10 years, in a direction to preserve the first member of the cluster (/1/) more often, especially with /1kt/. There was no substantial between-item variation, indicating that simplification patterns are not lexically specified. Finally, the results suggest that the process of tri-consonantal simplification has not been fully phonologized in the grammar of the language as evident in substantial inter- and intra-speaker variation.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.55-81
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• 1997

In the present paper, V-to-V coarticulation in Korean VCV sequences is discussed, focusing on links between consonantal production and degree of V-to-V coarticulation. Temporal and spatial differences between three types of Korean alveolar stops (lax /t/. aspirated /$t^h$/ and thense /t'/) are examined from VCV sequences involving all possible combinations of three Korean unrounded vowels /a, i,/ based on spectrographic and electrographic data(two male speakers and one female speaker and one female speaker respectively). Closure duration and voice onset time (VOT) were measured from acoustic data. 'Total duration', which is defined as the sum of the closure duration and the VOT, was also calculated in order to see the temporal distance between two vowels in a VCV sequence. Differences in lingual-palatal contact pattern at the maximum contact (MC) point between the three types of stop were observed from EPG data. V-to-V coarticulation was investigated by measuring the offset or onset of the second formant (F2) of the target vowels from spectrograms. Two different dimensions of articulation, temporal and spatial, seem to playa role in determining the degree of V-to-V coarticulation. The degree of V-to-V anticipatory coarticulation is influenced by the spatial characteristics of the intervening consonant while the degree of carryover coarticulation is influenced by the temporal characteristics of the consonant.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.41-46
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• 2009

Duration of the preceding vowel is known to vary as a function of the (phonological or phonetic) voicing feature of the following consonant. This study raises a question against this general belief. A spectrographic experiment using 14 Korean obstruents (three sets of stops: /p, p', $p^h$/, /t, t', $t^h$/, /k, k', $k^h$/; one set of affricates: /c, c', $c^h$/; one set of fricatives: /s, s'/) reveals that (1) phonetic voicing in the intervocalic lax consonants /p, t, k, c, s/ has nothing to do with the duration of the preceding vowel; (2) vowel length is significantly shorter before tense consonants than before their lax cognates while tense consonants are significantly longer than their lax cognates. Importantly, Korean obstruents are all phonologically voiceless. Therefore, the voicing feature is rejected as the cause of preconsonantal vowel shortening in Korean both phonetically and phonologically. It is suggested that the temporal phenomenon is basically a kind of physiologically-motivated coarticulation though it is restricted by the phonology of a given language. To meet this assumption, the feature voicing should be replaced with the feature tenseness as the cause, which will enable us to explain the temporal phenomenon on the same basis irrespective of language.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.1324-1335
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• 1991

In this paper, a phoneme separation and an establishment of discriminative pattern of Korean phonemes are studied on experiment. The separation uses parameters such as pitch extraction, glottal peak pulse width of each pitch. speech duration. envelope and amplitude bias. The first pitch is extracted by deviations of glottal peak and width. energy and normalization on a bias on the top of vowel envelope. And then, it traces adjacent pitch to vowel in whole. On vewel, amethod to be reduced gliding pattern and the possible of vowel distinction to be used just second formant are proposed, and shrinking pitch waveform has nothing to do with pitch length is estimated. A pattern of envelope, spectrum, shrinking waveform, and a method of analysis by mutual relation among phonemes and manners of articulation on consonant are detected. As experimental results, 90% on vowel phoneme, 80% and 60% on initial and final consonant are discriminated.

• MALSORI
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• no.40
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• pp.79-89
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• 2000

한국어와 영어는 서로 다른 음소 배열 제약과 음운 규칙을 가지고 있기 때문에 영어 학습자들은 특정 영어 자음군을 정확하게 발음하는 데 어려움을 겪게 된다 따라서 이 논문은 영어 학습자들이 어떤 영어 자음군을 배우기 어려워 하고 왜 이러한 어려움이 생겨나는지 한국어와 영어의 음소 배열 제약과 음운 규칙을 비교해서 밝히는 것을 목적으로 한다.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.61-71
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• 2009

This study aims to investigate whether the misalignment between syllable and word onsets due to the process of resyllabification affects Korean-English late bilinguals perceiving English continuous speech. Two word-spotting experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, misalignment conditions (resyllabified conditions) were created by adding CVC contexts at the beginning of vowel-initial words and alignment conditions (non-resyllabified conditions) were made by putting the same CVC contexts at the beginning of consonant-initial words. The results of Experiment 1 showed that detections of targets in alignment conditions were faster and more correct than in misalignment conditions. Experiment 2 was conducted in order to avoid any possibilities that the results of Experiment 1 were due to consonant-initial words being easier to recognize than vowel-initial words. For this reason, all the experimental stimuli of Experiment 2 were vowel-initial words preceded by CVC contexts or CV contexts. Experiment 2 also showed misalignment cost when recognizing words in resyllabified conditions. These results indicate that Korean listeners are influenced by misalignment between syllable and word onsets triggered by a resyllabification process when recognizing words in English connected speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2013

This study investigated how acoustic characteristics (i.e., duration, F1, F2) of English high front vowels /i, ɪ/ are modulated by boundary- and prominence-induced strengthening in native vs. non-native (Korean) speech production. The study also examined how the durational difference in vowels due to the voicing of a following consonant (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless) is modified by prosodic strengthening in two different (native vs. non-native) speaker groups. Five native speakers of Canadian English and eight Korean learners of English (intermediate-advanced level) produced 8 minimal pairs with the CVC sequence (e.g., 'beat'-'bit') in varying prosodic contexts. Native speakers distinguished the two vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2, whereas non-native speakers only showed durational differences. The two groups were similar in that they maximally distinguished the two vowels when the vowels were accented (F2, duration), while neither group showed boundary-induced strengthening in any of the three measurements. The durational differences due to the voicing of the following consonant were also maximized when accented. The results are discussed further in terms of phonetics-prosody interface in L2 production.