• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제65호
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• pp.93-103
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a method for optimizing a multiple pronunciation dictionary used for modeling pronunciation variations of non-native speech. The proposed method removes some confusable pronunciation variants in the dictionary, resulting in a reduced dictionary size and less decoding time for automatic speech recognition (ASR). To this end, a confusability measure is first defined based on the Levenshtein distance between two different pronunciation variants. Then, the number of phonemes for each pronunciation variant is incorporated into the confusability measure to compensate for ASR errors due to words of a shorter length. We investigate the effect of the proposed method on ASR performance, where Korean is selected as the target language and Korean utterances spoken by Chinese native speakers are considered as non-native speech. It is shown from the experiments that an ASR system using the multiple pronunciation dictionary optimized by the proposed method can provide a relative average word error rate reduction of 6.25%, with 11.67% less ASR decoding time, as compared with that using a multiple pronunciation dictionary without the optimization.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제64호
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• pp.137-153
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• 2007

The pronunciation lexicon of a continuous speech recognition system should contain enough pronunciation variations to be used for building a search space large enough to contain a correct path, whereas the size of the pronunciation lexicon needs to be constrained for effective decoding and lower perplexities. This paper describes a procedure for selecting pronunciation variations to be included in the lexicon based on the frequencies of the corresponding phonetic rules observed in the training corpus. Likelihood of a phonetic rule's application is estimated using the observation frequency of the rule and is used to control the construction of a pronunciation lexicon. Experiments with various pronunciation lexica show that the proposed method is helpful to improve the speech recognition performance.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제57호
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• pp.1-14
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• 2006

This study examines personal factors that affect Korean speakers' English pronunciation. Personal factors which are examined here are as follows: personality type, cognitive system, motivational orientation type, interest in English, how often they listen to tapes, and academic achievements. Data were collected through MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) Test, Group Embedded Figural Test, and a Questionnaire. The participants consisted of 65 college students. All the results were statistically analyzed: Korean students' personality type and cognitive system are not related with their pronunciation, but motivational orientation type, how often they listen to tapes, academic achievements, and interest in English study are correlated with their pronunciation.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권3호
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• pp.31-38
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• 2013

This study investigated the influence of English vowel pronunciation training to English word-initial stop pronunciation. For that purpose, VOT values of English stops produced by twenty Korean English learners(five Youngnam dialect male speakers, five Youngnam dialect female speakers, five Kangwon dialect male speakers, and five Kangwon dialect female speakers) were measured using the Speech Analyzer and their post-training production was compared with their pre-training production. The result shows that post-training VOT values of voiced stops became closer to those of native English speakers in all four groups. Hence, it can be inferred that vowel pronunciation training is effective for correcting pronunciation of voiced vowels by analyzing the change of the quality of following vowels(especially low vowels) and the degree of giving stress.

• 컴퓨터교육학회논문지
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• 제18권4호
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• pp.11-18
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• 2015

청력의 결여나 결손이 생기면 회화 음이나 환경 음을 청취하는 것이 어려우므로 언어 감각, 성격 등에 문제가 발생한다. 이러한 청각장애인들을 위하여 특별하게 발음 교정 교육을 할 수 있는 응용 프로그램을 설계하고 구현하였다. 시간과 장소에 제약이 없이 사용할 수 있도록 스마트폰 앱 형태로 제작하였고, 청각장애인의 발음 교정 실태를 고려하여 발음 습득 순서에 따라 난이도 순 훈련을 제공한다. 기본 발음 연습, 단어 발음 연습을 할 수 있고, 이에 대한 기록을 통하여 연습률과 성공률을 확인할 수 있다. 또한, 전면카메라를 통한 자가 발음 교정이 가능하도록 하여 발음이 향상되도록 하였다.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 1996년도 10월 학술대회지
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• pp.275-276
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• 1996

Koreans learning Mandarin Chinese are faced with serious pronunciation errors in vowels, consonants and tones, etc. Most of these pronunciation errors are found to be due the transference of the native Korean phonetic habits. Following are some of the most common pronunciation errors encountered by Koreans learning Chinese.

• 한국언어정보학회지:언어와정보
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.81-101
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• 2003

This paper introduces a computerized version of the Korean Standard Pronunciation Rules that can be used in speech engineering systems such as Korean speech synthesis and recognition systems. For this purpose, we build Petri net models for each item of the Standard Pronunciation Rules, and then integrate them into the sound conversion table. The reversion of the Korean Standard Pronunciation Rules regulates the way of matching sounds into grammatically correct written characters. This paper presents not only the sound conversion table but also the character conversion table obtained by reversely converting the sound conversion table. Malting use of these tables, we have implemented a Korean character into a sound system and a Korean sound into the character conversion system, and tested them with various data sets reflecting all the items of the Standard Pronunciation Rules to verify the soundness and completeness of our tables. The test results show that the tables improve the process speed in addition to the soundness and completeness.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제49호
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• pp.123-134
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• 2004

An automatic pronunciation correction system provides learners with correction guidelines for each mispronunciation. In this paper we propose an HMM based speech recognizer which automatically classifies pronunciation errors when Koreans speak Japanese. We also propose two pronunciation networks for automatic detection of mispronunciation. In this paper, we evaluated performances of the networks by computing the correlation between the human ratings and the machine scores obtained from the speech recognizer.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제20권2호
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• pp.35-43
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• 2001

음성 인식이나 음성 합성시 필요한 발음열을 수작업으로 작성할 경우 작성자의 음운변화 현상에 대한 전문적 언어지식을 비롯하여 많은 시간과 노력이 요구되며 일관성을 유지하기도 쉽지 않다. 또한 한국어의 음운 변화 현상은 단일 형태소의 내부와 복합어에서 결합된 형태소의 경계점, 여러 형태소가 결합해서 한 어절을 이룰 경우 그 어절 내부의 형태소의 경계점, 여러 어절이 한 어절을 이룰 때 구성 어절의 경계점에서 서로 다른 적용 양상을 보인다. 본 논문에서는 이러한 문제를 해결하기 위해서 형태음운론적 분석에 기반하여 문자열을 자동으로 발음열로 변환하는 발음 생성 시스템을 제안하였다. 이 시스템은 한국어에서 빈번하게 발생하는 음운변화 현상의 분석을 통해 정의된 음소 변동 규칙과 변이음 규칙을 다단계로 적용하여 가능한 모든 발음열을 생성한다. 각 음운변화 규칙을 포함하는 대표적인 언절 리스트를 이용하여 구성된 시스템의 안정성을 검증하였고, 발음사전 구성과 학습용 발음열의 유용성을 인식 실험을 통해 평가하였다. 그 결과 표제어 사이의 음운변화 현상을 반영한 발음사전의 경우 5-6％ 정도 나은 단어 인식률을 얻었으며, 생성된 발음열을 학습에 사용한 경우에서도 향상된 결과를 얻을 수 있었다.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations between phonetic differences among Korean learners' production of English front vowels, pronunciation intelligibility and speaking proficiency test score. To do so, thirty Korean university students were asked (1) to read English text book paragraphs and (2) describe a picture. Two English native raters and one Korean rater evaluated Korean subjects' English pronunciation intelligibility and speaking. In addition, subjects' English vowel productions were acoustically analyzed(F0, F1, F2, vowel duration, intensity). The results of the study show that the vowel quality and pitch of the unstressed vowels and lax vowel are related to the pronunciation intelligibility. In addition, the scores of pronunciation intelligibility and speaking are highly related.