• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.9-17
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• 2017

The aim of this study is to examine whether Chinese Korean learners (CKL) can correctly produce the aspiration in 'a lenis obstruents /k/, /t/, /p/, /ʧ/+/h/ sound' sequence at the lexical and post-lexical level. For this purpose 4 Korean native speakers (KNS), 10 advanced and 10 intermediate CKL participated in a production test. The material analyzed consisted of 10 Korean sentences in which aspiration can be applied at different prosodic boundaries (syllable, word, accentual phrase). The results showed that for KNS and CKL, the rate of application of aspiration was different according to prosodic boundaries. Aspiration was more frequently applied at the lexical level than at the post-lexical level and it was more frequent at the word boundary than at the accentual phrase boundary. For CKL, pronunciation errors were either non-application of aspiration or coda obstruent omission. In the case of non-application of aspiration, CKL produced the target syllable as an underling form and they did not transform it as a surface form. In the case of coda obstruent ommision, most of the errors were caused by the inherent complexity of phonological process.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.47-55
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• 2020

The current study was designed to investigate which type of phrase boundary tones high-intermediate Korean learners of English used in their spontaneous speech. These boundary tones were compared to those used in native speakers' spontaneous speech to examine whether the learners successfully acquired the use of boundary tones. To achieve this purpose, 10 Korean learners of English and four native speakers of English participated in the current study. The participants were asked to summarize the stories of short videos, and the tonal and the phrasing patterns of the obtained spontaneous speech were analyzed using Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that both the native speakers and the Korean learners frequently marked their intonational phrase boundaries with high boundary tones. However, regarding the prosodic phrase positions within a sentence, Korean learners frequently used steep rising tones (i.e., H-H%) while native speakers used gradual rising tones (i.e., L-H%) for sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the findings suggested that high-intermediate Korean learners understood the forward-looking function of the high boundary tones and that they were able to make use of these tones to mark intonational phrases in their spontaneous speech.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.91-94
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• 2007

This paper aims to analyze the pronunciation of Korean Point-of-Interest (POI) data, which consist of 224 sound files, from the phonological point of view, adapting the notion of prosodic word within the framework of Intonational Phonology. Each POI word is broken down into prosodic words, which are defined as the minimal sequence of segments which can be produced as one Accentual Phrase (AP). Then the pronunciation of the POI word considering its prosodic words are analyzed. The results show that: in most cases, a prosodic word is realized as one AP; that, in some cases, two prosodic words are pronounced as one AP: and that no cases are found where 3 prosodic words are realized as one AP.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.153-161
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• 2014

The current study reports the results from a cross-modal naming experiment investigating the effects of a prosodic boundary location on the comprehension of ambiguous dative NPs in Korean (Yeongmi-ka Ceonghi-eykey norae-rul pwulecwu-n pwuin-ul ${\cdots}$). The underlined dative NP, Ceonghi-eykey, can temporarily be attached to the embedded rel-marked verb, pwulecwu-n ('sing-rel') or to the matrix verb to appear later. Participants heard sentence fragments manipulated for the location of Intonation Phrase boundary (the biggest prosodic boundary in the model of Seoul Korean) and right after that, had to name visually presented naming targets, which resolve the ambiguity of dative NPs. The prosodic manipulation did not result in difference in naming time, suggesting that the location of a prosodic boundary failed to influence the way Korean listeners interpreted ambiguous dative NPs. Possible reasons for the null effect were discussed.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.02a
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• pp.157-172
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• 1996

This study aims to suggest some theoretical methodology for analysis of the prosodic patterns in Korean Read Speech. The engineering effort relevant to the phonetic study has focused to the importance of prosodic phrasing which may play a major role in analyzing the phonetic DB. Before establishing the prosodic phrase as the prosodic unit, we should describe the features of the boundary signal in a target sentence. With this in mind, the general characteristics of Read Speech and the ToBI(tones and Break Indices), which has been currently in vogue with respect to the prosodic labelling system were presented as the first step. The concrete analysis was carried out with the fable 'North Wind and the Sun' Korean version, where about 25 prosodic units were discriminated by perceptual approach for 5 subjects. Establishing various informations which can be used for deciding a boundary position systematically, we can proceed to the next, viz. acoustic analysis of prosodic unit. The most important which we primarily study for improving the naturalness of synthetic speech may be, at first, detecting the boundary signals in the speech file and accordingly reestablishment it within the raw text.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2024

This study investigates the fixed and random factors affecting response patterns of wh-scope interpretations in Gyeongsang Korean. It employed logistic mixed-effects regression models to analyze responses from 24 participants who listened to 40 pre-recorded stimuli from 40 different speakers. The stimuli consisted of an embedded wh-phrase and an interrogative ending marker, "-nkiko," thereby forming a wh-question, specifically a matrix wh-scope. Participants repeated the test three times. The study found that the prominence level of a prosodic phrase composed of an embedded verb and a complementizer was inversely related to responses with wh-questions, as demonstrated through multiple regression analysis in Yun. The test trial significantly impacted the number of responses with wh-questions, increasing from 50.3% in the first trial to 58.8% and 61.2% in subsequent trials. Examination of random subject effects revealed two main factors influencing responses: morpho-syntactic constraints and prosodic structural integrity. These two factors demonstrated the potential to be inversely weighted. Analysis of random stimulus effects suggested that the prominence level had limited effects on response patterns with each stimulus primarily eliciting one type of responses across trials.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.35-51
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• 2000

The goal of this paper is to examine how Case Drop (the drop of the case markers) correlates with the prosodic structure in Korean. On the assumption that intervocalic Lenis Stop Voicing (LSV) applies within the domain of the Accentual Phrase (AP), voicing analyses are performed on intervocalic lenis stop consonants before and after Case Drop. A statistical analysis reveals that the drop of the nominative and accusative case markers significantly alter the AP structure. Pitch values will then be extracted to verify that such changes in the AP structure conform to the pitch properties proposed for the AP (Jun 1993, 1998). The results show that the AP structure suggested by LSV does not always coincide with that imposed by the pitch properties.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.168-176
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• 2001

This paper discusses two important issues of corpus-based synthesis: synthesis unit generation based on phrase break strength information and pruning redundant synthesis unit instances. First, the new sentence set for recording was designed to make an efficient synthesis database, reflecting the characteristics of the Korean language. To obtain prosodic context sensitive units, we graded major prosodic phrases into 5 distinctive levels according to pause length and then discriminated intra-word triphones using the levels. Using the synthesis unit with phrase break strength information, synthetic speech was generated and evaluated subjectively. Second, a new pruning method based on weighted vector quantization (WVQ) was proposed to eliminate redundant synthesis unit instances from the synthesis database. WVQ takes the relative importance of each instance into account when clustering similar instances using vector quantization (VQ) technique. The proposed method was compared with two conventional pruning methods through objective and subjective evaluations of synthetic speech quality: one to simply limit the maximum number of instances, and the other based on normal VQ-based clustering. For the same reduction rate of instance number, the proposed method showed the best performance. The synthetic speech with reduction rate 45% had almost no perceptible degradation as compared to the synthetic speech without instance reduction.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• spring
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• pp.7-10
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• 2000

Studies of prosody and sentence processing have demonstrated that prosodic phrasing can exhibit strong effects on processing decisions in English. In this paper, we tested Korean sentence fragments containing syntactically ambiguous Adj-N1-N2 strings in a cross-modal naming task. Four accentual phrasing patterns were tested: (a) the default phrasing pattern, in which each word forms an accentual phrase; (b) a phrasing biased toward N1 modification; (c) a phrasing biased toward complex-NP modification; and (d) a phrasing used with adjective focus. Patterns (b) and (c) are disambiguating phrasings; the other two are commonly found with both interpretations and are thus ambiguous. The results showed that the naming time of items produced in the prosody contradicting the semantic grouping is significantly longer than that produced in either default or supporting prosody, We claim that, as in English, prosodic information in Korean is parsed into a well-formed prosodic representation during the early stages of processing. The partially constructed prosodic representation produces incremental effects on syntactic and semantic processing decisions and is retained in memory to influence reanalysis decisions.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.29-37
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• 2009

This paper presents results from speech production experiments on English, Korean, and Hindi that compare variation in the acoustic expression of dissimilar phonological laryngeal contrast in stops conditioned by prosodic prominence. Target stops are analyzed from utterance-initial, -medial, and -final positions, with a variation in contrastive focal accent, from the speech data by six male American English speakers, five male Seoul Korean speakers, and five male Delhi Hindi speakers. The results show that prosodic prominence conditions enhanced distinctiveness between contrastive segments in the three languages. The manner in which prosodic prominence and prosodic phrase structure is marked at the level of segmental variation is, however, found to be language-specific to some extent. In addition, a correlation between the size of the phonological inventory and the corresponding acoustic variation was found but the linear correlation was not strongly supported with the findings in the present study.