• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.19
• /
• pp.271-293
• /
• 2010

Japanese Give and Receive Verbs are divided into "YARU", "MORAU" and "KURERU". These are influenced by the subject, speaker's viewpoint and meaning. Three verbs are used in a different way depending on who is the giver and who is the taker. I analyze "YARU" and "KURERU" Verbs used in TOUSEISYOUSEIKATAGI. It focus on politeness, gender, and meaning when combined with 'TE'. As an expression of politeness, 'Yaru' is to give to a person of lower social status or an animal or plant. 'Ageru' is to give to an equal ora person of lower social status nowadays. However, 'Ageru' which is treated as elegance of the language remained expression of respect, 'Yaru' is used when the receiver is a person of lower social status and equal social status in TOUSEISYOUSEIKATAGI. 'Kureru' is used when the receiver is a person of lower social status and equal social status, 'kudasaru' is used when a person of higher social status gives the speaker something in TOUSEISYOUSEIKATAGI. Women speakers use 'oyarinasai' 'oyariyo' 'ageru' 'okureru' and men speakers use 'yaru' 'kureru'. Speech patterns peculiar to men are 'kuretamae' 'kurenka'. If the verbs are joined to "TE", they obtain abstract meaning as well as a movement of things. They express some modality for action of the preceeding verbs. The modality has the following meanings ; good will, goodness, benefits, kindness, hopeness, expectation, disadvantage, injury, ill will and sarcasm. In addition, 'TE YARU' expresses the speaker's strong will, 'TE KURERU' expresses the speaker's request.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.83-95
• /
• 2006

This study attempts to suggest a criterion of Korean language development. For this purpose we investigated speaking rates of the spontaneous utterances produced by 144 children, aged 3 to 8. We analyzed each subject's speaking rate and its relevance with speaker's age, gender and utterance length. To determine the relative contributions of variables to the speaking rate, multiple regression was conducted. Results of this study can be summarized as follows: (1) The mean and maximum values of the speaking rate increased with the growth of age. (2) A statistically significant increase in speaking rate appeared at two-year intervals. (3) There was no significant difference between male and female groups in the speaking rate. (4) The multiple regression analysis has shown that along with the speaker's age, the utterance length(the mean number of syllables per utterance) is also important in estimating the speaking rates.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.138-154
• /
• 2019

This study was conducted to identify the use motivations of AI speaker and examine the characteristics of AI speaker users. Based on the uses and gratifications theory, The study results show that the user motivations of AI speaker are four dimensional, namely escaping from daily problems and maintaining social relationships, information acquisition and learning, entertainment and relaxation and pursuit of practicability. The main AI speaker users are in their 30s, and they are innovative to actively use AI speakers for entertainment purposes such as listening to music. The four sub-dimensions differed as we compared them with user characteristics. Specifically, the motivation for escaping from daily problems and maintaining social relationships varied with gender and age. Moreover, age and informativeness were identified to have an influence on the motivations of information acquisition and learning and entertainment and relaxation. In sum, this research provides practical implications into how to strategically create contents and services for AI speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.139-150
• /
• 2015

The data accumulated in this database will be used to develop a speaker identification system. This may also be applied towards, but not limited to, fields of phonetic studies, sociolinguistics, and language pathology. We plan to supplement the large-scale speech corpus next year, in terms of research methodology and content, to better answer the needs of diverse fields. The purpose of this study is to develop a speech corpus for standard Korean speech. For the samples to viably represent the state of spoken Korean, demographic factors were considered to modulate a balanced spread of age, gender, and dialects. Nine separate regional dialects were categorized, and five age groups were established from individuals in their 20s to 60s. A speech-sample collection protocol was developed for the purpose of this study where each speaker performs five tasks: two reading tasks, two semi-spontaneous speech tasks, and one spontaneous speech task. This particular configuration of sample data collection accommodates gathering of rich and well-balanced speech-samples across various speech types, and is expected to improve the utility of the speech corpus developed in this study. Samples from 639 individuals were collected using the protocol. Speech samples were collected also from other sources, for a combined total of samples from 1,012 individuals.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
• /
• v.12 no.7
• /
• pp.303-314
• /
• 2023

Voice conversion, a technology that allows an individual's speech data to be regenerated with the acoustic properties(tone, cadence, gender) of another, has countless applications in education, communication, and entertainment. This paper proposes an approach based on the StarGAN-VC model that generates realistic-sounding speech without requiring parallel utterances. To overcome the constraints of the existing StarGAN-VC model that utilizes one-hot vectors of original and target speaker information, this paper extracts feature vectors of target speakers using a pre-trained version of Rawnet3. This results in a latent space where voice conversion can be performed without direct speaker-to-speaker mappings, enabling an any-to-any structure. In addition to the loss terms used in the original StarGAN-VC model, Wasserstein distance is used as a loss term to ensure that generated voice segments match the acoustic properties of the target voice. Two Time-Scale Update Rule (TTUR) is also used to facilitate stable training. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms previous methods, including the StarGAN-VC network on which it was based.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.29
• /
• pp.391-411
• /
• 2012

Request expressions can be defined as expressions that demand or ask the other person to do certain movements. There are direct request expressions that ask the other person to do certain movements directly and indirect request expressions that ask the other person to do certain movements by describing the speaker's condition. The study analyzed gender and hierarchy of speakers and listeners who used 'tekure' and 'tekudasai' in dialog examples of the Meiji Period and the Taisho Period. In those periods, the modern Tokyo dialect was formed and established. "Toseishoseikatagi"in Meiji 10s,"Ukigumo""Natsukodachi""Tajotakon"in Meiji 20s,"Hakai""Botchan"in Meiji 30s,"Huton""Inakakyoshi" in Meiji 40s and "Aruonna"in the Taisho Period were analyzed for the study. 'kure' was used more by male speakers than female speakers. Examples by female speakers were shown on the novels after Meji 30s. In case of male speakers, they often used it to listeners with an equitable relationship at "Toseishoseikatagi"in Meiji 10s but they often used it to younger listeners at "Hakai"in Meiji 30s. 'okure' was used more by female speakers than male speakers. Listeners were varied from older ones to younger ones. In case of female speakers, 'okure' was used more often at "Aruonna"in the Taisho Period than the other novels. In case of male speakers, 'okure' was used only at "Ukigumo""Natsukodachi"and "Hakai". 'Okurenasai' was used outstandingly by female speakers on the form of 'okun_'. In case of 'kudasai', female speakers used it more than male speakers at "Toseishoseikatagi" and "Aruonna"but male speakers used it more than female speakers at "Tajotakon"and "Hakai". Listeners were varied from older ones to younger ones. 'o~kudasai' was not shown until Meiji 20s but shown after Meiji 30s among the analyzed novels. According to gender, it was used a little bit more often by female speakers than male speakers. According to hierarchy, listeners were usually older than speakers. 'o~nasatekudasai' was used more often by male speakers than female speakers. Listeners were also usually older than speakers.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2007.05a
• /
• pp.197-200
• /
• 2007

The purpose of this study is to analyze the prosodic characteristics of Korean news utterances. In this paper, prosodic phrases were described in terms of the K-ToBI labeling system. In addition, the change of intonation contour that occurs throughout the sentences was discussed in terms of types of media and gender. According to analyzing the tendency of resets, 331 out of 729 resets were observed at the boundary of the intonation phrases. This means that resets are of the speaker's own volition regardless of prosodic units of intonation phrases. The declination of the intonation contour of radio news showed a gentler slope than that of TV news, because when the sentence is getting longer, the declination of the intonation contour becomes slower.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.1-16
• /
• 2018

In this study, we investigated age differences of preference and trust ratings when the appearance of an artificial intelligent speaker resembles a human face. The appearance of the artificial intelligent speaker was presented in seven levels from robot face to human face. In addition, face stimuli were divided into gender (male and female) and age (20s / 60s). Participants evaluated the reliability and likability of each face stimulus on a 7-point scale. The results show that younger adults tend to prefer the face that was halfway between the robot and the human face, while older adults evaluated that the perceived reliability and likability were higher when the stimuli resembled the human face. When asked to choose the most preferred of the four face categories, all participants chose a younger face. However, with additional conditions including emoticon face and empty condition, older adults still preferred human face, while younger adults preferred emoticon face and empty condition. Taken together, older adults are more receptive to human faces than robotic faces in the context of artificial intelligence speakers. Because artificial intelligent speakers can play an important role in the elderly living alone, the present study will be a good reference in the design and development of artificial intelligent speakers for the elderly users.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.97-102
• /
• 2011

Electroglottography (EGG) is a common method for providing non-invasive measurements of glottal activity. EGG has been used in vocal pathology as a clinical or research tool to measure vocal fold contact. This paper presents the results of pitch, jitter, and closed quotient (CQ) measurements in electroglottographic signals of young (mean = 22.7 years) and elderly (mean = 74.3 years) male and female subjects. The sustained corner vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/ were measured at around 70 dB SPL since the most notable among EGG variables is the phonation intensity, which showed positive correlation with closed phase. The aim of this paper was to measure EGG data according to age and gender. In CQ, there was a significant difference between young and elderly female subjects while there was no significant difference between young and elderly male subjects. The mean value for young males was higher than that for elderly males while the mean value for young females was lower than that for elderly females. Thus, it can be said that in mean values, increased CQ was related to decreased age for females, while CQ decreased for males as the speaker's age decreased. Although the laryngeal degeneration due to increased age seems to occur to a lesser extent in females, the significant increase of CQ in elderly female voices could not be explained in terms of age-related physiological changes. In standard deviation of pitch and jitter, the mean values for young and elderly males were higher than that for young and elderly females. That is, male subjects showed higher in mean values of voice variables than female subjects. This result could be considered as a sign of vocal instability in males. It was suggested that these results may provide powerful insights into the control and regulation of normal phonation and into the detection and characterization of pathology.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.41 no.1
• /
• pp.99-107
• /
• 2022

This study attempted to analyze the consonant perception ability and errors and to verify compatibility items for hearing impaired children wearing hearing aids and cochlear implants using the Phoneme Perception Test for School-Aged children (PPT-S). As a result of the study, it was found that children with hearing impairments have more difficulty in perceiving final consonants than initial consonants. The hard type of PPT-S, in which the articulation method and articulation place of the target and foil words are similar, felt more difficult than the easy type. Among the initial consonants, the incorrect response rate for aspiration sound was higher. In the case of final consonants, the incorrect answer rate for 'ㄷ' and 'ㅁ' was relatively higher. There was no significant difference in the percentage of correct response rate according to the gender of the speaker. The above results can be usefully used as basic data for standardizing of PPT-S and evaluating the intervention effects before and after hearing rehabilitation with hearing impaired children.