• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.87-103
• /
• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.175-183
• /
• 2005

In this study, realization of strong and weak syllables in English by Korean leaners with low English proficiency was examined through experiment. The aspects of three acoustic characteristics-duration, pitch, amplitude-were measured and compared with native speakers of English. It was assumed that production of duration, pitch and amplitude of strong and weak syllable by Korean learners would be different from that of English native speakers. According to the production experiments, English native speakers produced strong syllable longer, higher and louder than weak syllable. However, Korean leaners produced strong syllable higher and louder than weak syllable, but not longer enough. Specifically, weak syllable by Korean leaners was longer and strong syllable shorter than native speakers. Furthermore, the difference in duration of syllables between Korean leaners and English native speakers is more significant than pitch and amplitude. As a result, the duration was more important cue for the realization of stress than pitch and amplitude. However, Korean leaners did not produce duration of stressed syllables as English native speakers did, even though they produce the pitch and amplitude of stressed syllable in a similar way to native speakers. The reasons for those were considered, too.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.113-128
• /
• 2005

The underlying premise of this study was that L1 production is easily transferred into L2 production. In neutral intonation, there is a consonant-tone correlation in Korean: High tone patterns are correlated with voiceless aspirated and tense consonants and Low-High tone patterns are correlated with lax or other voiced consonants. The purpose of this study was to see whether the correlation in Korean (L1) is transferred into English (L2) production and whether the degree of transfer differs depending on the degree of proficiency. Eight Korean speakers and two American speakers participated in the experiment. F0 contours of words and sentences were collected and analyzed. The results of the present study showed that there is a strong correlation between voicing and tone in L2 utterances. When utterance-initial consonant types were voiceless, the word or the sentence began with the H pattern; otherwise it had the LH pattern. The degree of interference differed depending on the degree of proficiency: less proficient speakers showed a stronger correlation in terms of the magnitude (Hz) and size (ms) of the effects on F0. The results indicate that the consonant-tone correlation in L1 is strongly transferred into L2 production and the correlation transfer can be one of the actual aspects that cause L2 speakers to produce deviant L2 accents and intonation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.3-10
• /
• 2010

The present study aims to investigate neural activations according to the level of code switching in English proficient bilinguals and to find the relationship between the performance of language switching and proficiency level using ERPs (event-related potentials). First, when comparing high-proficient (HP) with low-proficient (LP) bilingual performance in a native language environment, the activation level of N2 was observed to be higher in the HP group than in the LP group, but only under two conditions: 1) the language switching (between-language) condition known as indexing attention of code switching and 2) the inhibition of current language for L1. Another effect of N400 can be shown in both groups only in the language non-switching (within-language) condition. This effect suggests that both groups completed the semantic acceptability task well in their native language environment without the burden of language switching, irrespective of high or low performance. The latencies of N400 are only about 100ms earlier in the HP group than in the LP group. This difference can be interpreted as facilitation of the given task. These results suggest that HP showed the differential activation in inhibitory system for L1 in switching condition of L1-to-L2 to be contrary to inactivation of inhibitory system for the LP group. Despite the absence of an N400 effect at the given task in both groups, differential latencies between the peaks were attributed to the differences of efficiency in semantic processing.

• Journal of Korean language education
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.137-168
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study is to prepare the basis for a more objective evaluation of oral fluency by comparing speech patterns of Korean native speakers and L2 Korean learners. For this purpose, the current study focused on the analysis of speech materials of the 21st century Sejong spoken corpus and Korean learner corpus. We compared the oral fluency of Korean native speakers and Korean learners based on speech rate, pause, and discourse markers. The results show that the pattern of Korean learners is different to that of Korean native speakers in all aspects of speech rate, pause, and discourse markers; even though proficiency of Korean leaners show increase, they could not reach the oral fluency level of Korean native speakers. At last, based on these results of the analysis, we added suggestions for setting the evaluation criteria of oral fluency of Korean learners.

• Journal of Korean language education
• /
• v.29 no.3
• /
• pp.255-292
• /
• 2018

Most grading scales of Korean language proficiency tests are based on existing grading scales that are not empirically verified. The purpose of this study is to develop an empirically verified scale descriptor. The 'Performance data-driven approach' that is suggested by Fulcher (1987) was used to develop the detailed description of characteristics for each level of performance. This study is focused on the functional phase of speech samples analysis (coding data) to create explanatory categories of discourse skills into which individual observations of speech phenomena can be scored. The speech samples that were collected through this study demonstrated stages of speech that can be a foundation of a grading scale. The data used in the study was collected from 23 native speakers of Korean. Speech samples were recorded from simulated speaking tests using the 'REFUSAL' task, and transcribed for analysis. The transcript was analyzed using discourse analysis. The result showed that the 'REFUSAL' task needs to go through four functional phases in actual communication. Furthermore, this study found specific and detailed explanatory categories of discourse competence based on the actual native speaker's speech data. Such findings are expected to contribute to the development of more valid and reliable speaking assessment.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.167-173
• /
• 2020

Background and Objectives: Top-down restoration of distorted speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of speech in noise, maybe a useful tool to understand robustness of perception in adverse listening situations. However, the relationship between phonemic restoration and speech perception in noise is not empirically clear. Subjects and Methods: 20 adults (40-55 years) with normal audiometric findings were part of the study. Sentence perception in noise performance was studied with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) to estimate the SNR with 50% score. Performance was also measured for sentences interrupted with silence and for those interrupted by speech noise at -10, -5, 0, and 5 dB SNRs. The performance score in the noise interruption condition was subtracted by quiet interruption condition to determine the phonemic restoration magnitude. Results: Fairly robust improvements in speech intelligibility was found when the sentences were interrupted with speech noise instead of silence. Improvement with increasing noise levels was non-monotonic and reached a maximum at -10 dB SNR. Significant correlation between speech perception in noise performance and phonemic restoration of sentences interrupted with -10 dB SNR speech noise was found. Conclusions: It is possible that perception of speech in noise is associated with top-down processing of speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of interrupted speech. More research with a larger sample size is indicated since the restoration is affected by the type of speech material and noise used, age, working memory, and linguistic proficiency, and has a large individual variability.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.167-173
• /
• 2020

Background and Objectives: Top-down restoration of distorted speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of speech in noise, maybe a useful tool to understand robustness of perception in adverse listening situations. However, the relationship between phonemic restoration and speech perception in noise is not empirically clear. Subjects and Methods: 20 adults (40-55 years) with normal audiometric findings were part of the study. Sentence perception in noise performance was studied with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) to estimate the SNR with 50% score. Performance was also measured for sentences interrupted with silence and for those interrupted by speech noise at -10, -5, 0, and 5 dB SNRs. The performance score in the noise interruption condition was subtracted by quiet interruption condition to determine the phonemic restoration magnitude. Results: Fairly robust improvements in speech intelligibility was found when the sentences were interrupted with speech noise instead of silence. Improvement with increasing noise levels was non-monotonic and reached a maximum at -10 dB SNR. Significant correlation between speech perception in noise performance and phonemic restoration of sentences interrupted with -10 dB SNR speech noise was found. Conclusions: It is possible that perception of speech in noise is associated with top-down processing of speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of interrupted speech. More research with a larger sample size is indicated since the restoration is affected by the type of speech material and noise used, age, working memory, and linguistic proficiency, and has a large individual variability.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.41-49
• /
• 2022

The average acoustic distribution of American English speakers was statistically compared with the English-speaking patterns of gifted students in a Science Academy in Korea. By analyzing speech recordings, the duration time of which is much longer than in previous studies, this research identified the degree of acoustic proximity between the two parties and the predictability of English academic achievement of gifted high school students. Long-term spectral acoustic power distribution vectors were obtained for 2,048 center frequencies in the range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz by applying an long-term average speech spectrum (LTASS) MATLAB code. Three more variables were statistically compared to discover additional indices that can predict future English academic achievement: the receptive vocabulary size test, the cumulative vocabulary scores of English formative assessment, and the English Speaking Proficiency Test scores. Linear regression and correlational analyses between the four variables showed that the receptive vocabulary size test and the low-frequency vocabulary formative assessments which require both lexical and domain-specific science background knowledge are relatively more significant variables than a basic suprasegmental level English fluency in the predictability of gifted students' academic achievement.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.617-623
• /
• 2024

Identifying emotions through speech poses a significant challenge due to the complex relationship between language and emotions. Our paper aims to take on this challenge by employing feature engineering to identify emotions in speech through a multimodal classification task involving both speech and text data. We evaluated two classifiers-Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)-both integrated with a BERT-based pre-trained model. Our assessment covers various performance metrics (accuracy, F-score, precision, and recall) across different experimental setups). The findings highlight the impressive proficiency of two models in accurately discerning emotions from both text and speech data.