• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.25-30
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• 2012

This study investigated whether native Korean listeners could use visual cues for the identification of the English consonants /b/ and /v/. Both auditory and audiovisual tokens of word minimal pairs in which the target phonemes were located in word-initial or word-medial position were used. Participants were instructed to decide which consonant they heard in $2{\times}2$ conditions: cue (audio-only, audiovisual) and location (word-initial, word-medial). Mean identification scores were significantly higher for audiovisual than audio-only condition and for word-initial than word-medial condition. Also, according to signal detection theory, sensitivity, d', and response bias, c were calculated based on both hit rates and false alarm rates. The measures showed that the higher identification rate in the audiovisual condition was related with an increase in sensitivity. There were no significant differences in response bias measures across conditions. This result suggests that native Korean speakers can use visual cues while identifying confusing non-native phonemic contrasts. Visual cues can enhance non-native speech perception.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.95-101
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• 2014

This paper investigated the effects of frequency band limitation on perceptual characteristics of Korean consonants. Monosyllabic speech (144 syllables of CV type, 56 syllables of VC type, 8 syllables of V type) produced by two announcers were low- and high-pass filtered with cutoff frequencies ranging from 300 to 5000 Hz. Six listeners with normal hearing performed perception test by types of filter and cutoff frequencies. We reported phoneme recognition rates and types of perception error of band-limited Korean consonants to examine how frequency distortion in the process of speech transmission affect listener's perception. The results showed that recognition rates varied with the following factors: position in a syllable, manner of articulation, place of articulation, and phonation types. Consonants in the final position were stronger to the frequency band limitation than those in the initial position. Fricatives and Affricates are stronger than stops. Fortis consonants were less stronger than their lenis or aspirated counterparts. Types of perception error also varied depending on such factors as consonant's place of articulation: In case of bilabial stops, they were perceived as alveolar stops with while in cases of alveolar and velar stops, there were changes in phonation types without any change in the place of articulation.

• 전자공학회논문지 IE
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.22-29
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• 2006

Recently the use of whispered speech has increased due to mobile phone and the necessity of whispered speech recognition is increasing. So various feature vectors, which are mainly used for speech recognition, are applied to their HMMs, normal speech models, whispered speech models, and integrated models with normal speech and whispered speech so as to find out suitable recognition system for whispered speech. The experimental results of recognition test show that the recognition rate of whispered speech applied to normal speech models is too low to be used in practical applications, but separate whispered speech models recognize whispered speech with the highest rates at least 85%. And also integrated models with normal speech and whispered speech score acceptable recognition rate but more study is needed to increase recognition rate. MFCE and PLCC feature vectors score higher recognition rate when applied to separate whispered speech models, but PLCC is the best when a lied to integrated models with normal speech and whispered speech.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.772-782
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• 2014

Two-microphone binary mask speech enhancement (2mBMSE) has been of particular interest in recent literature and has shown promising results. Current 2mBMSE systems rely on spatial cues of speech and noise sources. Although these cues are helpful for directional noise sources, they lose their efficiency in diffuse noise fields. We propose a new system that is effective in both directional and diffuse noise conditions. The system exploits two features. The first determines whether a given time-frequency (T-F) unit of the input spectrum is dominated by a diffuse or directional source. A diffuse signal is certainly a noise signal, but a directional signal could correspond to a noise or speech source. The second feature discriminates between T-F units dominated by speech or directional noise signals. Speech enhancement is performed using a binary mask, calculated based on the proposed features. In both directional and diffuse noise fields, the proposed system segregates speech T-F units with hit rates above 85%. It outperforms previous solutions in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and perceptual evaluation of speech quality improvement, especially in diffuse noise conditions.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.27-39
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• 2017

This paper deals with how speech rate in Korean is affected by the sociolinguistic factors such as region, gender and generation. Speech rate was quantified as articulation rate (excluding physical pauses) and speaking rate (including physical pauses), both expressed as the number of syllables per second (sps). Other acoustic measures such as pause frequency and duration were also examined. Four hundred twelve subjects were chosen from Korean Standard Speech Database considering their age, gender and region. The result shows that generation has a significant effect on both speaking rate and articulation rate. Younger speakers produce their speech with significantly faster speaking rate and articulation rate than older speakers. Mean duration of total pause interval and the total number of pause of older speakers are also significantly different to those of younger speakers. Gender has a significant effect only on articulation rate, which means male speakers' speech rate is characterized by faster articulation rate, longer and more frequent pauses. Finally, region has no effect both on speaking and articulation rates.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.723-726
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• 2009

In this research, We simulated performances of error reduction algorithm for the speech signal based on the microphone array-based beamforming method in speech recognition system and analyzed its performance. Also, we processed speech signal adopted from microphone array and maximum signal to noise ratio for each channel, and then compared them with signal to noise ratio of speech signal. Speech recognition rate is improved from 54.2% to 61.4% in case 1 and is improved from 41.2% to 50.5% in case 2 of the lower signal to noise ratio. Therefore the average reduction rates are showed 15.7% in case 1.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.10-16
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• 1999

In this paper, we have studied Continuous Speech Recognition System of Speaker Adaptation using MAPE (Maximum A Posteriori Probability Estimation) which can adapt any small amount of adaptation speech data. Speaker adaptation is performed by the method of MAPB after Concatenation training which is making sentence unit HMM linked by syllable unit HMM and Viterbi segmentation classifies speech data to be adaptation into segmentation of syllable unit data automatically without hand labelling. For car control speech the recognition rates of adaptation of HMM was 77.18% which is approximately 6% improvement over that of unadapted HMM.(in case of O(n)DP)

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.1299-1304
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• 2000

In a speed coding system using excitation source of voiced and unvoiced, it would be involved a distortion of speech quality in case coexist with a voiced and an unvoiced consonants in a frame. So, I propose TSIUVC(Transition Segment Including UnVoiced Consonant) searching, extraction ad approximation-synthesis method in order to uncoexistent with a voiced and unvoiced consonants in a frame. This method based on a zerocrossing rate and pitch detector using FIR-STREAK Digital Filter. As a result, the extraction rates of TSIUVC are 84.8% (plosive), 94.9%(fricative), 92.3%(affricative) in female voice, and 88%(plosive), 94.9%(fricative), 92.3%(affricative) in male voice respectively, Also, I obain a high quality approximation-synthesis waveforms within TSIUVC by using frequency information of 0.547kHz below and 2.813kHz above. This method has the capability of being applied to speech coding of low bit rate, speech analysis and speech synthesis.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.2
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• pp.57-66
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• 1997

This paper studies the effects of the method, CMS(Cepstral Mean Subtraction), (which compensates for some of the speech distortion. caused by telephone channels), on the performance of the text-dependent speaker identification system. This system is based on the VQ(Vector Quantization) and HMM(Hidden Markov Model) method and chooses the LPC-Cepstrum and Mel-Cepstrum as the feature vectors extracted from the speech data transmitted through telephone channels. Accordingly, we can compare the correct recognition rates of the speaker identification system between the use of LPC-Cepstrum and Mel-Cepstrum. Finally, from the experiment results table, it is found that the Mel-Cepstrum parameter is proven to be superior to the LPC-Cepstrum and that recognition performance improves by about 10% when compensating for telephone channel using the CMS.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.121-126
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• 2012

This study deals with how stuttering changes in its frequency in a situation where adult participants who stutter are exposed to one type of background noise, that is, multi-talker babble noise. Eight American English-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study. Each of the subjects read aloud sentences under each of three speaking conditions (i.e., typical solo reading (TSR), typical choral reading (TCR), and multi-talker babble noise reading (BNR)). Speech fluency was computed based on a percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and speaking rate was also assessed to examine if there was significant change in rates as a measure of vocal change under each of the speaking conditions. The study found that participants read more fluently both during BNR and during TCR than during TSR. The study also found that participants did not show significant changes in speaking rate across the three speaking conditions. Some discussion was provided in relation to the effect of multi-talker babble noise on the frequency of stuttering and its further speculation.