• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.21-30
• /
• 2008

The current study investigated distributional properties of the Korean Accentual Phrase and their implication to word segmentation. The properties examined were the frequency of various AP tonal patterns, the types of tonal patterns that are imposed upon content words, and the average number and temporal location of content words within the AP. A total of 414 sentences from the Read speech corpus and the Radio corpus were used for the data analysis. The results showed that the 84% of the APs contained one content word, and that almost 90% of the content words are located in AP-initial position. When the AP-initial onset was not an aspirated or tense consonant, the most common AP patterns were LH, LHH, and LHLH (78%), and 88% of the multisyllabic content words start with a rising tone in AP-initial position. When the AP-initial onset was an aspirated or tense consonant, the most common AP patterns were HH, HHLH, and HHL (72%), and 74% of the multisyllabic content words start with a level H tone in AP-initial position. The data further showed that 84.1% of APs end with the final H tone. The findings provide valuable information about the prosodic pattern and structure of Korean APs, and account for the results of a previous study which showed that Korean listeners are sensitive to AP-initial rising and AP-final high tones (Kim, 2007). This is in line with other cross-linguistic research which has revealed the correlation between prosodic probability and speech processing strategy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.21-31
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study is to find the influence of Chinese falling-rising tone on the pitch pattern of corresponding partly-different-form-same-meaning Sino-Korean words delivered by Chinese learners of Korean and to examine how the falling-rising tone of corresponding Chinese words affects the pitch patterns of Sino-Korean words. The scope of this research is limited to Chinese learners of Korean, especially on two groups of Sino-Korean words - AB:CB type and AB:AC type that the are second-most frequently occuring different-form-same-meaning Sino-Korean words. In this study, Chinese learners pronounced both Chinese words and corresponding Sino-Korean words. Learners' pitch patterns were recorded and analyzed using software and compared with the tone of corresponding Chinese words. Experimental results showed that AB:CB type Sino-Korean words were not affected by Chinese 'falling-rising tone - high and level tone'. As well as AB:CB type, experimental results showed there were no significant influence on the pitch pattern of AB:AC type Sino-Korean words by Chinese falling-rising tone. But it was clear that Chinese learners' made pitch errors on both AB:CB type and AB:AC type Sino-Korean words. In conclusion, the Chinese learners' pitch patterns of partly-different-form-same-meaning Sino-Korean words are different from Korean native speakers', but their pitch errors cannot be attributed to Chinese falling-rising tone.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.11-17
• /
• 2020

Non-tonal language speakers may have difficulty learning second language lexical tones. In the present study, we explored this issue with Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese (i.e., non-tonal first language speakers) by examining their perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones. In the perception experiment, the Korean learners were asked to listen to the tone of each stimulus and assign it to one of four Mandarin lexical tones using the response keys; in the production experiment, the learners provided speech production data for the lexical tones and then their productions were identified by native listeners of Mandarin Chinese. Our results showed that the Korean learners of Mandarin Chinese had difficulty in perceptually distinguishing Tone 2 and Tone 3, with the most frequent production error being the mispronunciation of Tone 3 as Tone 2. We also investigated whether unfamiliar non-native phonemes (i.e., Chinese phonemes) that do not exist in the native language phonemic inventory (i.e., Korean) may hinder the processing of the non-native lexical tones. We found no evidence for such effects, neither for the perception nor for the production of the tones.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.3
• /
• pp.151-156
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this study was to develop a computer-animated pure tone audiometry for screening (CAPTAS) for toddler and to determine its validity and reliability. The CAPTAS utilizes an animated cartoon story producing visual and auditory stimuli. The intensities were 40 dB, 60 dB, 80 dB. The frequencies were 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, 2000 Hz, and 4000 Hz. The subjects were 20 (9 males and 11 females) severely hearing impaired children. As a result, The correlation coefficient between mean hearing threshold of children who were able to perform PTA and average hearing threshold of CAPTAS was performed and it revealed CAPTAS's high validity. And to verify the reliability of the re-test, all children had the CAPTAS and repeated it periodically. The result confirmed the reliability.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.59-76
• /
• 2007

The purpose of this study is to investigate the pitch rules of Chinese poetry. Pitch rules are concerned with the high tone and the low tone. Because Chinese poetry is a fixed form of verse, it must keep pitch rules to compose Chinese poetry. But until now there has been no acoustic study of pitch rules of Chinese poetry. So, for the first time the present study investigates pitch rules of Chinese poetry acoustically. Pitch contours were analyzed from the sound spectrogram made by Praat. Results showed that actual pitch patterns did not coincide with theoretical pitch rules in reciting Chinese poetry. Therefore, in studying Chinese classics, the Chinese poetry, which has traditionally been considered to be recited according to original Chinese pitch rules, must now be considered in terms of how pitch rules may have changed over time in Korea since it was first introduce to Korean scholars.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.37-62
• /
• 2007

The current study examines the role of post-lexical tonal patterns of a prosodic phrase in word segmentation. In a word spotting experiment, native Korean listeners were asked to spot a disyllabic or trisyllabic word from twelve syllable speech stream that was composed of three Accentual Phrases (AP). Words occurred with various post-lexical intonation patterns. The results showed that listeners spotted more words in phrase-initial than in phrase-medial position, suggesting that the AP-final H tone from the preceding AP helped listeners to segment the phrase-initial word in the target AP. Results also showed that listeners' error rates were significantly lower when words occurred with initial rising tonal pattern, which is the most frequent intonational pattern imposed upon multisyllabic words in Korean, than with non-rising patterns. This result was observed both in AP-initial and in AP-medial positions, regardless of the frequency and legality of overall AP tonal patterns. Tonal cues other than initial rising tone did not positively influence the error rate. These results not only indicate that rising tone in AP-initial and AP_final position is a reliable cue for word boundary detection for Korean listeners, but further suggest that phrasal intonation contours serve as a possible word boundary cue in languages without lexical prominence.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.18 no.7
• /
• pp.17-22
• /
• 1999

In this paper we propose a new mixed method of LDA and tri-tone model to predict Korean prosodic break indices(PBI) for a given utterance. PBI can be used as an important cue of syntactic discontinuity in continuous speech recognition(CSR). The model consists of three steps. At the first step, PBI was predicted with the information of syllable and pause duration through the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) method. At the second step, syllable tone information was used to estimate PBI. In this step we used vector quantization (VQ) for coding the syllable tones and PBI is estimated by tri-tone model. In the last step, two PBI predictors were integrated by a weight factor. The proposed method was tested on 200 literal style spoken sentences. The experimental results showed 72% accuracy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.121-128
• /
• 2013

In Korean, wh-question and indefinite yes-no questions have the same morphemic and syntactic structure. In speech, however, these two types of questions are distinguished by a prosodic difference. In this study, we examined if Chinese Korean leaners can distinguish between these two types of questions in production and if they can correctly perceive the different meaning of a question based on the prosodic information. For this purpose, we analysed two types of interrogative sentences produced by 5 native speakers and 15 Chinese Korean language leaners. The results show that the 5 Korean native speakers produce two types of questions by a salient prosodic difference, i.e., difference of prosodic structure, different pitch range of wh-phrase and indefinite phrase, and different boundary tone. However, for the 15 Chinese speakers, the two types of questions were not distinguished by the same prosodic features but in the perception analysis they were able to distinguish between the two types of questions easily.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.59-69
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine the variation of pitch contour observed in the reading of Korean sentences produced by Chinese Korean-learners. In the reading context, Korean sentence intonation can be described by considering accentual phrases' pitch pattern and intonational phrases' boundary tone. But when APs and IPs connect to each other to form sentences, another aspect of speech production must be considered, that is declination of pitch contour. So, in order to examine how Chinese speakers produce Korean sentence intonation, we have analysed the sentences' pitch contours produced by fourteen Chinese speakers differing in proficiency, and compared them to pitch contours produced by six Korean native speakers. The results show that Chinese speakers tend to decline the pitch contour in shorter sentences, but for longer sentences, the declination was not observed. Moreover, even though Chinese speakers produced sentences with declination, internal tonal modulation differs from native speakers.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2005.04a
• /
• pp.41-44
• /
• 2005

This study is about Chinese tone evaluation system for Korean learners using speech technology, Chinese prounciaion system consists of initials, finals and tones. Initials/finals are in segmental level and tones are in suprasegmental level. So different method could be used assessing Korean users' Chinese. Differ from segmental level recognition method, we chose pattern matching method in evaluating Chinese tones. Firstly we defined speakers' own speech range and produced standard tonal pattern according to speakers' own range. And then we compared input patterns of users with referring patterns.