• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제64호
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• pp.1-14
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to examine the acoustic perception different by formants change for profoundly hearing impaired children with cochlear implants. The subjects were 10 children after 15 months of experience with the implant and mean of their chronological age was 8.4 years and Standard deviation was 2.9 years. The ability of auditory perception was assessed using acoustic-synthetic vowels. The acoustic-synthetic vowel was combined with F1, F2, and F3 into a vowel and produced 42 synthetic sound, using Speech GUI(Graphic User Interface) program. The data was deal with clustering analysis and on-line analytical processing for perception ability of acoustic synthetic vowel. The results showed that auditory perception scores of acoustic-synthetic vowels for cochlear implanted children were increased in F2 synthetic vowels compaire to those of F1. And it was found that they perceived the differences of vowels in terms of distance rates between F1 and F2 in specific vowel.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권3호
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• pp.81-89
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• 2014

Korean English learners tend to have difficulty perceiving and producing English vowels. The purpose of this study is to examine a link between perceived and produced vowel spaces of Korean learners of English. Sixteen Korean male and female participants perceived two sets of English synthetic vowels on a computer monitor and rated their naturalness. The same participants produced English vowels in a carrier sentence with high and low pitch variation in a clear speaking mode. The author compared the perceived and produced vowel spaces in terms of the pitch and gender variables. Results showed that the perceived vowel spaces were not significantly different in either variables. Korean learners perceived the vowels similarly. They did not differentiate the tense-lax vowel pairs nor the low vowels. Secondly, the produced vowel spaces of the male and female groups showed a 25% difference which may have come from their physiological differences in the vocal tract length. Thirdly, the comparison of the perceived and produced vowel spaces revealed that although the vowel space patterns of the Korean male and female learners appeared similar, which may lead to a relative link between perception and production, statistical differences existed in some vowels because of the acoustical properties of the synthetic vowels, which may lead to an independent link. The author concluded that any comparison between the perceived and produced vowel space of nonnative speakers should be made cautiously. Further studies would be desirable to examine how Koreans would perceive different sets of synthetic vowels.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권3호
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• pp.39-46
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• 2013

This study examined the perception of two Korean vowels using F1/F2 manipulated synthetic vowels. Previous studies indicated that there is an overlap between the acoustic spaces of Korean /o/ and /u/ in terms of the first two formants. A continuum of eleven synthetic vowels were used as stimuli. The experiment consisted of three tasks: an /o/ identification task (Yes-no), an /u/ identification task (Yes-no), and a forced choice identification task (/o/-/u/). ROC(Receiver Operating Characteristic) analysis and logistic regression were performed to calculate the boundary criterion of the two vowels along the stimulus continuum, and to predict the perceptual judgment on F1 and F2. The result indicated that the location between stimulus no.5 (F1 = 342Hz, F2 = 691Hz) and no.6 (F1 = 336Hz, F2 = 700Hz) was estimated as a perceptual boundary region between /o/ and /u/, while stimulus no.0 (F1=405Hz, F2=666Hz) and no.10 (F1=321Hz, F2=743Hz) were at opposite ends of the continuum. The influence of F2 was predominant over F1 on the perception of the vowel categories.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권4호
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• pp.91-99
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• 2014

Speaking styles tend to have an influence on spectral characteristics of produced speech. There are not many studies on the spectral characteristics of speech because of complicated processing of too much spectral data. The purpose of this study was to examine spectral characteristics and formant bandwidths of English vowels produced by nine American males with different speaking styles: clear or conversational styles; high- or low-pitched voices. Praat was used to collect pitch-corrected long-term averaged spectra and bandwidths of the first two formants of eleven vowels in the speaking styles. Results showed that the spectral characteristics of the vowels varied systematically according to the speaking styles. The clear speech showed higher spectral energy of the vowels than that of the conversational speech while the high-pitched voice did the same over the low-pitched voice. In addition, front and back vowel groups showed different spectral characteristics. Secondly, there was no statistically significant difference between B1 and B2 in the speaking styles. B1 was generally lower than B2 when reflecting the source spectrum and radiation effect. However, there was a statistically significant difference in B2 between the front and back vowel groups. The author concluded that spectral characteristics reflect speaking styles systematically while bandwidths measured at a few formant frequency points do not reveal style differences properly. Further studies would be desirable to examine how people would evaluate different sets of synthetic vowels with spectral characteristics or with bandwidths modified.

• 한국통신학회논문지
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.159-167
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• 1985

男性話者가 發音한 韓國語 母音/아, 에, 이, 오, 우/의 聲門波를 직접 抽出하여 音聲에 따라 성문파가 각각 다르다는 것을 확인하였다. 具現한 5가지의 성문파로 母音을 다시 合成하여 聲門波形이 音聲合成에 미치는 영향을 波形的으로 비교하였다. 상문파의 모양, 개방시간과 폐쇄기간에 따라 合成音聲波形은 變化가 있었으며, 聲門波形이 合成音質向上의 중요 factor로 作用함을 알 수 있었다.

• 음성과학
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• 제2권
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• pp.9-23
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• 1997

Through iterative analysis and synthesis experiments on Korean monosyllables, the Korean text-to-speech system was implemented using the phoneme-based formant synthesis method. Since the formants of initial and final consonants in this system showed many variations depending on the medial vowels, the database for each phoneme was made up of formants depending on the medial vowels as well as duration information of transition region. These techniques were needed to improve the intelligibility of synthetic speech. This paper investigates also methods of concatenating the synthesis units to improve the quality of synthetic speech.

• 전자공학회논문지S
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• 제35S권7호
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• pp.95-102
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• 1998

This paper proposes a synchronization method of synthetic facial iamge sequences and synthetic speech. The LP-PSOLA synthesizes the speech for each demi-syllable. We provide the 3,040 demi-syllables for unlimited synthesis of the Korean speech. For synthesis of the Facial image sequences, the paper defines the total 11 fundermental patterns for the lip shapes of the Korean consonants and vowels. The fundermental lip shapes allow us to pronounce all Korean sentences. Image synthesis method assigns the fundermental lip shapes to the key frames according to the initial, the middle and the final sound of each syllable in korean input text. The method interpolates the naturally changing lip shapes in inbetween frames. The number of the inbetween frames is estimated from the duration time of each syllable of the synthetic speech. The estimation accomplishes synchronization of the facial image sequences and speech. In speech synthesis, disk memory is required to store 3,040 demi-syllable. In synthesis of the facial image sequences, however, the disk memory is required to store only one image, because all frames are synthesized from the neutral face. Above method realizes synchronization of system which can real the Korean sentences with the synthetic speech and the synthetic facial iage sequences.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제13권2호
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• pp.47-61
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to survey the major elements that have changed English from a synthetic language to an analytic one. Therefore, this paper has looked at the differences between synthetic languages and analytic ones. In synthetic languages, the relation of words in a sentence is synthetically determined by means of inflections, while in analytic languages, the functions of words in a sentence are analytically determined by means of word order and function words. Thus, Old English with full inflectional systems shows the synthetic nature. However, in the course of time, Old English inflections came to be lost by phonetic changes and operation, which made English dependent on word order and function words to signal the relation of words in a sentence. The major phonetic changes that have shifted English are the change of final /m/ to /n/, the leveling of unstressed vowels, the loss of final /n/, and the decay of schwa in final syllables. These changes led to reduction of inflections of English as well as the loss of grammatical gender. The operation of analogy, the tendency of language to follow certain patterns and to adapt a less common form to a more familiar one, has also played an important role in changing English.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.121-125
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• 2018

This paper describes procedures of changing and measuring voice quality in terms of jitter. Jitter synthesis method was applied to the TD-PSOLA analysis system of the Praat software. The jitter component is synthesized based on a Gaussian random noise model. The TD-PSOLA re-synthesize process is used to synthesize the modified voice with artificial jitter. Various vocal jitter parameters are used to measure the change in quality caused by artificial systematic jitter change. Synthetic vowels, natural vowels and short sentences are used to check the change in voice quality through the synthesizer model. The results shows that the suggested method is useful for voice quality control in a limited way and can be used to alter the jitter component of voice.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제18권7호
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• pp.10-16
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• 1999

본 논문에서는 설계하지 않은 연속 음성 코퍼스로부터 추출된 CVC 음성 세그먼트를 사용하는 연결 기반 음성 합성기를 제안한다. 연속 음성은 각 음운간의 상호조음효과가 비교적 잘 반영되고, 자연스러운 억양 변화를 포함하고 있으므로 이를 적절하게 활용할 수 있는 합성 단위를 선택하면 자연스런 음성합성이 가능하다. 여러 가지 합성단위 가운데 CVC 합성 단위는 자음의 안정 부분에서 접속이 일어나므로 연결부에서의 음질 저하가 적고, 전후 자음과 모음간의 조음 현상을 잘 반영하는 장점이 있다. 본 논문에서는 CVC 합성 단위를 사용하는 경우 나타나는 문장 세그먼트들의 조합을 4가지로 분류하여 각각의 통계적 특성과 합성음성의 품질을 분석하고, CVC에 근거한 새로운 복합 합성 단위를 사용하는 방식을 제안한다. 제안된 방식을 사용하여 설계하지 않은 연속 음성 코퍼스로부터 CVC 음성 세그먼트를 추출하여 다양한 예제 문장을 합성하였다. 만일 필요한 CVC 음성 세그먼트가 음성 코퍼스에 존재하지 않는 경우 반음절 음성 세그먼트로 대치하여 합성하였다. 실험 결과 약 100 Mbytes의 연속 음성 코퍼스로 비교적 자연스러운 음성합성이 가능함을 알 수 있었다.