• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 2003

The devoicing vowel is a phonological process whose contrast in sonority is lost or reduces in a particular phonetic environment. Phonetically, the vocal fold vibration originates from the abduction/adduction of the glottis in relation to supraglottal articulatory movements. The purpose of this study is to investigate Korean vowel devoicing by means of experimental instruments. The interrelated laryngeal adjustments and aerodynamic effects for this voicing can clarify the redundant articulatory gestures relevant to the distinctive feature of sonority. Five test words were selected, being composed of the high vowel /i/, between the fricative and strong aspirated or lenis affricated consonants. The subjects uttered the test words successively at a normal or at a faster speed. The EMG, the sensing tube Gaeltec S7b and the High-Speech Analysis system and MSL II were used in these studies. Acoustically, three different types of speech waveforms and spectrograms were classified, based on the voicing variation. The intraoral air pressure curves showed differences, depending on the voicing variations. The activity patterns of the PCA and the CT for devoicing vowels appeared differently from those showing the partially devoicing vowels and the voicing vowels.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.153-156
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• 2003

In this paper, we studied advanced audio/ voice information processing techniques, and trying to introduce more human friendly audio/voice. It is just in the beginning stage. Firstly, we approached in well-known time-domain methods such as moving average, differentiation, interpolation, and decimation. Moreover, some variation of them and envelope contour modification are utilized. We also suggested the MOS test to evaluate subjective listening factors. In the long term viewpoint, user's preference, mood, and environmental conditions will be considered and according to them, we hope our future technique can adapt speech and audio signals automatically.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.39-48
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• 2009

Previous studies on the effects of speaking rate on voice onset time (VOT) of stops in English, French, Icelandic, and Thai indicate that speaking rate asymmetrically affects VOT values. That is, pre-voiced and long-lag stops vary due to the rate factor more than short-lag stops do. One suggested explanation for this asymmetry is that it is due to the necessity of maintaining phonetic contrasts among the stop categories. Since pre-voiced and long-lag stops represent the ends of the VOT scale, they encompass broad swathes of that range and consequently allow for large variations. On the other hand, the VOT variations of short-lag stops may result in overlap with the VOTs of long-lag stops. This study aimed to explore the effects of speaking rate on the VOTs of Korean stops and see whether Korean fortis and lenis stops are limited in the degrees of variation as a function of rates due to the existence of stops with larger VOT values, lenis and aspirated stops respectively. Conversely, aspirated stops were expected to show more variation since there are no other categories with longer VOTs. Fortis, lenis, and aspirated stops in /CVn/ words (C = bilabial or velar stop, V = /i/ or /a/) were examined in isolation, and at normal and fast rates in a carrier sentence. Speaking rates were controlled by alternating words or sentences on a computer screen at intervals of two seconds for the isolation- and normal-rate conditions and one second for the fast-rate condition. This study found that while the VOTs of fortis stops did not change significantly, those of lenis and aspirated stops showed considerable changes as a function of speaking rates. Also, overlap between lenis and aspirated stops occurred considerably at all speaking rates. These phenomena were interpreted to relate to the fact that VOT contrasts between lenis and aspirated stops in Korean are currently being collapsed. Large variations of lenis stops as a function of rates seem to occur due to a weak motivation to limit the degree of variations for the purpose of maintaining phonetic contrasts. The significant overlap between lenis and aspirated stops at all rates was interpreted to occur because the VOT merger between the two categories became considerably fixed. Also the percentage of correctly-classified VOTs by optimal-boundary values between lenis and aspirated stops turned out to be lower than in previously-studied languages. This was interpreted to be further evidence that VOTs are losing their role in contrasting the two stop categories in Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.71-81
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• 2011

This paper investigated how prosodic position and word type affect the phonetic structure of Korean coronal stops. Initial segments of prosodic domains were known to be more strongly articulated and longer relative to prosodic domain-medial segments. However, there are few studies examining whether the properties of prosodic domain-initial segments are affected by the information content of words (real vs. nonsense words). In addition, since the scope of domain-initial effect was known to be local to the initial consonant and the effects on the following vowel have been found to be limited, it is thus worth examining whether the prosodic domain-initial effect extends into the vowel after the initial consonant in a systematic way across different prosodic domains. The acoustic properties of Korean coronal stops (lenis /t/, aspirated /$t^h$/, and tense /t'/) were compared across Intonational Phrase, Phonological Phrase and Word-initial positions both in real and nonsense words. The durational intervals such as VOT and CV duration were cumulatively lengthened for /t/ and /$t^h$/ in the higher prosodic domain-initial positions. However, tense stop /t'/ did not show any variation as a function of prosodic position and word type. The domain-initial lenis stop showed significantly longer duration in nonsense words than in real words. But the prosodic domain-initial effect was not found in the properties of F0 and [H1-H2] of the vowel after initial stops. The present study provided evidence that speakers tend to enhance speech clarity when there is less contextual information as in prosodic domain-initial position and in nonsense words.

• MALSORI
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• no.65
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• pp.51-65
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• 2008

The aim of this study is to compare ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) children with normal children in terms of the prosodic features. Materials are collected by the reading of Korean read sentences. They are composed of 10 declarative sentences, each of which was consisted of 5-6 words. Subjects are consisted of 10 ASD and 10 normal male children with a receptive vocabulary age of 5;0-6;5 years. We found out that both groups showed the differences not only in the tonal patterns at the end of the prosodic phrases, but also in both the degree of rising and falling slope related to pitch contour. While HL% and HLH% were highly emerged in sentence final position in normal group, HL% and HLH% were prominent in ASD group in the same position. LH% and LHL% IP types were observed only in ASD group in sentence medial position. The slope showing the variation in the fundamental frequency at the end of the prosodic phrase was twice as steep in the group of ASD children as in the group of normal children.

• MALSORI
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• no.57
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• pp.175-189
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• 2006

Because a packet loss brings about degradation of speech quality, VoIP speech coders have PLC (Packet Loss Concealment) mechanism. G.711, which is a mandatory VoIP speech coder, also has the PLC algorithm based on pitch period replication. However, it is not robust to burst losses. Thus, we propose two methods to improve the performance of the original PLC algorithm in G.711. One adaptively utilizes voiced/unvoiced information of adjacent good frames regarding to the current lost frame. The other is based on adaptive gain control according to energy variation across the frames. We evaluate the performance of the proposed PLC algorithm by measuring a PESQ value under different random and burst packet loss simulating conditions. It is shown from the experiments that the performance of the proposed PLC algorithm outperforms that of PLC employed in ITU-T Recommendation G.711.

• MALSORI
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• no.19_20
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• pp.58-87
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• 1990

According to Government Phonology, at 1 phonological positions save the domain's head must be licensed in order to appear in the syllable structure. A non-nuclear head is licensed by the following nucleus, and the nuclei with phonetic content are licensed through government by the nuclear head of the domain at the level of the nuclear projection. Therefore, in the theory of Government Phonology it is claimed that words always end with a nucleus. With regard to the licensing of empty nuclei, Kaye(1990a) proposes the 'Empty Category Principle' and its sub-theory of 'Projection Government'. Government Phonology claims that a nucleus which dominates a vowel that regularly undergoes elision in certain contexts is underlyingly empty. This underlying empty nucleus is not manifested phonetically when it is properly governed by an unlicensed(i, e, a nucleus filled with a full vowel). It is when proper government fails to apply, that the empty nucleus is phonetically Interpreted. The purpose of this paper is to present a principled account of the process of $[i]{\Leftrightarrow}{\emptyset}$ alternation in Korean. Following Kaye's proposal, we assume that [i] of Korean is underlyingly empty. This position is pronounced as [i] if it is unlicensed, and is not phonetically realized if is licensed. Empty nuclei ape devided into two categories: domain-internal and domain-final. Firstly, we consider the question why Korean has little word ending with [i]. As for this, ECP states that domain-final empty nuclei are not pronounced if the language licenses domain-final empty nuclei. Whether a final empty nucleus may occur in the structure is parametric variation. This property is seen from the fact that words may appear to end in consonants in this language. Since Korean abounds with words ending in a consonant, it licenses domain-final empty nuclei. Therefore, it is quite natural that Korean has little word ending with [i]. Secondly, word-internal empty nuclei of Korean respect proper government and inter-onset government. That is, an empty nucleus in word-internal position will be pronounced with the vowel [i] if either proper government or inter-onset government fail to apply. Inter-onset government refers to the government established between two onsets across an empty nucleus. Thirdly, we consider words ending with [i], which seems to be exceptional to the final licensing. Host of them are. either mono-syllabic verbs(for instance, [s'i-] 'to write') or derived adjectives ending with [p'i] (for instance, [kip'i-] 'be happy'). As for the former, the 'inaccessibility for proper government' is applied because the empty nucleus appears in the first syllable. In latter case, domain-final empty nuclei are pronounced as [i] because of government-licensing. That is, final empty nucleus is pronounced to license the preceding onset dominating negatively charmed segments which empty nucleus of Korean cannot license.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.35S no.12
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• pp.93-102
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• 1998

In noisy environments, human speech productions are influenced by noises(Lombard effect), and speech signals are contaminated. These distortions dramatically reduce the performance of speech recognition systems. This paper proposes a method of the Lombard effect compensation and noise suppression in order to improve speech recognition performance in noise environments. To estimate the intensity of the Lombard effect which is a nonlinear distortion depending on the ambient noise levels, speakers, and phonetic units, we formulate the measure of the Lombard effect level based on the acoustic speech signal, and the measure is used to compensate the Lombard effect. The distortions of speech under noisy environments are cancelled out as follows. First, spectral subtraction and band-pass filtering are used to cancel out noise. Second, energy nomalization is proposed to cancel out the variation of vocal intensity by the Lombard effect. Finally, the Lombard effect level controls the transform which converts Lombard speech cepstrum to clean speech cepstrum. The proposed method was validated on 50 korean word recognition. Average recognition rates were 82.6%, 95.7%, 97.6% with the proposed method, while 46.3%, 75.5%, 87.4% without any compensation at SNR 0, 10, 20 dB, respectively.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.166-177
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• 2000

The purpose of this study was to create letters for of nonliterary Pulang tribe in Thailand those who immigrant from China. illiterate Pulang tribe hand down their tradition by primary oral culture therefore their tradition can't initiate and keep, moreover, it may disappear throughout history. So it is expected to crusade against unlettered people. The scheme of research adopted in this study was a minority race who habitate at the northern Machan, Chiangrai in Thailand. It is not only analysis of language but also the eradication of literacy and the research based on linguistic, ethnolinguistic, and primary oral culture. Five Pulang people who live in that area were chosen for creating letters. By using the I. P. A., after each word was listen to their pronunciation one by one it was described and repeated this process several times; the material words and humanbody were pointed in front of them while other words were described by gesture. For final description, number of people were in the lineup for listening the sound of words and phrases to sentences. In the first stage, it was an analysis segmental of Pulang: vocoid, contoid and diphthong were described with each sample syllables and words. The suprasegmental were studied with intonation and juncture of the words in the second stage. Two words were compared and different meanings within their intonation and juncture were shown. At the end of this part, each case of phonemic or morphophonemics representation described the juncture in the words. In the third stage, minimal pairs were analyzed with vowels and consonants and described in free variation based on words. In the last stage, syllable structure in open syllable and closed syllable was studied and then each syllable of its structure was analyzed with samples. There were thirty-two phonemes in apong Pulang as follows: seven vocoids; a, i, e, o, u, ${\ae}$, and $\wedge$, one diphthong; wu, 24 contoids; b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, k, 1, m, n, ${\eta}, {\;}p^{h}$, p, p, r, s, s, sh, t, t, w, and y. Their pronunciations of p, s, d, $p^{h}$, j, and t are frequently used in speech and are unique in triphthong. Moreover, most of the words used initial and final consonant cluster.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.35-46
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• 2021

In this study, we examined the interactive aspects between pitch reduction phenomena considered a universal language phenomenon and native language interference in the production of L2 intonation performed by Chinese learners of Korean. To investigate their interaction, we conducted an acoustic analysis using acoustic measures such as pitch span, pitch level, pitch dynamic quotient, skewness, and kurtosis. In addition, the correlation between text comprehension and pitch was examined. The analyzed material consisted of four Korean discourses containing five and seven sentences of varying difficulty. Seven Korean native speakers and thirty Chinese learners who differed in their Korean proficiency participated in the production test. The results, for differences by language, showed that Chinese had a more expanded pitch span, and a higher pitch level than Korean. The analysis between groups showed that at the beginner and intermediate levels, pitch reduction was prominent, i.e., their Korean was characterized by a compressed pitch span, low pitch level, and less sentence internal pitch variation. Contrariwise, the pitch use of advanced speakers was most similar to Korean native speakers. There was no significant correlation between text difficulty and pitch use. Through this study, we observed that pitch reduction was more pronounced than native language interference in the phonetic layer.