• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.33B no.1
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• pp.96-107
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• 1996

A voice personality transformation algorithm using orthogonal vector space conversion is proposed in this paper. Voice personality transformation is the process of changing one person's acoustic features (source) to those of another person (target). In this paper, personality transformation is achieved by changing the LPC cepstrum coefficients, excitation spectrum and pitch contour. An orthogonal vector space conversion technique is proposed to transform the LPC cepstrum coefficients. The LPC cepstrum transformation is implemented by principle component decomposition by applying the Karhunen-Loeve transformation and minimum mean-square error coordinate transformation(MSECT). Additionally, we propose a pitch contour modification method to transform the prosodic characteristics of any speaker. To do this, reference pitch patterns for source and target speaker are firstly built up, and speaker's one. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in both subjective and objective evaluations.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-18
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• 2017

The relationships between the ability to understand changes in meaning depending on the prosody of spoken words and the ability to perceive pitch and melodic contour in cochlear implants (CI) recipients were examined. Fifteen postlingual CI recipients were measured in terms of speech prosody perception, speech perception, pitch discrimination (PD), and melody contour identification (MCI). The speech prosody perception test consists of words with positive (PW) and neutral meaning (NW). Participants were asked to identify the meaning of words depending on the conditions of positive and negative prosody. The MCI consists of subtests 1 and 2 with different chance levels to choose. Then, the relationships between speech prosody perception, speech perception, PD, and MCI performance were analyzed. There was a significant difference in identifying the meaning of words expressed in a different prosody between the PW and NW conditions. Speech prosody perception showed a significant correlation with MCI 1 while there was no significant relationship with speech perception. Although speech perception may be possible after CI, limited spoken word comprehension due to decreased sensitivity for prosodic changes may persist in CI recipients. In addition, there was a limitation in perception of melodic contour change compared to pitch discrimination, which is related to speech prosody perception.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.83-94
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• 1999

The purpose of this study was to explore musical development of 3- to S-year-old children and their musical home environment. The subjects were one hundred ninety-four children and their mothers enrolled in four kindergartens in Seoul. Each child sang the birthday song with peers in a birthday play setting. It was audiotaped for the children to sing the song. Questionnaire of musical home environment developed by the researchers was used for the mothers. The children's rhythm and pitch development were coded by the scoring categories of Project Spectrum(Krechevsky, 1994). The data were analyzed by t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe, and Pearson correlation. The results of this study were as follows: Firstly, there was no a significant difference in the children's rhythm development among three age-groups as well as between boys and girls. Among rhythm subcategories, the unit of note was ranked in the highest score and the pulse the next. Secondly, there were significant differences in children's pitch development among three age-groups and between boys and girls. The older children significantly achieved higher scores than the younger. Among pitch subcategories, the contour was ranked in the highest score and the interval the next. Thirdly, the children's musical development and their physical home environment related to music were correlated positively. The children's pitch development was significantly related to the mothers' musical attitude and the children's rhythm development to the mothers' educational levels.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.157-177
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• 1998

An electroglottography (EGG) was used to investigate the function of the vocal folds during their vibration. In this study, four Korean native speakers and 10 vocal polyp patients were selected. To investigate the dynamic change of EGG waveforms for the three-way distinction of Korean stops, a DSP-Sona graph model 5500, a Rino- Laryngeal stroboscope, a CSL model 4300B and a Laryngograph were used. An EGG Model 4338 was used to exam the vocal polyp of patients' voices during high, low, comfortable pitch production. The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of Korean stop consonants in relation to pitch and to observe laryngeal movement during vocal fold vibration and speech production. The basic data accumulated during this research can be applied in clinical treatment. The results are as follows: on the Korean stop consonants, the aspirated stop is the highest in the GOT and PC1. On the angle of vowel contour, the angle of lenis is smaller than the angle of heavily aspirated and glottalized stops. The fundamental frequency is lowest at the lenis stop, In vocal polyp patients', the low pitch range is smaller than in normal speakers'. The pitch break and the vocal fry were observed. The jitter and OQ value are higher in vocal polyp patients than in those of normal speakers'.

• MALSORI
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• no.35_36
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• pp.157-173
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• 1998

This is a pilot study on applying the Rise/Fall/connection(RFC) model to Korean intonation tot speech synthesis. RFC model contains successive intonation events, which can be pitch accents and intonation boundary tones. The intonation contour of RFC model is composed of piecewise linear curves of rise, fall, and connection elements, and each element can have any amplitude and duration. In this paper, elements of RFC model is slightly modified to accommodate the characteristics of Korean intonation. Subjective preference test was conducted to compare the modified RFC model with the original one. The results show that the intonation contour produced by the modified RFC model is perceptually indistinguishable from that of the original RFC model, while the former requires less number of labels than the latter.

• MALSORI
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• no.54
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• pp.45-61
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• 2005

In this paper, we present a method of generating intonation contour for Korean text-to-speech (TTS) system and a method of synthesizing emotional speech, both based on Soft template mark-up language (Stem-ML), a novel prosody generation model combining mark-up tags and pitch generation in one. The evaluation shows that the intonation contour generated by Stem-ML is better than that by our previous work. It is also found that Stem-ML is a useful tool for generating emotional speech, by controling limited number of tags. Large-size emotional speech database is crucial for more extensive evaluation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.347-356
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• 2003

The characteristics of near wakes of circular cylinders with serrated fins are investigated experimentally using a hot-wire anemometer for various freestream velocities. Near wake structures of the fin tubes are observed using a phase average technique. With increasing fin height and decreasing fin pitch. oscillation of streamwise velocity increases. It file oscillation of lateral velocity decreases. The time averaged V-component velocity distribution of the finned tube is contrary to that of the circular cylinder due to the different strength of entrainment flow. This strength is affected by the distance of (equation omitted) = 1.0 contour lines. (equation omitted) = 1.0 contour line approaches to the wake center line when the fin density is increased. When the distance between (equation omitted) = 1.0 contour lines comes close the shear force should be increased and the flow toward the wake center line can be more strengthened because of the shear force. Factors related to the velocity recovery in the near wake of the finned tube are attributed to tile turbulent intensity, the boundary layer thickness. the position and strength of entrainment process.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• spring
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• pp.119-122
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• 2000

In this paper, we implement an elementary system to correct accent, pronunciation, and intonation in English spoken by non-native English speakers. In case of the accent evaluation, energy and pitch information are used to find stressed syllables, and then we extract the segment information of input patterns using a dynamic time warping method to discriminate and evaluate accent position. For the pronunciation evaluation. we utilize the segment information using the same algorithm as in accent evaluation and calculate the spectral distance measure for each phoneme between input and reference. For the intonation evaluation. we propose nine pattern of slope to estimate pitch contour, then we grade test sentences by accumulated error obtained by the distance measure and estimated slope. Our result shows that 98 percent of accent and 71 percent of pronunciation evaluation agree with perceptual measure. As the result of the intonation evaluation. system represent the similar order of grade for the four sentences having different intonation patterns compared with perceptual evaluation.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.95-108
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• 2009

One of the learning difficulties for Korean learners of English is the intonation of English focused yes/no questions. Focused words in English yes/no questions are realized as low pitch accents which contrast with high pitch accents in Korean counterparts. In order to improve Korean students' intonation, direct and metalinguistic explanations on the intonation of English focused yes/no questions were given to Korean learners of English. In pre-tests and post-tests, students' perceptions on the target items were measured. The study results showed that phonetic explanation using intonation contour enhanced students' perception on English intonation. With respect to the position of focused words, sentence initial and medial focused questions were more difficult than sentence final focused questions. The perception was most improved in sentence initial focused questions. The study showed the immediate effects of the explicit instruction on perceptions of English intonation.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.43-47
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• 2003

This paper is phonetic study of $F_{0}$ range and boundary tone in Mandarin Chinese. The production data from 6 Chinese speakers show that there are declination, pitch resetting and tonal variation of boundary tone. In declarative sentence, $F_{0}$ declines gradually over the utterance but mid-sentence boundary prevents $F_{0}$ of following syllable from declining because of pitch resetting. $F_{0}$ range of syllable is expanded before the mid- and final sentence boundaries. In interrogative one, $F_{0}$ ascends gradually over the utterance and mid-sentence boundary makes $F_{0}$ of following syllable rise more. $F_{0}$ range of sentence final syllable is expanded and $F_{0}$ contour shows rising curve.