• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.67-76
• /
• 2001

This study is targeted at introducing the three aspects of speech timing (articulatory, acoustic and auditory) and discussing their strong and weak points in describing speech timing. Traditional (extrinsic) articulatory timing theories exclude timing representation in the speaker's articulatory plan for his utterance, while the (intrinsic) articulatory timing theories headed by Fowler incorporate time into the plan for an utterance. As compared with articulatory timing studies with crucial constraints in data collection, acoustic timing studies can deal with even several hours of speech relatively easily. This enables us to perform suprasegmental timing studies as well as segmental timing studies. On the other hand, perception of speech timing is related to psychology rather than physiology and physics. Therefore, auditory timing studies contribute to enhancing our understanding of speech timing from the psychological point of view. Traditionally, some theories of speech timing (e.g. typology of speech rhythm: stress-timing; syllable-timing or mora-timing) have been based on our perception. However, it is problematic that auditory timing can be subjective despite some validity. Many questions as to speech timing are expected to be answered more objectively. Acoustic and articulatory description of timing will be the method of solving such problems of auditory timing.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.67
• /
• pp.1-16
• /
• 2008

Stress effects upon Korean vowels were investigated with reference to rhythm. We measured three acoustic correlates (Duration: VOT, Vowel Duration; F0; Intensity) of stress from the seven pairs of stressed vs. unstressed Korean vowels /i, ${\varepsilon}(e)$, a, o, u, i, e/. The results of the experiment revealed that stress gave only inconsistent and weak effects on duration, which supports that Korean is not a stress-timed language as far as strong stress effects on duration are still considered crucial in stress-timing. On the other hand, Korean stressed vowels were most characterized with higher F0 and next with stronger intensity. But speakers generally showed tactics to reversely use F0 and intensity in stressing an utterance rather than proportionately strengthening both of the two acoustic correlates of stress. There was found great inter-speaker variability especially in the variations of duration.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.121-135
• /
• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Korean speakers realize English stress and rhythm at the sentence level, and investigate what different acoustic characteristics of English sentence stress and rhythm Korean speakers have, compared with those of American English speakers. Stressed words in the sentence were analyzed in terms of duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the stressed vowel in the word with neutral stress and with emphatic stress, respectively. According to the results, when the words had emphatic stress, both Koreans' and Americans' F0 and intensity of the stressed vowel were higher than those with neutral stress. Korean speakers of English realized the sentence stress with shorter vowel duration and higher F0 than American English speakers when the words had emphatic stress. The analysis of the timing of the sentence with increased unstressed syllables showed that both Americans and Koreans produced the sentence with longer duration as the number of unstressed syllables increased. However, the duration of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables by Koreans was longer than that by Americans. Americans seemed to produce unstressed syllables between stressed syllables faster than Koreans for regular intervals of stressed syllables. This analysis implies that if there are more unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, Koreans might produce unstressed syllables and the whole sentence with longer duration.