Asymmetric effects of speaking rate on the vowel/consonant ratio conditioned by coda voicing in English

Eon-Suk Ko 한국음성학회 2018 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.10 No.2

The vowel/consonant ratio is a well-known cue for the voicing of postvocalic consonants. This study investigates how this ratio changes as a function of speaking rate. Seven speakers of North American English read sentences containing target monosyllabic words that contrasted in coda voicing at three different speaking rates. Duration measures were taken for the voice onset time (VOT) of the onset consonant, the vowel, and the coda. The results show that the durations of the onset VOT and vowel are longer before voiced codas, and that the durations of all segments increase monotonically as speaking rate decreases. Importantly, the vowel/consonant ratio, a primary acoustic cue for coda voicing, was found to pattern asymmetrically for voiced and voiceless codas; it increases for voiced codas but decreases for voiceless codas with the decrease in speaking rate. This finding suggests that there is no stable ratio in the duration of preconsonantal vowels that is maintained in different speaking styles.

The phonology and semantics of expressive lengthening in Korean

Eon Suk Ko 한국음운론학회 2017 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.23 No.3

Expressive lengthening is a universal process with language-specific variation in its semantic and phonological implementation. This paper suggests that there are two types of expressive lengthening in Korean, i.e. intensification and diffusive lengthening. Intensification augments the core semantic attribute of a word, and its locus of lengthening is the last segment of the initial syllable. Diffusive lengthening, often applied to adjectives and adverbs derived from –ha verbs, yields the effect of spatial and/or temporal sustainment of the semantic property denoted by a word. The target locus for diffusive lengthening is often the stem-final syllable, with some exceptions. I suggest that the locus of expressive lengthening is determined by the semantic intent of the speaker rather than a morphological class. The data on intensification sheds fresh insight on the phonological representation of Korean laryngeal consonants. (Chosun University)

Nurture in nature : Mothers’ tacit knowledge and enhancement of linguistic cues to their children

Eon-Suk Ko 사단법인 한국언어학회 2019 한국언어학회 학술대회지 Vol.2019 No.6

Deriving the Metrical Head in Standard Korean

Eon-Suk Ko 언어과학회 2021 언어과학연구 Vol.- No.97

Standard Korean is known to have vowel length contrasts. It has, however, been proposed that the Korean long vowel is phonetic, whereby a long vowel reflects an elongation of vowel duration under stress (Ko 2002, 2013). This paper is a follow-up on this proposal to analyze the long vowel as a metrical head, whose derivation is shown in the framework of Halle and Idsardi (1995). The algorithm for deriving the metrical head involves formal proposals for the Projection, Edge Marking, and Head Location parameters for designating the most prominent syllable in the word. The metrical head is phonetically rendered prominent with the elongation of the vowel, which is audible in the initial syllable but to a lesser degree in the second (Ko 2013). The proposed algorithm provides a principled explanation for the so-called verb stem vowel shortening phenomenon by applying the cross-linguistically attested accent clash resolution.

Entrainment of prosody in the interaction of mothers with their young children

KO, EON-SUK,SEIDL, AMANDA,CRISTIA, ALEJANDRINA,REIMCHEN, MELISSA,SODERSTROM, MELANIE Cambridge University Press 2016 JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE Vol.43 No.2

<B>Abstract</B><P>Caregiver speech is not a static collection of utterances, but occurs in conversational exchanges, in which caregiver and child dynamically influence each other's speech. We investigate (a) whether children and caregivers modulate the prosody of their speech as a function of their interlocutor's speech, and (b) the influence of the initiator of the conversation on durational characteristics of the exchange. We analyzed naturalistic conversations from 13 mother-infant/toddler dyads aged 12-30 months across full-day recordings of 3-5 days per dyad using LENA and automated analytic tools. We found small, but significant, effects of mothers and their children influencing each other's speech, particularly in pitch measures. We also found longer utterances and shorter response latencies for the initiator of a conversation. While mothers show more mature conversational capabilities (more entrainment, shorter response latencies), our findings converge with prior research to highlight the active role of young children in the conversational exchange.</P>

An Information-Status Theory of Case and NP Deletion in Korean : With a Focus on the Realization of Object

Ko, Eon-Suk 서울대학교 어학연구소 2000 語學硏究 Vol.36 No.1

This paper examines the realization of the object and object case marker in Korean by means of a quantitative analysis of naturally occurring data, and provides a unified analysis of what determines the optional or obligatory realization of objects and the object marker through the information status theory of Prince (1992), the cognitive hierarchy theory of Gundel et al. (1993) and a focus theory of Vallduv'i and Vilkuna (1998). In a statistical analysis of the data, it is shown that the realization of the object and object case marker in Korean is closely related to the formality of the speech. It is also proposed that the object case marker -lul is a delimiter that converys kontrastive function, evoking a set of alternative members. This paper provides a typoligical addition to ways of information packaging by showing that morphology is exploited for conveying information in Korean while some languages mainly exploit syntax and/or prosody.

Effects of vowel duration on the perceived naturalness of English monosyllabic words ending in a stop: Some preliminary findings

Eon-Suk Ko 한국음성학회 2021 말소리와 음성과학 Vol.13 No.2

Preliminary findings are reported from five experiments testing the perceived naturalness of word tokens whose vowel durations are altered. The stimuli were minimal pairs of English words ending in a voiced/voiceless plosive. Results show an asymmetric effect of shortening and lengthening of the vowel on the perceived naturalness of the word. Incremental shortening of vowel duration initially shows a stable degree of perceived naturalness but rapidly deteriorates beyond a certain point. On the contrary, only a small degree of lengthening of the vowel made the perceived naturalness of the word quickly decay, but there was a floor effect such that the perceived degree of naturalness does not lower beyond a certain level. Further, the tokens with the original vowel duration were not always scored higher than the stimuli with a small degree of shortening. Future studies should address the issue of speaking rate and the ratio between the vowel and the stop closure duration to better understand the phenomenon. The issue investigated here has implications on the role of prototypical exemplars in the perception of phonotactic naturalness.

정도부사 ‘너무’의 의미와 의미운율

고언숙(Ko, Eon-Suk) 한국음운론학회 2015 음성·음운·형태론 연구 Vol.21 No.2

The Korean degree adverb nemu has traditionally been thought to have a negative meaning, and prescriptive grammar has dictated that it should be used in a negative context. Speakers, however, have violated this rule so often that the National Institute of the Korean Language recently acknowledged the use of nemu in a positive context. This paper investigates the usage of nemu in the conversational speech corpus Call Friend Korean. Specifically, it analyzes the distribution of the semantic contexts in which it is used. The classification of the sentiments for which nemu is used reveals that while nemu is used in a negative context most often, its usage in positive and neutral contexts is also quite frequent. A collocation analysis of the same corpus shows that nemu is more often used with negative words than positive or neutral ones. Based on these results, this paper proposes that nemu lacks a negative meaning in itself, but is imbued with a negative aura of meaning by its contexts or collocates. It also argues that the frequent violation of prescriptive grammar with regard to the usage of nemu reflects its status in the lexicon of lacking a grammaticalized negative meaning.

TalkBank의 음성 말뭉치를 활용한 대화 참여자의 상호작용 연구

고언숙 ( Eon-suk Ko ) 한국언어정보학회 2021 언어와 정보 Vol.25 No.2

This paper analyzes speaker dynamics in conversational exchanges between mothers and their young children based on open corpus data in the TalkBank system. In particular, we analyze four mother-infant dyads in the Providence corpus with focus on the interaction of the initiator of Conversational Block and the Conversational Turn with regard to variables such as the turn length and the response time. We show that both the mother and child speak longer in conversational blocks that they have initiated, which is consistent with the findings in Ko et al. (2016) based on data collected and processed by the LENA^® system. The model for response time, however, did not yield a significant interaction despite some indications towards such a tendency. The methodology for conducting such analyses using the corpus data in TalkBank is described in detail so that it could serve as a reference for research adopting similar procedures.

Shell Mapper Implementation of V. 34 Using a Table Method

Young Hoon Ko,Suk Hyon Yoon,Tae Hyen Moon,Chang Eon Kang 대한전자공학회 1996 ITC-CSCC :International Technical Conference on Ci Vol.- No.-