The present study investigated the mental representation and processing of an ambiguous word in the bimodal processing system by manipulating the lexical ambiguity of a visually or auditorily presented word. Homonyms (e.g., '물었다') with more than two meanings and control words (e.g., '고통을') with a single meaning were used in the experiments. The lemma frequency of words was manipulated while the relative frequency of multiple meanings of each homonym was balanced. In both experiments using the lexical decision task, a robust frequency effect and a critical interaction of word type by frequency were found. In Experiment 1, spoken homonyms yielded faster latencies relative to control words (i.e., ambiguity advantage) in the low frequency condition, while ambiguity disadvantage was found in the high frequency condition. A similar interactive pattern was found in visually presented homonyms in the subsequent Experiment 2. Taken together, the first key finding is that interdependent lexico-semantic processing can be found both in the visual and auditory processing system, which in turn suggests that semantic processing is not modality dependent, but rather takes place on the basis of general lexical knowledge. The second is that multiple semantic candidates provide facilitative feedback only when the lemma frequency of the word is relatively low.

이 논문은 100년 전 학범 박승빈이 제안한 언어 개혁 운동의 내용을 살펴보고, 그의 100년 전 제안이 현재 우리에게 어떤 의미를 갖는지에 대해 논의하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 계명구락부를 배경으로 박승빈이 제안하고 실천했던 언어 개혁 운동의 내용은 크게 세 가지였다. 첫째는 성명이나 성 아래 ‘씨’로 경칭을 통일하는 것이었다. 둘째는 경칭의 2인칭 대명사 ‘당신’을 적극적으로 사용하자는 것이었다. 그리고 셋째는 아동 상호 간에 경어를 사용하게 하자는 것이었다. 박승빈의 세 가지 제안은 모두 기저에 한 가지 목표를 가지고 있다. 말로 완성하는 사회의 평등이 그것이다. 박승빈은 갑오개혁으로 법적으로는 만인 평등이 이루어졌지만 그 이전에 존재했던 굳건한 문벌, 남녀, 관작, 연령의 계급이 반영된 차별적인 언어의 사용으로 평등이 이루어지지 못하였다고 진단한다. 따라서 평등한 언어로의 개혁을 통해 평등한 사회를 이루어야 한다고 주장한다. 이러한 박승빈의 주장은 호칭의 차별적인 사용과 존댓말 반말이 여전히 존재하는 100년 후 한국어의 현재 모습을 성찰하게 한다.

The purpose of this study is to observe the realization of pause and breath groups from adult speakers and to examine how gender, generation, and tasks can affect this realization.For this purpose, we analyzed forty-eight male or female speakers.Their generation was divided into two groups: young, old.Task and gender affected both the realization of pause and breath groups.The length of the pause groups was longer in the read speech than in the spontaneous speech and female speech.On the other hand, the length of the breath group was longer in the spontaneous speech and the male speech.In the spontaneous speech, which requires planning, the speaker produced shorter length of pause group.The short sentence length of the reading material influenced the reason for which the length of the breath group was shorter in the reading speech.Gender difference resulted from difference in pause patterns between genders.In the case of the breath groups, the male speaker produced longer duration of pause than the female speaker did, which may be due to difference in lung capacity between genders.On the other hand, generation did not affect either the pause groups or the breath groups.The generation factor only influenced the number of syllables and the eojeols, which can be interpreted as the result of the difference in speech rate between generations.

본고는 한국인 피험자를 대상으로 지각 실험을 진행하여 화자의 실제 연령(Chronological age)과 지각 연령 (Perceived age) 간의 상관관계를 살피고, 한국인 피험자가 얼마나 정확하게 익명의 화자의 연령을 지각할 수 있는지를 밝히고자 한다. 또한, 이러한 연령 지각에 음성적 단서가 되는 음높이와 발화 속도와 지각 연령 간의 영향 관계를 검토하고자 한다. 이를 위해, 성인 80명을 대상으로 3가지 과제로 구성된 지각 실험을 진행하였다. 실험 자극은 표준어 화자 40명에게서 추출되었으며, 자유 발화, 낭독 발화, 모음 연장 발성으로 구성되었다. 각 실험은 10초 내외의 음성을 듣고 연령을 구체적인 숫자로 답하는 방식으로 진행되었다. 분석 결과, 한국인 피험자들은 상당히 높은 판단 정확도를 보였으며, 모음 연장 발성을 들었을 때보다 자유 발화와 낭독 발화를 들었을 때 화자의 연령을 더욱 정확하게 짐작하였다. 이러한 결과는 음성이 포함하고 있는 정보량의 차이에 기인한 것으로 보인다. 또한, 음성 분석을 수행한 결과 피험자들은 화자의 음높이와 발화 속도를 참고하여 화자의 연령을 추정하는 것으로 나타났으며, 음높이보다는 발화 속도가 연령 지각에 더 적극적으로 기여한 것으로 나타났다.

This study investigated the interaction between phonological phrase boundary and word frequency variable in Korean speech processing. A word monitoring task was performed to examine the interference caused by the frequency effect of target word depending on whether a phonological phrase is formed within the target word. Frequency of target word (high vs low) and phonological phrase boundary (within target word vs between target words) were applied as between and within subject condition respectively. Our results showed the significant main effect of the phonological phrase boundary and the significant interaction. In the post-hoc analysis, the high-frequency target words were detected significantly faster than the low-frequency target words only in the within phonological phrase boundary condition. Frequency effect in the between phonological phrase boundary condition did not appear. The results indicated that the phonological phrase boundary and word frequency variable played an important role in Korean speech processing. In particular, we discussed the possibility of processing the word frequency at the very early sensory information processing stage based on the interaction of two experimental factors.

This paper dealt with how realization of pauses in utterance is affected by speech style, gender, and generation. For this purpose, we analyzed the frequency and duration of pauses. Pauses were categorized into four types: pause with breath, pause with no breath, utterance medial pause, and utterance final pause. Forty-eight subjects living in Seoul were chosen from the Korean Standard Speech Database. All subjects engaged in reading and spontaneous speech, through which we could also compare the realization between the two speech styles. The results showed that utterance final pauses had longer durations than utterance medial pauses. It means that utterance final pause has a function that signals the end of an utterance to the audience. For difference between tasks, spontaneous speech had longer and more frequent pauses because of cognitive reasons. With regard to gender variables, women produced shorter and less frequent pauses. For male speakers, the duration of pauses with breath was significantly longer. Finally, for generation variable, older speakers produced more frequent pauses. In addition, the results showed several interaction effects. Male speakers produced longer pauses, but this gender effect was more prominent at the utterance final position.

This paper deals with how speech rate in Korean is affected by the sociolinguistic factors such as region, gender and generation. Speech rate was quantified as articulation rate (excluding physical pauses) and speaking rate (including physical pauses), both expressed as the number of syllables per second (sps). Other acoustic measures such as pause frequency and duration were also examined. Four hundred twelve subjects were chosen from Korean Standard Speech Database considering their age, gender and region. The result shows that generation has a significant effect on both speaking rate and articulation rate. Younger speakers produce their speech with significantly faster speaking rate and articulation rate than older speakers. Mean duration of total pause interval and the total number of pause of older speakers are also significantly different to those of younger speakers. Gender has a significant effect only on articulation rate, which means male speakers' speech rate is characterized by faster articulation rate, longer and more frequent pauses. Finally, region has no effect both on speaking and articulation rates.

This paper aims at investigating the prosodic markers and morphological markers in spoken Korean. Prosody, especially intonation, has linguistic and paralinguistic meanings in spoken Korean. As is well-known, prosody plays important role in spoken language: it is hard to determine whether a word(or a eojeol) is realized at the sentence final or non-final position without consulting the prosody. Only an exception is that a word(or eojeol) ends with a typical sentence final ending such as ‘–다, -냐, -라, -자’. Therefore, we can categorize two types of endings in Korean: clause terminal endings and sentence terminal endings. A eojeol with a clause terminal ending, which is categorized as a connective ending in the previous studies, terminates a sentence only with a terminal boundary tone. It does not terminates a sentence with a non-terminal boundary tone. On the other hand, a eojeol with a sentence terminal ending, which is categorized as a terminal ending in the previous studies, always terminates a sentence with a unmarked terminal boundary tone. The unmarked terminal boundary tone depends on the ending types: H% for the interrogative ending (e.g. {-냐), L% for the rests. Marked terminal boundary tone with sentence terminal ending only changes paralinguistic modal meaning of the sentence. It does not change the linguistic category of the sentence type, which is realized with the morphological marker(i.e. sentence terminal ending type). Only paralinguistic modal meaning changes in this case. On the other hand, when a eojeol does not end with a sentence terminal ending, a sentence can close off with terminal boundary tone and cannot close off with non-terminal boundary tone. In this case, terminal boundary tone can have linguistic meaning as well as paralinguistic modal meaning.

The data accumulated in this database will be used to develop a speaker identification system. This may also be applied towards, but not limited to, fields of phonetic studies, sociolinguistics, and language pathology. We plan to supplement the large-scale speech corpus next year, in terms of research methodology and content, to better answer the needs of diverse fields. The purpose of this study is to develop a speech corpus for standard Korean speech. For the samples to viably represent the state of spoken Korean, demographic factors were considered to modulate a balanced spread of age, gender, and dialects. Nine separate regional dialects were categorized, and five age groups were established from individuals in their 20s to 60s. A speech-sample collection protocol was developed for the purpose of this study where each speaker performs five tasks: two reading tasks, two semi-spontaneous speech tasks, and one spontaneous speech task. This particular configuration of sample data collection accommodates gathering of rich and well-balanced speech-samples across various speech types, and is expected to improve the utility of the speech corpus developed in this study. Samples from 639 individuals were collected using the protocol. Speech samples were collected also from other sources, for a combined total of samples from 1,012 individuals.

Background & Objectives: The aim of the present study is to provide information on the occurrence frequencies of Korean phoneme and syllable units based on the careful analysis of entries inthe Korean Dictionary. Information on phoneme and syllable frequencies of the entries is a fundamental knowledge component of the Korean language. Methods: Using 47,401 entries from the Yonsei Korean Dictionary, the occurrence frequencies for units of Korean phonemes and syllables were analyzed. Pronunciations of all the entries were manually checked, and SynKDP 1.5.2 was used to calculate thephoneme and syllable frequencies. Results: A total of 122,761 syllables and 290,131 phonemes were observed from 47,401 entries, with 65.8% of consonants occupying the onset position in the syllable structure. Among 36 phonemes, /alpha showed the highest frequency, and /(sic)/ showed the lowest frequency. Among 19 consonants, /k/ occupied the highest ranking, and /n/, /(sic), /l/, and /kappa were the next rankings, in that order. Syllable frequency was also investigated. A total of 1,283 syllable types were observed. However, the most frequent 82 syllable types, i.e., 6.4% of all observed syllable types, accounted for over 50% of the data. Discussion & Conclusion: Information on the phoneme and syllable frequencies of entries in the Korean dictionary is a fundamental knowledge component of the Korean language. Therefore, this type of information is useful not only for Korean linguistics, but also speech pathology, Korean language teaching, and speech engineering.