Rhythm Metrics of Spoken Korean

In this paper, the rhythm characteristics of spoken Korean are investigated. Instead of conventional methods in which rhythm events are examined by researchers' impressionistic judgments and interpretation, calculation of numerical measures are performed so that a large amount of data tokens can be processed. Besides, the technique of automatic speech recognition (ASR) is adopted for the purpose of future application of measured values into practical systems. Results show that some metrics are useful for characterizing the rhythm structure of Korean utterances as compared to that of other languages, especially those traditionally classified as stress-based language. It is also discussed whether the conventional dichotomy of rhythm classification is valid and plausible.