Phonetics and Speech Sciences (말소리와 음성과학)

Korean Society of Speech Sciences (한국음성학회)
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Cross-generational Change of /o/ and /u/ in Seoul Korean II: Spectral Interactions in Normalized Vowel Space

  • Received : 2013.05.01
  • Accepted : 2013.06.24
  • Published : 2013.06.30
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Abstract

This is a follow-up study on Han and Kang (2013) which argued that the Euclidean distances between /o/ and /u/ in Seoul Korean decreased in the first syllable position as speakers were among younger female speakers but not for male speakers, whereas in the second syllable position both gender groups showed a cross-generational decreasing effect of the Euclidean distance between /o/ and /u/. This study normalized the same data in Han and Kang (2013) which measured 12 speakers (six males and six females) for each Age group and investigated the spectral changes vowels /o/ and /u/ between age and gender, using the log-mean normalized statistical results. This study also examined overlap fraction values generated in SOAM 2D ($F1{\times}F2$) (cf. Wassink, 2006), which may also indicate the proximity of two vowels in question. The results showed that /o/ and /u/ vowels were making closer with /o/ raising for female speakers in $V_1$ and $V_2$ positions but only in the $V_2$ position for male speakers. That is, females led the upward movement of peripheral /o/ vowel, just like the raising of 'e' and 'o' in New York City (Labov, 1991). The results also showed that younger speakers used a rather narrow vowel space for the vowels. This also contributed to the proximity of the vowels /o/ and /u/, resulting in rather large overlap fraction values for younger speakers between these two vowels.

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Acknowledgement

Supported by : Hanyang University

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  2. Neutralization of Vowels /ɨ/ and /u/ after a Labial Consonant in Korean: A Cross-generational Study vol.6, pp.1, 2014, https://doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2014.6.1.003
  3. Sound change of /o/ in modern Seoul Korean: Focused on relations with acoustic characteristics and perception vol.6, pp.3, 2014, https://doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2014.6.3.109
  4. Acoustic parameters that differentiate /o/ from /u/ in Seoul Korean vol.10, pp.2, 2018, https://doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2018.10.2.015
  5. Dominance of lower formants of Korean vowels /o/–/u/ in perceptual identification by Seoul dialect listeners vol.40, pp.1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1250/ast.40.56
  6. Origin of the Higher Difficulty in the Recognition of Vowels Compared to Handwritten Digits in Deep Neural Networks vol.74, pp.1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.3938/jkps.74.12