• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.17-25
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• 2023

This study examines the fundamental frequency(f0) distribution of 2,740 Korean speakers in a dialogue speech corpus. Praat and R were used for the collection and analysis of acoustical f0 data after removing extreme values considering the interquartile f0 range of the intonational phrases produced by each individual speaker. Results showed that the average f0 value of all speakers was 185 Hz and the median value was 187 Hz. The f0 data showed a positively skewed distribution of 0.11, and the kurtosis was -0.09, which is close to the normal distribution. The pitch values of daily conversations varied in the range of 238 Hz. Further examination of the male and female groups showed distinct median f0 values: 114 Hz for males and 199 Hz for females. A t-test between the two groups yielded a significant difference. The skewness representing the distribution shape was 1.24 for the male group and 0.58 for the female group. The kurtosis was 5.21 and 3.88 for the male and female groups, and the male group values appeared leptokurtic. A regression analysis between the median f0 and age yielded a slope of 0.15 for the male group and -0.586 for the female group, which indicated a divergent relationship. In conclusion, a normative f0 distribution of different Korean age and sex groups can be examined in the conversational speech corpus recorded by a massive number of participants. However, more rigorous data might be required to define a relation between age and f0 values.