• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.29 no.5
• /
• pp.325-331
• /
• 2010

Categorical perception has been noted as characteristic properties of linguistic stimuli. In this study, Korean monosyllabic minimal pairs (consonant-vowel-consonant, CVC) were analyzed to understand perception boundaries between clinically confusing words. An efficient scheme has been developed to systematically synthesize temporal transition waveforms (11 steps) from one word to the target word for the pairs of /gom/-/gong/, /non/-/noon/, and /don/-/non/. The corresponding slopes, widths, and non-dominant factors of perception boundaries were analyzed for the total of 40 young normal subjects (20 males and 20 females). Results showed that there were relative pattern differences among confusing monosyllabic minimal pairs under categorical perception. For instance, the vowel difference within CVC pairs led to the lowest boundary performance in this experiment set. Data also indicated the potential application of the overall procedure for evaluating auditory functions and assisting rehabilitation programs.