• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.83-92
• /
• 2010

The present study examined how listeners of Seoul Korean would recover deleted phonemes in consonant cluster simplification. In a phoneme monitoring experiment, listeners had to monitor for C2 (/k/ or /p/) in C1C2C3 when C2 was deleted (C1 was preserved) or preserved (C1 was deleted). The target consonant (C2) was either /k/ or /p/ (e.g., i$\b{lk}$-t${\partial}$lato vs. pa$\b{lp}$-t${\partial}$lato), and there were two listener groups, one group tested in 2002 and the other in 2009. Some points have emerged from the results. First, listeners were able to detect deleted phonemes as accurately and rapidly as preserved phonemes, showing that the physical presence of the acoustic information did not improve the listeners' performance. This suggests that listeners must have relied on language-specific phonological knowledge about the consonant cluster simplification, rather than relying on the low-level acoustic-phonetic information. Second, listener groups (participants in 2002 vs. 2009), differed in processing /p/ versus /k/: listeners in 2009 failed to detect /p/ more frequently than those in 2002, suggesting that the way the consonant cluster sequence is produced and perceived has changed over time. This result was interpreted as coming from statistical patterns of speech production in contemporary Seoul Korean as reported in a recent study by Cho & Kim (2009): /p/ is deleted far more often than /p/ is preserved, which is likely reflected in the way listeners process simplified variants. Finally, listeners processed /k/ more efficiently than /p/, especially when the target was physically present (in C-preserved condition), indicating that listeners benefited more from the presence of /k/ than of /p/. This was interpreted as supporting the view that velars are perceptually more robust than labials, which constrains shaping phonological patterns of the language. These results were then discussed in terms of their implications for theories of spoken word recognition.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.101-108
• /
• 2010

An inhaled salbutamol and salmeterol for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) and asthma have been used worldwidely. But there has been few study about the voice change evoked from the post-medicine effect. To evaluate the voice influenced of short-acting and long-acting ${\beta}_2$-agonists, two experiments were carried out: one was salbutamol experiment 1 with eight patients, the other was salmeterol experiment 2 with six patients. Experiment 1 was made of two stages: premedication & postmedication. Experiment 2 was four stages: stageI was premedication, stageII was postmedication & pregaggling, stageIII was postmedication & postgaggling(100 ml with water), and stageIV was postmedication & 30 minutes later. Measured parameters were F0, F0_SD, Jitter_rap, Shimmer_apq11, HNR, BW(1, 2, 3), Intensity, and H1-H2. The mean data collected from 3 repetitions each was statistically analyzed by Wilcoxon signed rank test for experiment 1 and repeated measures ANOVA for experiment 2. In experiment 1, significant differences were found in the Jitter_rap(Z= -2.10, p=0.036). The findings indicated that the postmedicated voice was worse than premedicated voice. In experiment 2, there wasn't significant difference, but values of parameters related to voice quality(Jitter_rap, Shimmer_apq11, HNR, and H1-H2) showed changes toward stageⅣ, that is, the voice quality was worse under medication.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.69-76
• /
• 2017

The current study investigated whether Korean learners' English-learning environments, especially target English accent (General American English (GAE) vs. Southern British English (SBE)) and English-language experience affected their production of English vowels. Thirty six EFL learners, 27 ESL-US learners, and 33 ESL-UK learners produced 8 English vowels with a bVt frame (beat, bit, bet, bat, bought, bot, boat, boot). The learners' productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of F1 and F2 frequencies. The overall results revealed that the learners' target accent had an effect on their production of some English vowels. The EFL and ESL-US learners' (especially, female learners') production of bought, bot, boat, and boot, which show characteristic differences between the GAE and SBE accents, was closer to that of the native American English (AE) speakers than the native British English (BE) speakers. In contrast, the ESL-UK learners' production of bought and bot demonstrated the opposite pattern. Thus, the impact of target accent was not demonstrated across the board. The effect of the learners' different English-language experience was also rather limited. This was because the EFL learners' production was not much different from the ESL-US learners' production, in spite of the ESL-US learners' residence in the US for more than 9 years. Furthermore, the Korean learners, irrespective of their different English-language experience, tended to produce bit and bat with lower F1 than the native AE and BE speakers, thus resulting in bit and bat to be produced similarly to beat and bet, respectively. This demonstrates the learners' persistent L1 effects on their English vowel production despite the learners' residence in the English speaking countries or their high English proficiency.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.4
• /
• pp.20-30
• /
• 1982

The aim of this paper is to analyse difficulties of the pronunciation in swedish vowels encountered by Koreans learners and to seek solutions in order to correct the possible errors. In the course of the analysis the swedish and Korean vowels in question are compared with the purpose of describing differences aha similarities between these two systems. This contrastive description is largely based on the students' articulatory speech level ana the writer's auditory , judgement . The following points are discussed : 1 ) Vowel length as a distinctive feature in Swedish compared with that of Korean. 2) A special attention is paid on the Swedish vowel [w:] that is characterized by its peculiar type of lip rounding. 3) The six pairs of Swedish vowels that are phonologically contrastive but difficult for Koreans to distinguish one from the other: [y:] ~ [w:], [i:] ~ [y:], [e:] ~ [${\phi}$:], [w;] ~ [u:] [w:] ~ [$\theta$], [$\theta$] ~ [u] 4) The r-colored vowel in the case of the postvocalic /r/ that is very common in American English is not allowed in English sound sequences. The r-colored vowel in the American English pattern has to be broken up and replaced hi-segmental vowel-consonant sequences . Korean accustomed to the American pronunciation are warned in this respect. For a more distinct articulation of the postvocalic /r/ trill [r] is preferred to fricative [z]. 5) The front vowels [e, $\varepsilon, {\;}{\phi}$) become opener variants (${\ae}, {\;}:{\ae}$] before / r / or supradentals. The results of the analysis show that difficulties of the pronunciation of the target language (Swedish) are mostly due to the interference from the Learner's source language (Korean). However, the Learner sometimes tends to get interference also from the other foreign language with which he or she is already familiar when he or she finds in that language more similarity to the target language than in his or her own mother tongue. Hence this foreign language (American English) in this case functions as a second language for Koreans in Learning Swedish.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.6
• /
• pp.4-12
• /
• 1983

이 논문은 음향 분석기를 이용하여 한국어의 단순모음 8개를 음향 음성학적으로 분석하고 그 결과를, 이 현복의 1971년 논문 "현대 서울말의 모음 음가"에서 기분 모음을 기준으로 하여 기술한 단순 모음의 소리값과 비교하는 데어 목적이 있다. 특히, 한국어의 모음 1)길고 세게 날 때, 2)짧고 세게 날 때, 그리고 3) 여리게 날 때의 세가지 환경에 따라 변이음의 음가가 달리 나타난다는 이 현복의 이론을 음향 음성학적으로 확인해 보는 것이 연구를 하는 주요 관심사이다. 이 실험에 사용된 자료는 위에 말한 이 현복의 논문과 "한국어 음성학"(김선기, 1937, 1971; 영문)에 제시된 낱말로 이루어져 있으며, 이를 스웨덴에 유학중인 지 민제가 자신의 목소리로 직접 녹음하여 위메오 대한 음성학과의 음향 음성학 실험실에서 음향분석기로 분석한 다음, 각 모음의 제1 및 제2포인트를 측정하여 리를 토대로 음향도를 만들었다. 이 실험 결과는 다음과 같이 요약할 수 있다. : 1)그림 2,3과 포먼트 표에서 보인 바와 같이, 모음 /이, 에, 오, 으/는 각각 이 현복의 주장대로 환경에 따라 세 개의 분명히 다른 음가를 나타내고 있다. 2) 한편 모음 /애, 아, 우, 어/는 모음의 길이에 따라 다만 두 종류의 음가 변동이 나타날 뿐이며 강세의 유무에 따른 음가 차이는 드러나지 않았다. 3) 이 현복의 주장대로 모음 /에/와 /애/mss 음가의 차이가 크지 않으므로 음운 대립이 무디어질 수 있음을 이번 실험 결과로 확인 하였다. 특히 강세가 없는 /에/는 강세가 있는 /애/와 소리값이 거의 같았다. 4) 이 현복은 표준말에서 /어/의 음가가 세대에 따라 다르며, 안정된 세대의 말씨에서는 /어:/가 /어/에 비해 높고 중앙화한 소리값을 지닌다는 주장을 하였다. 그러나 이 실험 연구에서는 녹음한 이가 젊은 세대이어서 인지 그러한 현상이 나타나지 않았고, 다만 /어:/는 /어/보다 높이만이 높은 것으로 나타났다. 5) 이번 실험 연구에서 모음의 소리값이 장단과 강세에 따라 달라진다는 이 현복의 주장이 대체로 증명된 셈이나, 종합적이고 확고한 결론을 내리려면 좀 더 광범한 실험 연구가 필요하다고 본다. 특히 안정된 세대의 말씨를 직접 녹음하여 음향 음성학적으로 분석함이 필요하다.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.26 no.10
• /
• pp.37-43
• /
• 2021

Using the acoustic features of speech, important social and linguistic information about the speaker can be obtained, and one of the key features is the dialect. A speaker's use of a dialect is a major barrier to interaction with a computer. Dialects can be distinguished at various levels such as phonemes, syllables, words, phrases, and sentences, but it is difficult to distinguish dialects by identifying them one by one. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a lightweight Korean dialect classification model using only MFCC among the features of speech data. We study the optimal method to utilize MFCC features through Korean conversational voice data, and compare the classification performance of five Korean dialects in Gyeonggi/Seoul, Gangwon, Chungcheong, Jeolla, and Gyeongsang in eight machine learning and deep learning classification models. The performance of most classification models was improved by normalizing the MFCC, and the accuracy was improved by 1.07% and F1-score by 2.04% compared to the best performance of the classification model before normalizing the MFCC.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.31-37
• /
• 2021

The fundamental frequency, or f0, is an important acoustic measure in the prosody of human speech. The current study examined the f0 distribution of a corpus of spontaneous speech in order to provide normative data for Korean speakers. The corpus consists of 40 speakers talking freely about their daily activities and their personal views. Praat scripts were created to collect f0 values, and a majority of obvious errors were corrected manually by watching and listening to the f0 contour on a narrow-band spectrogram. Statistical analyses of the f0 distribution were conducted using R. The results showed that the f0 values of all the Korean speakers were right-skewed, with a pointy distribution. The speakers produced spontaneous speech within a frequency range of 274 Hz (from 65 Hz to 339 Hz), excluding statistical outliers. The mode of the total f0 data was 102 Hz. The female f0 range, with a bimodal distribution, appeared wider than that of the male group. Regression analyses based on age and f0 values yielded negligible R-squared values. As the mode of an individual speaker could be predicted from the median, either the median or mode could serve as a good reference for the individual f0 range. Finally, an analysis of the continuous f0 points of intonational phrases revealed that the initial and final segments of the phrases yielded several f0 measurement errors. From these results, we conclude that an examination of a spontaneous speech corpus can provide linguists with useful measures to generalize acoustic properties of f0 variability in a language by an individual or groups. Further studies would be desirable of the use of statistical measures to secure reliable f0 values of individual speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2021

This study examined the characteristics of linguistic prosody in terms of cerebral lateralization in three groups of 9 healthy speakers and 14 speakers with a history of stroke (7 with left hemisphere damage (LHD), 7 with right hemisphere damage (RHD)). Specifically, prosodic characteristics related to speech rate, duration, pitch, and intensity were examined in three types of interrogative sentences (wh-questions, yes-no questions, alternative questions) with auditory perceptual evaluation. As a result, the statistically significant key variables showed flaws in production of the linguistic prosody in the speakers with LHD. The statistically significant variables were more insufficiently produced for wh-questions than for yes-no and alternative questions. This trend was particularly noticeable in variables related to pitch and speech rate. This result suggests that when Korean speakers process linguistic prosody, such as that of lexico-semantic and syntactic information in interrogative sentences, the left hemisphere seems to be superior to the right hemisphere.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.91-99
• /
• 2018

Korean stops are currently undergoing a tonogenetic sound change, as found in the Seoul dialect in which a merged VOT of aspirated and lax stops induces F0 to be the primary cue for distinguishing the two stops and the lax stops have lower F0 than the aspirated stops. In tonal languages, low tone is produced with a breathy voice. This study investigated whether there are changes in voice quality with respect to the tonogenetic sound change of Korean stops. Two age groups speaking the Seoul dialect participated in this study: five females and six males born in the 1940s and 1950s and nine females and eight males born in the 1980s and 1990s. This study replicated previous findings of VOT and F0 and further examined H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A2 to see how they correlate with the sound change. In the older and younger generations, H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A2 were significantly lower after the tense stops than after the aspirated and lax stops, but they were not significantly different after the aspirated and lax stops. However, the younger females exhibited some different results for H1-H2 and H1-A2 than the older generation. In the younger females, the H1-H2 mean was higher after the aspirated stops than it was after the lax stops at the vowel onset, and the H1-H2 difference increased at the vowel midpoint. Although there was an inter-speaker variation in the results of H1-H2 and H1-A1, analyses of individual speakers showed that the H1-H2 and H1-A1 were higher after the lax stops than after the aspirated stops in the younger female speakers. These results indicate that lax stops tend to be breathier than aspirated stops in the younger female speakers. They also indicate that changes in voice quality are on Korean stops with tonal sound change, but are still developing.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.147-154
• /
• 2018

Wet voice quality (WVQ) is a characteristic that appears after swallowing. Although the concept is accepted by many clinicians worldwide, it is nevertheless ambiguous. In this study, we investigated WVQ in patients with swallowing disorders using acoustic analysis. A total of 106 patients diagnosed with penetration-aspiration by the videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS) were recruited. A voice recording of vowel /a/ was conducted before and after the VFSS, and an acoustic analysis was then performed using PRAAT. Voice after VFSS was used for a perceptual judgment and divided into two groups: the Wet group (48 patients) and the Non-wet group (58 patients). At the post-VFSS stage, the two groups displayed significant differences in many acoustic parameters including F0_SD, Jitter, RAP, Shimmer, APQ, HNR, NHR, FUF, DVB, and CPP. The parameter affecting judging wetness resulted into Jitter and NHR by the logistic regression test. At the pre-VFSS stage, the two groups differed significantly in many acoustic parameters including Intensity, Jitter, RAP, Shimmer, NHR, FUF, DVB, and CPP. Both pre-and post-VFSS, the mean values of all significant parameters, except Intensity, HNR, and CPP, were higher in the Wet group. According to pre-and post-VFSS, the two groups displayed interactions in many parameters (Intensity, F0_SD, Jitter, RAP, Shimmer, APQ, HNR, NHR, FUF, DVB, and CPP). In particular, Intensity increased in both groups after the VFSS, although the increase in the Non-wet group was greater. Based on these results, it was conjectured that the WVQ after swallowing resulted from the secretion effect of the mucous membrane due to the dry laryngeal characteristic of elderly patients, rather than aspiration resulting in food on the vocal cords.