• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.37-47
• /
• 2022

The purpose of the this study is to observe the effects of healthy adults' age on temporal features of speech and identify which could differentiate older and young adults. We examined speech rates(i.e., overall speaking rate, articulation rate), occurrence of pause, and duration of pause per utterance by utilizing the National Institute of Korean Language's open corpus. We selected a total of 30 healthy adults (10 young, 10 middle-aged, and 10 older adults) in this study. There were significant differences among the groups in the overall speaking rate, articulation rate, total occurrence of pause, the occurrence of pause between syntactic words, total duration of pause, and duration of pause between syntactic words. The older and middle-aged adults showed slower speech rates and longer and more frequent pause than young adults. But there were no significant differences among the three groups in terms of pause within syntactic word. The overall speaking rate significantly differentiated older adults from young adults. These findings suggested that the effect of speakers' age was reflected in gradual changes in the temporal features of their speech.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.63-72
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to provide basic data for development of Korean teaching programs for immigrant women from multicultural families through the acoustic analysis of their speech rate and pauses. They showed slower speech rate, longer pause duration, and higher frequency of pauses compared to a Korean women's group. Philippine women, whose residence duration in Korea is relatively longer than that of Vietnamese women, were more similar to Korean women. The slower speech rate of the immigrant women seems to be due to their slower articulation rate and their reading habit of inserting a pause after almost every word in a sentence.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.117-127
• /
• 2012

This research reports the prosodic characteristics (including articulation speech rate, pause characteristics, duration) of children with cochlear implants with reference to those of children with normal hearing. Subjects are 8-to 10-year-old children, balancing each number of gender as 24. Dialogue speech data are comprised of four types of sentence patterns. Results show that 1) there's a statistically meaningful difference on articulation speech rate between the two groups. 2) On pauses, they are not observed in exclamatory and declarative sentences in normal children. While imperative sentences show no statistical difference on the number of pauses between the two groups, interrogative sentences do. 3) Declarative, exclamatory, and interrogative sentences reveal statistical difference between the two groups in terms of the sentence's final two-syllable word duration, showing no difference on imperative sentences. 4) When it comes to the RFP (duration ratio of sentence final syllable to penultimate syllable), we no statistically meaningful difference between the two groups in all types of sentences exists. 5) Lastly, RWS (the ratio of sentence final two syllable word duration to that of whole sentence duration) shows statistical difference between two groups in imperative sentences, but not in all the rest types.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.44
• /
• pp.343-372
• /
• 2016

This paper introduces symbols from Ghana, the 'Adinkra', and expands upon the concepts associated with it. In other words, the world view, values and scalability that appear to form philosophical thoughts in everyday life. 'Adinkra' are symbols from Ghana in West Africa. Adinkra means 'goodbye' or 'farewell'. There are some 400 Adinkra symbols, but the meanings of the symbols have been lost. The first book on Adinkra is 'The Adinkra Dictionary' (1998) by W. Bruce Willis. Adinkra is related to the Ghanaian culture, and represents concepts such as philosophical ideology, history, historical figures, myths, legends, animals, plants, etc. In the old days, because of its meaning-'goodbye' or 'farewell'-Adinkra was generally used for funerals. But today, Adinkra is utilized in a full range of cultural events and activities. Each of the 'Adinkra' has various meanings. According to Willis, Adinkra is ever-evolving and constantly expanding. As a matter of fact, Adinkra continues to expand, evolve and develop. Nevertheless, no books have been published on Adinkra since Bruce Willis (5 May 2016 to the present). Adinkra provides insights into the rich philosophical, educational, and historical significance of Africa. Therefore, Adinkra requires evolution, expansion, and research. In this study, we will examine the Adinkra, divided into four categories. The first is related to God and the powers, the second is related to moral education. The third symbolizes 'love' and 'friendship'. and lastly, the fourth is 'life' and 'death'.