• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.75-83
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to examine how a singing program using self-voice monitoring for children with cochlear implants (CI) influences on the intonation and the accuracy of pitch production. To verify and estimate the effectiveness, a program was conducted with participants of 7 prelingual CI users, whose aged between 4 years and 7 years. The program adopted three stages from the self-voice monitoring: Listen, Explore, and Reproduce (LER stage). All participants received 8 singing sessions over 8 weeks, including pre-test, intervention, and post-test. For the pre and post-test, participants' singing of an excerpt of a song "happy birthday" and speaking three assertive sentences and three interrogative sentences were recorded and analyzed in terms of the intonation slopes at the end of the sentences and the melodic contour. From the sentence speeches, we found that the intonation slopes of the interrogative sentences significantly improved as they showed similar patterns with that of the average normal hearing group. Also, in regard to singing, we observed that the melody contour had progressed, as well as the range of pitch production had extended. The positive result from the intervention indicates that the singing program was effective for children with CI to develop the intonation skill and accuracy of pitch production.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.51-66
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• 2022

This study aims to help Korean English learners to learn English pronunciation by revealing which suprasegmentals affect the implementation of English sentences closer to native English speakers when they read English sentences. To this end, Korean middle school English learners were selected as subjects and research data were gathered through sentence types (declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative), as well as syllables. Speech rate, pause frequency, pause duration, F0 range, and rhythm among suprasegmentals were used for analysis of these English sentence utterances. Mean analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were performed. The results showed that speech rate, pause frequency, pause duration, and F0 range affected the evaluation of fluency levels. In the regression analysis between all suprasegmentals and fluency levels, the suprasegmentals that most affected fluency levels were speech rate and F0 range. Rhythm had no meaningful relation with fluency levels. Therefore, when teaching English pronunciation, it is necessary to teach students to increase their speech rate and F0 range. In addition, students should be trained to reduce both the number and the duration of pauses during utterance to improve their fluency. It is noteworthy that of the four sentence types, exclamative sentences were produced with faster speech rate, fewer pauses, shorter pause duration, and higher rhythm values.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

A wh-phrase positioned in an embedded clause can be interpreted as having a matrix scope if the sentence is produced with proper prosodic structures such as the wh-intonation. In a previous experiment, a sentence with a wh-phrase in an embedded clause was given to 40 speakers of Gyeongsang Korean. A script containing the sentence was provided to induce a matrix scope interpretation for the wh-phrase. These 40 utterances were prepared as stimuli for a perception test to verify whether the wh-phrases in the stimuli were perceived as having matrix scopes. Each utterance was played thrice to 24 subjects. The results showed that more than half of the 72 responses indicated a preference for an embedded scope rather than a matrix scope in 20 of the utterances. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that the matrix scope responses were best predicted by the magnitude of the pitch prominence in a prosodic word consisting of an embedded verb and a complementizer. The pitch prominence was calculated by subtracting the fundamental frequency (F0) at the right edge of the prosodic word from the peak F0 in the same prosodic word. The smaller the magnitude, the more matrix responses there were. These results suggest that the categorical perception of wh-scopes is based on the magnitude of pitch prominence.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.51-68
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• 2023

With the emergence of the internet and the increasing use of online communities for over 20 years, the age range of users has also been rising. This study explores the linguistic changes that have occurred as the user age in online communities has increased. To do this, data was collected and analyzed from an online community that has been actively operating, despite new member registrations being closed nine years ago. By comparing the posts over an 11-year period from 2012 to 2022, changes such as an increase in average comments, a decrease in interrogative sentences, and a decrease in imperative statements were observed. The study also proposed loneliness due to aging and a decline in curiosity and confidence as potential causes of these changes. In South Korea, which is rapidly entering an aging society unprecedentedly fast on a global scale, the increase in single-person households has evolved loneliness from a personal issue to a social problem, manifested in an increase in solitary deaths and reclusive individuals. This research sheds light on one aspect of these social phenomena through the analysis of data from a large online community.