• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.45-50
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• 2018

The vowel/consonant ratio is a well-known cue for the voicing of postvocalic consonants. This study investigates how this ratio changes as a function of speaking rate. Seven speakers of North American English read sentences containing target monosyllabic words that contrasted in coda voicing at three different speaking rates. Duration measures were taken for the voice onset time (VOT) of the onset consonant, the vowel, and the coda. The results show that the durations of the onset VOT and vowel are longer before voiced codas, and that the durations of all segments increase monotonically as speaking rate decreases. Importantly, the vowel/consonant ratio, a primary acoustic cue for coda voicing, was found to pattern asymmetrically for voiced and voiceless codas; it increases for voiced codas but decreases for voiceless codas with the decrease in speaking rate. This finding suggests that there is no stable ratio in the duration of preconsonantal vowels that is maintained in different speaking styles.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.542-551
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine how Korean college students perceive and produce American English vowels /i, ɪ, eɪ, ${\varepsilon}$, ${\ae}$, ${\alpha}$, ɔ, oʊ, ʊ, u, ʌ/ embedded in CVC words, and further to examine the relationship between perception and production of the target vowels. Forty-two participants who are English major/double major were divided into 2 groups under different conditions: the control group took only theoretical lessons about English phonetics and the experimental group took 4-week phonetic training lessons in addition to the theoretical ones. The result of the pretest revealed that the two groups showed strong correlations between perception and production. However in the post-test, both of the two groups had no correlation between the two elements. The two groups showed changes in the correct percentage in the post-test and this had the influence on the correlations between perception and production. The control group showed the fluctuation in perception, whereas the experimental group showed improvement in production, and these changes in the post-test had an influence on the correlations between perception and production. Based on this analysis, pedagogical implications were discussed and limitations of the study were also described.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.19-25
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• 2021

It has been widely recognized that there are two varieties of lateral liquid /l/, which are light /l/ (a non-velarized allophone) and dark /l/ (a velarized allophone). However, this categorical view has been challenged in recent studies, both on articulatory and acoustic aspects. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether to consider /l/ velarization as a continuum in American English and provide supporting data. A spontaneous American English speech database called the Buckeye Speech Corpus was used for the material. The formant frequencies of /l/ in each syllable position were measured and analyzed statistically. The formant frequencies of /l/ in each syllable position, especially F2 values, were significantly different from each other. The results showed that there were other significantly different varieties of /l/ in American English, which support the continuum view on /l/ velarization. Regarding the effect of the adjacent vowel, the backness of the adjacent vowels was shown to affect the degree of /l/ velarization, regardless of the syllable position of the lateral liquid. This result will help provide a solid ground for the continuum view.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.851-870
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distribution of /ju/ in British English, especially after the coronal sonorants /n, l, /r/. The sequence /ju/ is related with vowels such as /u/, /ʊ/, and /ʊ/, and has occasioned a variety of conflicting analyses or suggestions. One of those is in which context /j/ is deleted if we suppose that the underlying form is /ju/. The context differs according to the dialect we deal with. In British English, it is known that /j/ is deleted always after /r/, and usually after /l/ when it occurs in an unstressed word-medial syllable. To check this well-known fact I searched OED Online (the 2nd Edition, 1989) for those words which contain /n, l, r/ + /ju, jʊ, u, ʊ, (j)u, (j)ʊ/ in their pronunciations, using the search engine provided by OED Online. After removing some unnecessary words, I classified the collected words into several groups according to the preceding sonorant consonants, the positions, and the presence (or absence) of the stress, of the syllable where /ju/ occurs. The results are as follows: 1) the deletion of /j/ depends on the sonorant consonant which /ju/ follows, the position where it occurs, and the presence of the stress which /ju/ bears; 2) though the influence of the sonorant consonants is strong, the position and stress also have non-trivial effect on the deletion of /j/, that is, the word-initial syllable and the stressed syllable prefer the deletion of /j/, and word-medial and unstressed syllable usually retain /j/; 3) the stress and position factors play their own roles even in the context where the effect of /n, l, r/ is dominant.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.13
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• pp.97-114
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• 2008

This study aims to study mouth shapes suitable to the shapes of Korean consonants and vowels for Korean animations by analyzing the process of English-speaking animation lip-sync based on pre-recording in the United States. A research was conducted to help character animators understand the concept of Korean lip-sync which is done after recording and to introduce minimum, basic mouth shapes required for Korean expressions which can be applied to various characters. In the introduction, this study mentioned the necessity of Korean lip-sync in local animations and introduced the research methods of Korean lip-sync data based on English lip-sync data by laking an American production as an example. In the main subject, this study demonstrated the characteristics and roles of 8 basic mouth shapes required for English pronunciation expressions, left out mouth shapes that are required for English expressions but not for Korean expressions, and in contrast, added mouth shapes required for Korean expressions but not for English expressions. Based on these results, this study made a diagram for the mouth shapes of Korean expressions by laking various examples and made a research on how mouth shapes vary when they are used as consonants, vowels and batchim. In audition, the case study proposed a method to transfer lines to the exposure sheet and a method to arrange mouth shapes according to lip-sync for practical animation production. However, lines from a Korean movie were inevitably used as an example because there has not been any precedents in Korea about animation production with systematic Korean lip-sync data.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.206-206
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• 1996

Previous studies of American English(e.g. Sussman 1991, 1993, 1994) CVC coarticulation with initial consonants representing the labial, alveolar, and velar showed a linear relationship that fits to data points formed by plotting onsets of F2 transition along the y-axis and their corresponding midvowel points along the x-axis. The present study extends the locus equation metric to include the following places of articulation:uvular, pharyngeal, laryngeal, and emphatics. The question of interest is to determine if locus equation could serve as phonetic descriptor for the place of articulation in Arabic. Five male native speakers of Colloquial Egyptian Arabic(CEA) read a list of 204 CVC and CVCC words, containing eight different places of articulation and eight vowels. Average of formant patterns(Fl,F2,F3) onsets, midpoints, and offsets were calculated, using wide band spectrograms obtained by means of the kay spectrograph model(7029), and plotted as locus equations. A summary of the acoustic properties of the place of articulation of CEA will be presented in the frames of bVC and CVb. Strong linear regression relationships were found for every place of articulation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.29-47
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to show how to convert the label files of the Buckeye Corpus of Spontaneous Speech [1] into Praat format and to introduce some of the Praat scripts that will enable linguists to study various aspects of spoken American English present in the corpus. During the conversion process, several types of errors were identified and corrected either manually or automatically by the use of scripts. The Praat script tools that have been developed can help extract from the corpus massive amounts of phonetic measures such as the VOT of plosives, the formants of vowels, word frequency information and speech rates that span several consecutive words. The script tools can extract additional information concerning the phonetic environment of the target words or allophones.