• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.71-75
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• 2005

We can easily recognize the voices already known to us. But what about unknown voices? Is there any relationship between voices and the images triggered by the voices? Actually, this question has been partly addressed by Moon(2000, 2002). The current study aims at shedding some more lights on the topic by investigating the relationship between unknown foreign voices and the images triggered by them. Speech samples from 16 American males and females (8 each) were recorded and 180 Korean subjects without any knowledge of the American Speakers were asked to match the voices with the corresponding photos. And the number of corrects matches between voices and pictures of the current study was less than that of Korean-speakers and Korean-listeners case. But in terms of the majority matches, regardless of correctness, the present study showed a similar trend: that is, there is more than a chance relationship between voices and the images triggered by the voices.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.129-147
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• 2008

Since the beginning of her dramatic career, Suzan-Lori Parks has considered digging up and restoring African-American history buried under the dominant white Anglo-Saxon history as her mission as a playwright. In Red Letter Plays, she attempts what Deborah Geis called "canon-critique" by taking canonical work by Nathaniel Hawthorne and casting an African-American character as the main character and describing her oppression as an African-American female. This paper argues that Suzan-Lori Parks accuses the oppressive social system by restoring and representing the history of sexual, economic, and racial exploitation that African-American females had to suffer through the dominant image of body and blood. Parks had to rewrite the history of black female characters on their bodies and in the blood because their bodies have been the ultimate object of revulsion and attraction in the perspective of white male. While abhorring and despising Hester La Negrita's abject body, male characters in In the Blood nonetheless not only exploit her sexually and economically but also impregnate her. Hester resorts to her only means of revolting against this oppressive system; she kills her most beloved son and writes "A" on the floor with his blood. Likewise, Hester Smith in Fucking A, who wears "A" on her bosom like Hester Prynne, which in this case means "abortionist," "saves" her son from the hunters by slitting his throat. Abundant graphic and sensational images written on black female body and in the blood are Parks's dramatic strategy to rewrite the forgotten and hidden history of black women's history.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.3-9
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• 2009

Acoustically English vowels are defined primarily by formant values. The measurements of the values have been usually made at a few time points of the vowel segment despite the fact that the majority of English vowel formants vary dynamically throughout the segment. This study attempts to collect acoustic data of the nine English vowels published by Hillenbrand et al. (1995) online and to examine the acoustic features of the English vowels for phoneticians and English teachers. The author used Praat to obtain the data systematically at six equidistant timepoints over the vowel segment. Obvious errors were corrected based on the spectrographic display of each vowel. Results show that the first two formant trajectories are important to separate the nine vowels within the front- or back-vowel groups. The third formant trajectories appear comparable except those of the high vowels. Second, the back vowels leave longer traces on the vowel space toward the locus of the following consonant /d/. Third, each vowel has inherent duration, pitch, and intensity patterns. The results match the findings of Yang (2009). From the results, the author concludes that dynamic spectral changes are important in specifying acoustic characteristics of English vowels. Further studies on the application of the vowel trajectories to English pronunciation lessons or on perceptual experiment of synthesized vowels are desirable.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.195-199
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• 2007

Statistical tools for determining sex in the sexually monomorphic black-billed magpie based on morphological characters have been developed based on studies of European and North American populations. However, since no morphological method has been developed for black-billed magpies in Korea, it has been difficult to conduct field studies that require information about the sex of individuals. We present two discriminant equations for determining sex of second-year (SY) and after-second-year (ASY) magpies in north- and midwestern part of South Korea. Based on morphological measurements on 105 SY (56 females, 49 males) and 72 ASY (36 females, 36 males) individuals, we found body mass, wing chord, and head length to be the most useful features for morphological sex determination. The accuracy of our method was 86.5% for SYs and 93.1% for ASYs, which is similar to values reported previously from American and European magpies. Since the equations contain morphological traits which are only minimally susceptible to seasonal variation and measurement errors, our discriminant equations should be both useful and robust for sex determination on black-billed magpies in the northern and mid-western regions of South Korea.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.91-112
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• 1991

The impact of gender, sex-role identity and cultural background on self - control behaviors was studied with the use of reports from 410 college students(201 Koreans and 209 Americans), who were administered both the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Missouri Self Control Instrument. Gender, sex - role identity and cultural background significantly affected self - control and satisfaction. Regardless of cultural background, males showed a higher level of self - control and satisfaction than females. Androgenous students from both nations used a higher level of expressed/yielded self - control and more satisfied than the students with other sex - role identities. There were some differences in self - control between the Korean and American students. For the American students, the level of expressed self - control was the critical factor in explaining self - control behavior, whereas the level of yielded self - control was the critical factor for the Korean students. This was explained as a phenomenon of culture - bound relationships. Regardless of sex and sex - role identity, the level of satisfaction of Korean students was significantly lower than that of American students. The present results suggested that Korean students have some sort of conflict between self - control and satisfaction. The conflict can probably be attributed to the recent influx of western culture emphasizing goal - oriented control.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.238-247
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• 1992

Immigration of Koreans to the United States has increased since the 1960's. Adjusting to life in the United States produces a great deal of stress for immigrants. Despite better economic opportunites, many see the U.S. culture as threatening to their family and cultural values. Differences in culture, language, expectations and social behavior can lead to misunderstandings between health care providers and clients. These misunderstanding can leaf to frustration on the part of each. The ultimate result of this is that often Korean-immigrants do not get their health care needs met and stress response symptoms can lead to disease if there is no appropriate care. To determine the health care needs and concerns of Korean-Americans, a health needs assessment is needed. Appropriate and adequate information about the health care needs of these individuals is important as it relates to American policy changes allowing greater numbers of immigrants to enter the U.S. The purpose of this prospective study was to describe Korean-American stress response. This study focused on the primary presenting problems for which subjects reported having sought care. These included a variety of stress-related symptoms, including peripheral manifestations, cardiopulmonary symptoms, central-neurological symptoms, gastrointestinal symptoms, muscle tension, habitual patterns, depression, anxiety, emotional irritability and cognitive disorganization. Of the 300 subjects who entered the study, 80% (N＝223) completed the questionnaire in full. Demographically, the percentage of females and males was 50% each and they ranged in age from 20 to 69 years. Ninety percent of the subjects were highly educated, 25% owners of business, 25% white collar professionals, 15% employed in sales or as skilled /unskilled labor, 30% had no occupation : and 5% were housewives or students. The SOS inventory is designed to quantify self-perception of behavioral, cognitive, and physiological components of the stress response. It consisted of 94 items divided into 10 subscales. The result of this study are as follows : The total mean 505 of all subjects (N＝223 was .8129 ; the mean 505 for male(N＝114) was .7665 and for females, (N＝108) .8594. The level of symptoms for central-neurologic and muscle tension was higher for than for males. The highest stress response of all subjects was emotional irritability symptoms(1.0644) : the lowest stress response of all subjects was peripheral manifestation symptoms.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.41
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• pp.9.1-9.14
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• 2019

Background: There is no normative craniofacial anthropometric data for the Kenyan-African population. The purpose of this investigation was to determine normative anthropometric craniofacial measurements and proportional relationships for Kenyans of African descent and to compare the data with African Americans (AA), North American Whites (NAW), and neoclassical canons. Methods: Twenty-five direct facial anthropometric measurements, and 4 angular measurements, were taken on 72 Kenyan-African participants (age range 18-30 years) recruited at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The data were compared with AA and NAW populations, and neoclassical canons. Descriptive statistics of the variables were computed for the study population. Results: Significant differences between both Kenyan males and females were detected in forehead height (~ 5 mm greater for males, ~ 4.5 mm for females), nasal height (reduced by ~ 4 mm in males, ~ 3 mm in females), nasal width (8-9 mm greater), upper lip height (> 3 mm), and eye width (greater by ~ 3 mm) compared to NAW subjects. All vertical measurements obtained were significantly different compared with NAW. Differences were observed in comparison with AA subjects, but less marked. Mouth width was similar in all groups. Angular measurements were variable. Neoclassical canons did not apply to the Kenyan population. Conclusions: Anthropometric measurements of NAW showed clear differences when compared with the Kenyan population, and variations exist with comparative AA data. The anthropometric data in terms of linear measurements, angular measurements, and proportional values described may serve as a database for facial analysis in the KenyanAfrican population.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.23-34
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• 2011

Many Korean children have difficulty learning English vowels. The gestures inside the oral and pharyngeal cavities are hard to control when they cannot see the gestures and the target vowel system is quite different from that of Korean. This study attempts to collect children's acoustic data of twelve English vowels published by Hillenbrand et al. (1995) online and to examine the acoustic features of English vowels for phoneticians and English teachers. The author used Praat to obtain the data systematically at six equidistant timepoints over the vowel segment avoiding any obvious errors. Results show inherent acoustic properties for vowels from the children's distribution of vowel duration, f0 and intensity values. Second, children's gestures for each vowel coincide with the regression analysis of all formant values at different timepoints regardless of the vocal fold and tract difference. Third, locus points appear higher than those of American males and females. Their gestures along the timepoints display almost similar patterns. From the results the author concludes that vowel formant trajectories provide useful and important information on dynamic articulatory gestures, which may be applicable to Korean children's education and correction of English vowels. Further studies on the developmental study of vowel formants and pitch values are desirable.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.31-37
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• 2018

Pitch trajectories reflect a continuous variation of vocal fold movements over time. This study examined the pitch trajectories of English vowels produced by 139 American English speakers, statistically analyzing their trajectories using the Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs). First, Praat was used to read the sound data of Hillenbrand et al. (1995). A pitch analysis script was then prepared, and six pitch values at the corresponding time points within each vowel segment were collected and checked. The results showed that the group of men produced the lowest pitch trajectories, followed by the groups of women, boys, then girls. The density line showed a bimodal distribution. The pitch values at the six corresponding time points formed a single dip, which changed gradually across the vowel segment from 204 to 193 to 196 Hz. The normality tests performed on the pitch data rejected the null hypothesis. Nonparametric tests were therefore conducted to discover the significant differences in the values among the four groups. The GAMMs, which analyzed all the pitch data, produced significant results among the pitch values at the six corresponding time points but not between the two groups of boys and girls. The GAMMs also revealed that the two groups were significantly different only at the first and second time points. Accordingly, the methodology of this study and its findings may be applicable to future studies comparing curvilinear data sets elicited by experimental conditions.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.11-16
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• 2024

The fundamental frequency (f0), representing an acoustic measure of vocal fold vibration, serves as an indicator of the speaker's emotional state and language-specific pattern in daily conversations. This study aimed to examine the f0 distribution in an English corpus of spontaneous speech, establishing normative data for American speakers. The corpus involved 40 participants engaging in free discussions on daily activities and personal viewpoints. Using Praat, f0 values were collected filtering outliers after removing nonspeech sounds and interviewer voices. Statistical analyses were performed with R. Results indicated a median f0 value of 145 Hz for all the speakers. The f0 values for all speakers exhibited a right-skewed, pointy distribution within a frequency range of 216 Hz from 75 Hz to 339 Hz. The female f0 range was wider than that of males, with a median of 113 Hz for males and 181 Hz for females. This spontaneous speech corpus provides valuable insights for linguists into f0 variation among individuals or groups in a language. Further research is encouraged to develop analytical and statistical measures for establishing reliable f0 standards for the general population.