• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.55-62
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• 2015

It is widely accepted that Parkinson's disease(PD) is the most common cause of hypokinetic dysarthria, and its characteristics of 'short rushes of speech' have become more evident along with the severity of motor disorders. Speech alternate motion rates (AMRs) are particularly useful for observing not only rate abnormalities but also deviant speech. However, relatively little is known about the characteristics of 'short rushes of speech' in terms of AMRs of PD except for the perceptual characteristics. The purpose of this study was to examine which acoustic features of 'short rushes of speech' in terms of AMRs are a robust indicator of Parkinsonian speech. Numbers of syllabic repetitions (/pə/, /tə/, /kə/) in AMR tasks were analyzed through acoustic methods observing a spectrogram of the Computerized Speech Lab in 9 patients with PD. Acoustically, we found three characteristics of 'short rushes of speech': 1) Vocalized consonants without closure duration(VC) 76.3%; 2) No consonant segmentation(NC) 18.6%; 3) No vowel formant frequency(NV) 5.1%. Based on these results, 'short rushes of speech' may affect the failure to reach and maintain the phonatory targets. In order to best achieve the therapeutic goals, and to make the treatment most efficacious, it is important to incorporate training methods which are based on both phonation and articulation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.133-144
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• 2009

Pharyngeal flap surgery changes the space and shape of the oral cavity and vocal tract, and these changing conditions bring resonance change. The purpose of this study was to determine the most reliable and valuable parameters for evaluating hypernasality to distinguish two patients before and after pharyngeal flap surgery. Each patient was asked to clearly speak the vowels /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/ for voice recording. There were nine parameters: Formant (F1, F2, F3), Bandwidth (BW1, BW2, BW3), LPC energy slope ($\Delta$ |A2-A1/F2-F1|), and Band Energy (0-500 Hz, 500-1000 Hz) by each vowel. From the results of discrimination analyses on acoustic parameters, the vowels /a/, /e/ appeared to be insignificant but vowels /i/, /u/, /o/ appeared to be efficient in the separation. A 95%, 100%, and 100% recognition score could be reached when vowels /i/, /u/, and /o/ were analyzed. The results showed that F2, BW3, and LPC slope are more important parameters than the others. Finally, there is a relation between perceptual evaluation score and LPC energy slope of acoustic parameters by least square slope.

• MALSORI
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• no.63
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• pp.47-66
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• 2007

This study aims at exploring the degree of phonetic similarity between Korean and Japanese vowels in terms of acoustic features by performing the speech production test on Korean speakers and Japanese speakers. For this purpose, the speech of 16 Japanese speakers for Japanese speech data, and the speech of 16 Korean speakers for Korean speech data were utilized. The findings in assessing the degree of the similarity of the 7 nearest equivalents of the Korean and Japanese vowels are as follows: First, Korean /i/ and /e/ turned out to display no significant differences in terms of F1 and F2 with their counterparts, Japanese /i/ and /e/, and the distribution of F1 and F2 of Korean /i/ and /e/ in the distributional map completely overlapped with Japanese /i/ and /e/. Accordingly, Korean /i/ and /e/ were believed to be "identical." Second, Korean /a/, /o/, and /i/ displayed a significant difference in either F1 or F2, but showed a great similarity in distribution of F1 and F2 with Japanese /a/, /o/, and /m/ respectively. Korean /a/ /o/, and /i/, therefore, were categorized as very similar to Japanese vowels. Third, Korean /u/, which has the counterpart /m/ in Japanese, showed a significant difference in both F1 and F2, and only half of the distribution overlapped. Thus, Korean /u/ was analyzed as being a moderately similar vowel to Japanese vowels. Fourth, Korean /${\wedge}$/ did not have a close counterpart in Japanese, and was classified as "the least similar vowel."

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.167-173
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• 2013

This work examines classification of diphthongs, as part of a distinctive feature-based speech recognition system. Acoustic measurements related to the vocal tract and the voice source are examined, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) results show that vowel duration, energy trajectory, and formant variation are significant. A balanced error rate of 17.8% is obtained for 2-way diphthong classification on the TIMIT database, and error rates of 32.9%, 29.9%, and 20.2% are obtained for /aw/, /ay/, and /oy/, for 4-way classification, respectively. Adding the acoustic features to widely used Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients also improves classification.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.14 no.1_2
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• pp.40-53
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• 1992

This sutdy aimed at examining the effect of lingual frenectomy on phonation & tongue movement. Almost the patient visiting to department of oral & maxillofacial surgery for the treatment of tongue tie always complain the speech problem. Many operation was performed according to this problem. But the objective evaluation of the speech change have been deficient. The experimental group was 25 adult males. Fourteen Korean consonants & after Korean vowels was combined and seventy sound was made for speech analysis. Before & after lingual frenectomy, the speech of the above mentioned group was recorded and then analysed by the Speech Workstation computer software. And before & after operation, the lingual frenum & tongue protrusion amount vas measured. The results were as follows : 1. The pre-operative length of lingual frenum was inverse proportion with the pre-operative length of the protrusive tongue. 2. The average difference between pre & post-operative length of the protrusive tongue was about 23 mm. 3. In the comparison of consonant continuing time change, fricative consonant(r, s, h) was increased post-operatively. 4. In the comparison of the vowel frequency formant change, the "i"and "u" sound vas reliably changed. 5. There was no reliable speech changes on the other sounds.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.1324-1335
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• 1991

In this paper, a phoneme separation and an establishment of discriminative pattern of Korean phonemes are studied on experiment. The separation uses parameters such as pitch extraction, glottal peak pulse width of each pitch. speech duration. envelope and amplitude bias. The first pitch is extracted by deviations of glottal peak and width. energy and normalization on a bias on the top of vowel envelope. And then, it traces adjacent pitch to vowel in whole. On vewel, amethod to be reduced gliding pattern and the possible of vowel distinction to be used just second formant are proposed, and shrinking pitch waveform has nothing to do with pitch length is estimated. A pattern of envelope, spectrum, shrinking waveform, and a method of analysis by mutual relation among phonemes and manners of articulation on consonant are detected. As experimental results, 90% on vowel phoneme, 80% and 60% on initial and final consonant are discriminated.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.390-395
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• 2011

This paper covers the studies on common voice parameters through the voice analysis of female main news anchors on weekday evening by the station, and differences of relative voices and sounds among stations. To examine voice characteristics, 6 voice parameters were analyzed and it showed anchors of each station had distinctive characteristics of voices and phonations over all fields except the speech rate, and there were also differences in sound systems. As major analysis parameters, basic pitch, tone of the 1st formant and pitch ratio, level of closeness by pitch bandwidth, type of sentence closing through average pitch position within pitch bandwidth, average speech rate, and acoustic tone analysis by energy distribution by frequency band were used. Analyzed values and results could be referred to and utilized in the criteria of phonation characteristics for domestic female news anchors.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.37 no.6C
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• pp.520-526
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• 2012

Mostly lung diseases by smoking and air pollution is increasing social interest one of 6 kinds of modern diseases which is difficult functional recovery of damaged lung as dangerous diseases of life extension. Therefore, to reduce suffering from respiratory diseases is usually non-smoking, to do strengthen behavior of lung function. In this paper, we would like to propose method to do investigation by voice analysis technology to apply when lung associated ear acupuncture point stimulus to help strengthen actually lung function. From this, we would like to consider the voice change of before/after in smoking to analyze the impact on the human body to the lungs. Based on this experiment, we would like to investigate numerically quantity data actual improved lung function to analyze of voice character difference of before/after in lung associated ear acupuncture point stimulating.

• Korean Journal of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
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• v.60 no.9
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• pp.454-462
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• 2017

Background and Objectives The present study aimed to investigate the effects of penetration/aspiration (P/A) on voice acoustic parameters. Subjects and Method Twenty-seven patients were analyzed with the videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS) and then divided into two groups based on the modified Penetration and Aspiration Scale results. Ten patients (5 males and 5 females) were included in the Non-P/A group, and 17 patients (12 males and 5 females) in the P/A group. Stroke was the major cause of swallowing disorders. Three sustained /a/ vowels recorded in pre- and post-VFSS were analyzed. Mann-Whitney U-test was used to compare acoustic values before and after VFSS, and the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve with combination of significant parameters was also conducted. Results Among acoustic parameters, the length of analyzed sample (p=0.010), number of segments computed (p=0.018), total number detected pitch periods (p=0.017), and second formant (p=0.013) in pre- and post-VFSS were significantly different between Non-P/A and P/A groups. In the P/A group after VFSS, the means of these significant parameters decreased. According to ROC combined with four significant parameters, the probability of predicting P/A condition was 84% (p=0.005), the sensitivity was 80%, and the specificity was 80%. Conclusion Voice acoustic analysis can reflect voice changes by penetration/aspiration and the combination of significant parameters can also detect swallowing disorders. Therefore, voice analysis can be a reliable screening tool for patients with swallowing disorders.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.243-250
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• 2010

This paper proposes a spectral modeling of Korean traditional instrument, Haegeum, using cepstral analysis to naturally describe Haegeum sounds varying with time. To get a precise result of cepstral analysis, we set the frame size to 3 periods of input signal and more cepstral coefficients are used to extract formants. The performance is enhanced by flexibly controlling the cutoff frequency of bandpass filter depending on the resonances in the synthesis process of sinusoidal components and the deleting peaks remained in the residual signal. To detect the change of pitch, we divide the input frames into silence, attack, and sustain region and determine which region the current frame is involved in. Then, the proposed method readjusts the frame size according to the fundamental frequency in the case of the current frame is in attack region and corrects the extraction errors of the fundamental frequency for the frames in sustain region. With these processes, the synthesized sounds are much more similar to the originals. The evaluation result through the listening test by a Haegeum player says that the synthesized sounds are almost similar to originals (96~100 % similar to the original sounds).