• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.157-177
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• 1998

An electroglottography (EGG) was used to investigate the function of the vocal folds during their vibration. In this study, four Korean native speakers and 10 vocal polyp patients were selected. To investigate the dynamic change of EGG waveforms for the three-way distinction of Korean stops, a DSP-Sona graph model 5500, a Rino- Laryngeal stroboscope, a CSL model 4300B and a Laryngograph were used. An EGG Model 4338 was used to exam the vocal polyp of patients' voices during high, low, comfortable pitch production. The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of Korean stop consonants in relation to pitch and to observe laryngeal movement during vocal fold vibration and speech production. The basic data accumulated during this research can be applied in clinical treatment. The results are as follows: on the Korean stop consonants, the aspirated stop is the highest in the GOT and PC1. On the angle of vowel contour, the angle of lenis is smaller than the angle of heavily aspirated and glottalized stops. The fundamental frequency is lowest at the lenis stop, In vocal polyp patients', the low pitch range is smaller than in normal speakers'. The pitch break and the vocal fry were observed. The jitter and OQ value are higher in vocal polyp patients than in those of normal speakers'.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.105-119
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• 1999

Cleft palate patients have general speech problems with resonance disorders and articulation disorders. The aim of this study is to find the aerodynamic and acoustic characteristics of the nasalization in cleft palate speakers. Thirteen control groups and three cleft palate patients pre- and post operation were selected for these studies. The test words are composed by polysyllabic words: consonants between high vowel /i/ analysis. The cleft palate patients repeated test words pre- and post-operation from one, three and six month periods. The subjects repeated test words on Macquirer and on Nasometer Model 6200-3. The aerodynamic and acoustic results of nasalization show as follows: (1) The nasal rate in overall airflow of aspirated consonant for cleft palate patients shows higher levels than that of the control group. It had decreased since one month after operation. (2) The overall airflow of cleft palate patients is higher than in the control group, however oral air pressure is lower than control group. (3) The nasal airflow and the nasal rate in overall airflow of cleft palate patients has higher than the control group, however its decreased after operation. (4) The nasalance scores of cleft palate patients were 40% higher than that of the control group. The scores did not decrease after operation. The nasalance score of lateral and fricative sounds did not decrease after operation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.3-14
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• 2011

It has been posited that in English, native listeners use the Metrical Segmentation Strategy (MSS) for the segmentation of continuous speech. Strong syllables tend to be perceived as potential word onsets for English native speakers, which is due to the high proportion of strong syllables word-initially in the English vocabulary. This study investigates whether Koreans employ the same strategy when segmenting speech input in English. Word-spotting experiments were conducted using vowel-initial and consonant-initial bisyllabic targets embedded in nonsense trisyllables in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. The effect of strong syllable was significant in the RT (reaction times) analysis but not in the error analysis. In both experiments, Korean listeners detected words more slowly when the word-initial syllable is strong (stressed) than when it is weak (unstressed). However, the error analysis showed that there was no effect of initial stress in Experiment 1 and in the item (F2) analysis in Experiment 2. Only the subject (F1) analysis in Experiment 2 showed that the participants made more errors when the word starts with a strong syllable. These findings suggest that Koran listeners do not use the Metrical Segmentation Strategy for segmenting English speech. They do not treat strong syllables as word beginnings, but rather have difficulties recognizing words when the word starts with a strong syllable. These results are discussed in terms of intonational properties of Korean prosodic phrases which are found to serve as lexical segmentation cues in the Korean language.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.213-221
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• 2010

The number of North Korean refugees entering South Korea is continuously increasing. North Korean speakers show significant differences in vowel and consonant phonetics, length of vowels, and the rhythm and intonation of sentences. The object of this research was to examine the effectiveness of a speech intervention program for North Korean refugees using visual feedback through acoustical analysis for intonation. The subjects were three adults with no speech disabilities who had been in South Korea for less than five years. They had not received any prior treatment for inflection change. The program was set in a discourse situation and used Praat to evaluate intonation and provide visual feedback as demonstrating proper intonation changes through pitch contour. The results after intervention are as follows. First, intonation was significantly improved according to a 5-point subjective evaluation scale. Second, the pitch contour was similar to the contour of standard South Korean pronunciation. The subjects were very satisfied with this initial treatment and showed a high level of motivation. In subsequent study, the development of intervention and the comparison of interventions will be needed as well.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.1026-1035
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• 1997

In this paper, we studied for phoneme recognition using GPFN and PNN as a kind of RBFN. The structure of RBFN is similar to a feedforward networks but different from choosing of activation function, reference vector and learnign algorithm in a hidden layer. Expecially sigmoid function in PNN is replaced by one category included exponential function. And total calculation performance is high, because PNN performs pattern classification with out learning. In phonemerecognition experiment with 5 vowel and 12 consant, recognition rates of GPFN and PNN as a kind of RBFN reflected statistic characteristic of speech are higher than ones of MLP in case of using test data and quantizied data by VQ and LVQ.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.64-76
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• 2022

Praat is a useful analysis tool for linguists, engineers, doctors, speech-language pathologits, music majors, and natural scientists. Basic parameters including duration, pitch, energy and perturbation parameters such as jitter and shimmer can be easily measured and manipulated in the sound editor. When a more in-depth analysis is needed, it is recommended to understand the advanced menus of the object window and learn how to use them. Among the object window menus, vowel formant analysis, spectrum analysis, and cepstrum analysis can be cited as useful ones in the clinical field. The spectrum object can be usefully used for voice quality measurement and diagnosis of patients with voice disorders by showing the energy distribution according to frequency axis (domain). A cepstrum object is useful for speech analysis when periodicity of the sound object is not measurable. The low to high ratio obtained from the spectral object and the CPPs measured from the cepstrum object have attracted many researchers, and it has been proven that the CPPs measured in Praat are relatively excellent.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.89-97
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• 2006

The stop consonants in Korean are classified into three types according to the manner of articulation as unaspirated (UA), slightly aspirated (SA) and heavily aspirated (HA) stops. Both the UA and the HA types are always voiceless in any environment. Generally, the voice onset time (VOT) could be measured spectrographically from release of consonant burst to onset of following vowel. The VOT of the UA type is within 20 msec of the burst, and about 40-50 msec in the SA and 50-70 msec in the HA. There have been many efforts to clarify properties that differentiate these manner categories. Umeda, et $al^{1)}$ studied that the fundamental frequency at voice onset after both the UA and HA consonants was higher than that for the SA consonants, and the voice onset times were longest in the HA followed by the SA and UA. Han, et $al^{2)}$ reported in their speech synthesis and perception studies that the SA and UA stops differed primarily in terms of a gradual versus a relatively rapid intensity build-up of the following vowel after the stop release. Lee, et $al^{3)}$ measured both the intraoral and subglottal air pressure that the subglottal pressure was higher for the HA stop than for the other two stops. They also compared the dynamic pattern of the subglottal pressure slope for the three categories and found that the HA stop showed the most rapid increase in subglottal pressure in the time period immediately before the stop release. $Kagaya^{4)}$ reported fiberscopic and acoustic studies of the Korean stops. He mentioned that the UA type may be characterized by a completely adducted state of the vocal folds, stiffened vocal folds and the abrupt decreasing of the stiffness near the voice onset, while the HA type may be characterized by an extensively abducted state of the vocal folds and a heightened subglottal pressure. On the other hand, none of these positive gestures are observed for the SA type. Hong, et $al^{5)}$ studied electromyographic activity of the thyroarytenoid and posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) muscles during stop production. He reported a marked and early activation of the PCA muscle associated with a steep reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle before voice onset in the production of the HA consonants. For the production of the UA consonants, little or no activation of the PCA muscle and earliest and most marked reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle were characteristic. For the SA consonants, he reported a more moderate activation of the PCA muscle than for the UA consonant, and the least and the latest reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle. Hong, et $al^{6)}$ studied the observation of the vibratory movements of vocal fold edges in terms of laryngeal gestures according to the different types of stop consonants. The movements of vocal fold edges were evaluated using high speed digital images. EGG signals and acoustic waveforms were also evaluated and related to the vibratory movements of vocal fold edges during stop production.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.60-64
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• 2000

This paper studies the relation between the Fundamental Frequency (F0) and the formants of simple vowels in the Korean language sung by sopranos. It is hewn that, in soprano singing, the F0 of a vowel affects its formants. For this reason the formants of simple vowels sung by sopranos must be considered in all over the soprano singing range. We recorded the five simple vowel sounds /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ sung by five professional sopranos from A3 (220.0Hz) to A5 (880.0Hz) in the major scale and compared the formants of the sung vowels with those of spoken vowels. We observed that F1 and F2 of sung vowels were stable in low F0 (lower than B4) but in high F0 (higher than B4), F1 and F2 lost their stabilities. In the case of /a/, /o/, and /u/, the slope of the F1-F2 graph was about 2.6, and those of the F0-F2 and F0-Fl graphs were 2.2-2.5 and 0.7-1.0, respectively. And as the F0 increases, the F1 and F2 of sung vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ were almost the same. At A5, the Fl and F2 of five sung vowels had the same values. This results suggest that the relation between the F0 and the formants be used to synthesize soprano's singing vowels.

• Journal of Clinical Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.212-222
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• 2018

Background and Objectives : The purpose of this study was to compare the measured values of acoustic and auditory perceptual assessments between normal and functional dysphonia (FD) groups. Materials and Methods : 102 subjects with FD and 59 normal voice groups were participated in this study. Mid-vowel portion of the sustained vowel /a/ and two sentences of 'Sanchaek' were edited, concatenated, and analyzed by Praat script. And then auditory-perceptual (AP) rating was completed by three listeners. Results : The FD group showed higher acoustic voice quality index version 2.02 and version 3.01 (AVQIv2 and AVQIv3), slope, Hammarberg index (HAM), grade (G) and overall severity (OS), values than normal group. Additionally, smoothed cepstral peak prominence in Praat (PraatCPPS), tilt, low-to high spectral band energies (L/H ratio), long-term average spectrum (LTAS) in FD group were lower than normal voice group. And the correlation among measured values ranged from -0.250 to 0.960. In ROC curve analysis, cutoff values of AVQIv2, AVQIv3, PraatCPPS, slope, tilt, L/H ratio, HAM, and LTAS were 3.270, 2.013, 13.838, -22.286, -9.754, 369.043, 27.912, and 34.523, respectively, and the AUC of each analysis was over .890 in AVQIv2, AVQIv3, and PraatCPPS, over 0.731 in HAM, tilt, and slope, over 0.605 in LTAS and L/H ratio. Conclusions : In conclusion, AVQI and CPPS showed the highest predictive power for distinguishing between normal and FD groups. Acoustic analyses and AP rating as noninvasive examination can reinforce the screening capability of FD and help to establish efficient diagnosis and treatment process plan for FD.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2002

Voice onset time (VOT) is defined as the time interval from the oral release of a stop consonant to the onset of glottal pulsing in the following vowel. VOT is a temporal characteristic of stop consonants that reflects the complex timing of glottal articulation relative to supraglottal articulation. There have been many reports on efforts to clarify the acoustical and physiological properties that differentiate the three types of Korean stops, including acoustic, fiberscopic, aerodynamic and electromyographic studies. In the acoustic and fiberscopic studies for stop consonants, the voice onset time and glottal width during the production of stops has been known as the longest and largest in the heavily aspirated type followed by the slightly aspirated type and unaspirated types. The thyroarytenoid and posterior cricoarytenoid muscles were physiologically inter-correlated for differentiating these types of stops. However, a review of the English literature shows that the fine movement of the mucosal edges of the vocal folds during the production of stops has not been well documented. In recent. years, a new method for high-speed recording of laryngeal dynamics by use of a digital recording system allows us to observe with fine time resolution. The movements of the vocal fold edges were documented during the period of stop production using a fiberscopic system of high speed digital images. By observing the glottal width and the visual vibratory movements of the vocal folds before voice onset, the heavily aspirated stop was characterized as being more prominent and dynamic than the slightly aspirated and unaspirated stops.