• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.124-130
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: The study investigated vowel context effects on the perception of stop consonants in Malayalam. It also probed into the role of vowel context effects in determining the frequency of occurrence of various consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in Malayalam. Subjects and Methods: The study used a cross-sectional pre-experimental post-test only research design on 30 individuals with normal hearing, who were native speakers of Malayalam. The stimuli included three stop consonants, each spoken in three different vowel contexts. The resultant nine syllables were presented in original form and five gating conditions. The consonant recognition in different vowel contexts of the participants was assessed. The frequency of occurrence of the nine target syllables in the spoken corpus of Malayalam was also systematically derived. Results: The consonant recognition score was better in the /u/ vowel context compared with /i/ and /a/ contexts. The frequency of occurrence of the target syllables derived from the spoken corpus of Malayalam showed that the three stop consonants occurred more frequently with the vowel /a/ compared with /u/ and /i/. Conclusions: The findings show a definite vowel context effect on the perception of the Malayalam stop consonants. This context effect observed is different from that in other languages. Stop consonants are perceived better in the context of /u/ compared with the /a/ and /i/ contexts. Furthermore, the vowel context effects do not appear to determine the frequency of occurrence of different CV syllables in Malayalam.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.23-31
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• 2011

This paper examines the production patterns of the acquisition of coda consonants in monosyllabic words in English-speaking children with cochlear implants. The data come from the transcribed speech of children with cochlear implants. This study poses three questions. First, do children with cochlear implants acquire onset consonants earlier than codas? Second, do children's productions have a bimoraic-sized constraint that maintains binary feet? Third, what patterns emerge from production of coda consonants? The results revealed that children with cochlear implants acquire onset consonants earlier than codas. With regard to the bimoraic-sized constraints, the productions of vowel type (i.e., monomoraic and bimoraic) were more accurate for monomoraic vowels than bimoraic ones for some children with cochlear implants, although accuracy in vowel productions showed high proportion regardless of vowel types. The variations of coda production exhibited individual differences. Some children produced less sonorant consonants with high frequency and others produced more sonorant ones. The results of this study were similar to those pertaining to children with normal hearing. In the process of coda consonant acquisition, the error patterns of prosody-sensitive production may be regarded as articulatory challenges to produce higher-level prosodic structures.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.75-83
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• 2012

The aims of this study were three. First, to examine the degree of deviation from dictionary prescribed symbols and actual speech made by American English speakers. Second, to measure the frequency of vowel and consonant production of American English speakers. And third, to investigate gender differences in the segmental sounds in a speech corpus. The Buckeye Speech Corpus was recorded by forty American male and female subjects for one hour per subject. The vowels and consonants in both the phonemic and phonetic transcriptions were extracted from the original files of the corpus and their frequencies were obtained using codes of a free software R. Results were as follows: Firstly, the American English speakers produced a reduced number of vowels and consonants in daily conversation. The reduction rate from the dictionary transcriptions to the actual transcriptions was around 38.2%. Secondly, the American English speakers used more front high and back low vowels while three-fourths of the consonants accounted for stops, fricatives, and nasals. This indicates that the segmental inventory has nonlinear frequency distribution in the speech corpus. Thirdly, the two gender groups produced vowels and consonants similarly even though there were a few noticeable differences in their speech. From these results we propose that English teachers consider pronunciation education reflecting the actual speech sounds and that linguists find a way to establish unmarked segmentals from speech corpora.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.167-177
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• 2002

Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) is one of the popular surgical procedure for snoring and sleep apnea syndrome. The main principle of this procedure is to reduce abundant velopharyngeal soft tissues resulting in a shortened soft palate, which may cause some alterations in speech sound. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the change of velopharyngeal function after UPPP in the view of aerodynamics. Thirty three patients who received uvulopalatopharyngoplasty for correcting snoring and sleep apnea were included in this study. The airflow, airflow rate and air pressure during the production of oral and nasal consonants were measured before surgery and 4 week and 8 week after surgery. The oral air flows and pressures for oral and nasal consonants were not changed after surgery. However, oral air pressure for nasal consonants were increased significantly after surgery. The nasal air flows for oral consonants were not changed after surgery, but for nasal consonants were decreased at 8 weeks after surgery. The nasal flow rate for oral and nasal consonants were increased at 8 weeks after surgery. The uvulopalatopharyngoplasty may result in affecting the aerodynamic air streams during speech production.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.124-130
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: The study investigated vowel context effects on the perception of stop consonants in Malayalam. It also probed into the role of vowel context effects in determining the frequency of occurrence of various consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in Malayalam. Subjects and Methods: The study used a cross-sectional pre-experimental post-test only research design on 30 individuals with normal hearing, who were native speakers of Malayalam. The stimuli included three stop consonants, each spoken in three different vowel contexts. The resultant nine syllables were presented in original form and five gating conditions. The consonant recognition in different vowel contexts of the participants was assessed. The frequency of occurrence of the nine target syllables in the spoken corpus of Malayalam was also systematically derived. Results: The consonant recognition score was better in the /u/ vowel context compared with /i/ and /a/ contexts. The frequency of occurrence of the target syllables derived from the spoken corpus of Malayalam showed that the three stop consonants occurred more frequently with the vowel /a/ compared with /u/ and /i/. Conclusions: The findings show a definite vowel context effect on the perception of the Malayalam stop consonants. This context effect observed is different from that in other languages. Stop consonants are perceived better in the context of /u/ compared with the /a/ and /i/ contexts. Furthermore, the vowel context effects do not appear to determine the frequency of occurrence of different CV syllables in Malayalam.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.35-41
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• 2017

The existence and the extent of vowel length difference before voiced/voiceless consonants in English and Korean are examined in three groups: (1) Korean-speaking Americans (group A), (2) immigrants who moved to the U.S. in their early teens (group I), and (3) Koreans who have been in the U.S. for less than 3 years (group K). 14 subjects were recorded reading 10 English and 10 Korean sentences. The results show that the three groups exhibit different patterns of the vowel length difference: Group A shows a very strong tendency of vowel lengthening before voiced consonants in both English and Korean, while Group I shows less degree of vowel lengthening, and Group K shows almost no tendency of vowel length difference in both languages. This strongly suggests that, (1) unlike English, Korean does not have the vowel length difference depending on the following consonants, and (2) the vowel lengthening effect observed in Korean (L2) speech in group A may be the result of transfer of the phonetic trait acquired in English (L1). It also implies that, in teaching pronunciation, some facts such as the vowel length difference cannot be expected to be acquired automatically for the learners of English, but have to be taught explicitly.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 1995

An auditory experiments for the phonetic value of the last consonants when its signal is transmitted through the amplifier from the last to the first, shortly speaking, time reversed waveform, were done for the 14 Korean consonants. Then the last consonant becomes to the first consonant in the time reversed waveform. The listeners who heard the 14 reversed consonants have recorded the phonetic value being heard. We analyzed these results by the method of articulation and the position of articulation. By the results, the phonetic value of the last consonants /n/, /l/ and /m/ is the same as the first consonants. Last consonant /d/ is heard like first consonant /n/. Last consonant /ng/ is heard like first consonant /m/. Last consonants /k/ and /b/ don't have any particular phonetic values. These results were tested by the experiments and were analyzed by the principle of articulation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.12
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• pp.186-191
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• 2006

The perception of English labial consonants was investigated via experiment where 40 Korean EFL learners identified nonwords with the target labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The overall result showed that the proportion of perception accuracy of the target consonants was rather low, amounting to only 55%. There was also a positional effect since the accuracy rates for perceiving the four target consonants differed by position. Specifically, the average accuracy rate of the target consonant identification was higher in intervocalic position before stress (70%) and initial onset position (67%) than in intervocalic position after stress (45%) and final coda position (36%). Further, the accuracy rate for [f] is was high in all prosodic locations except intervocalic position after stress. The perception patterns were accounted for by the markedness and perceptual factors in conjunction with stress location.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.115-120
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• 2001

This study aims to show why and how the shift in the point of articulation for Korean consonants occurs with an increase of their tensity. From an EPG study on the point of articulation for Korean alveolar stops, fricatives and velar stops, it was concluded that the shift in the point of articulation occurs because the increase in the tensity of Korean consonants requires more contact area with the roof of mouth by the tongue, and that the direction of the shift depends on the surface shape of tongue for the plain consonant.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.145-155
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• 2013

This study investigated the articulatory characteristics of Korean singleton and geminate sonorants in the word-medial position, effects of the duration of the sonorant consonant and the preceding vowel on perception, and the difference between native Korean speakers and foreign learners of Korean in perceiving the singleton and geminate consonant contrast. The Korean sonorant consonants(/m, n, l/) are examined from the VCCV, VCV sequences through speech production and perception experiments. The results suggest that the duration of the sonorant consonant is the most important factor for native Korean speakers to recognize whether sonorants are overlapped, and the duration of preceding vowel and other factors affect the recognition of singleton/geminate consonant contrast if the duration is not obvious. A perception experiment showed Chinese Korean language learners did not clearly distinguish singleton consonants from geminate consonants. The results of this study provide basic data for recognition of singleton/geminate consonant contrast in word-medial of Korean language, and can be utilized for teaching Korean pronunciation as a foreign language.