• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.33-40
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• 2017

This study aimed to examine how Korean-English bilinguals make use of VOT and F0 cues in perception and production of Korean (lenis vs. aspirated) and English (voiced vs. voiceless) stops. It was explored whether bilinguals with extensive experience living in the U.S. exhibit native-like or interactive patterns in the cue use for both languages. Participants produced monosyllabic word-initial stops within a carrier sentence in each language, and performed forced-choice identification tasks with synthesized stimuli varying in 7 VOT steps and 7 F0 steps with base tokens of /$t^han$/ for Korean and /$t{\ae}n$/ for English. Listeners were required to select either /tan/ or /$t^han$/ for Korean and either /$d{\ae}n$/ or /$t{\ae}n$/ for English. The results from binary logistic regression analyses for each listener indicated that all bilinguals placed greater weight on F0 than VOT when distinguishing between the Korean lenis and aspirated stops, and greater weight on VOT than F0 in distinguishing between the English voiced and voiceless stops. In terms of production, all participants showed remarkably overlapping ranges in the VOT dimension and separating ranges in the F0 dimension for the stop contrast of Korean, while forming overlapping ranges in the F0 dimension and separating ranges in the VOT dimension for the stop contrast of English. These results indicate that the bilinguals with extensive exposure to L2 manage the stop systems of the two languages independently, both in perception and production, employing the opposite cue use for stops in the two languages. It was also found that the absolute beta-coefficient values of the perceptual cues for Korean stops were generally smaller than those for English and those reported in a previous study as for later bilinguals, which may have resulted from Korean not being their dominant language.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2023

This study investigated acoustic (VOT) and articulatory characteristics of Korean velar stops in monosyllabic CV structures to examine how the three-way distinction is realized in the laryngeal and supralaryngeal domains and how the distinction is manifested in male versus female speakers' speech production. EMA data were collected from 22 speakers. In line with previous studies, male speakers preserved the three-way differentiation of velar stops (/k^*/</k/</k^h/) in terms of VOT while female speakers showed only a two-way distinction (/k^*/</k/=/k^h/). As for the kinematic characteristics, a clear three-way distinction was found only in male speakers' peak velocity measure in the C-to-V opening movement (/k^h/</k/</k^*/). For the other kinematic measures (i.e., articulatory closure duration, deceleration duration of the opening movement and the entire opening movement duration), male speakers showed only a two-way distinction between fortis and the other two stops. Female speakers did not show a three-way contrast in any kinematic measure. They showed a two-way distinction between lenis and the other two stops in C-to-V deceleration duration (/k^*/=/k^h/</k/), and a two-way distinction between fortis and lenis stops in the opening movement duration. An overall comparison of VOT and articulatory analyses revealed that the lenis-aspirated kinematic distinction is diminishing, driven by female speakers, in line with the loss of the lenis-aspirated distinction in VOT that could influence supralaryngeal articulation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.3-11
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• 2010

The present study confirmed the intelligibility improvement benefit of clear speech by investigating the intelligibility of Korean stops produced in different speaking styles: conversational, citation-form, and clear speech. This finding supports the Hypo- & Hyper-speech theory that speakers adjust vocal effort to accommodate hearers' speech perception difficulty. A progressive intelligibility improvement was found for the three speaking styles investigated: clear speech was more intelligible than citation-form speech citation-form speech was more intelligible than conversational speech and clear speech was also more intelligible than conversational speech. These findings suggest that the manipulations to elicit three distinct speaking styles in a laboratory setting were successful. Korean lenis stops showed the least intelligibility improvement among the three Korean stop types, and this result suggests that lenis stops should be more resistant to intelligibility enhancement efforts in clear speech than aspirated and fortis stops.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.71-81
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• 2011

This paper investigated how prosodic position and word type affect the phonetic structure of Korean coronal stops. Initial segments of prosodic domains were known to be more strongly articulated and longer relative to prosodic domain-medial segments. However, there are few studies examining whether the properties of prosodic domain-initial segments are affected by the information content of words (real vs. nonsense words). In addition, since the scope of domain-initial effect was known to be local to the initial consonant and the effects on the following vowel have been found to be limited, it is thus worth examining whether the prosodic domain-initial effect extends into the vowel after the initial consonant in a systematic way across different prosodic domains. The acoustic properties of Korean coronal stops (lenis /t/, aspirated /$t^h$/, and tense /t'/) were compared across Intonational Phrase, Phonological Phrase and Word-initial positions both in real and nonsense words. The durational intervals such as VOT and CV duration were cumulatively lengthened for /t/ and /$t^h$/ in the higher prosodic domain-initial positions. However, tense stop /t'/ did not show any variation as a function of prosodic position and word type. The domain-initial lenis stop showed significantly longer duration in nonsense words than in real words. But the prosodic domain-initial effect was not found in the properties of F0 and [H1-H2] of the vowel after initial stops. The present study provided evidence that speakers tend to enhance speech clarity when there is less contextual information as in prosodic domain-initial position and in nonsense words.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2019

Korean (L1)-English (L2) bilingual adults' and children's production of Korean and English stops was examined to determine the age effects and L2 experience on the development of L1 and L2 stop contrasts. Four groups of Seoul Korean speakers (experienced and inexperienced adult and child groups) and two groups of age-matched native English speakers participated. The overall results of voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) of phrase-initial stops in Korean and word-intial stops in English showed a delay in the acquisition of L1 due to the dominant exposure to L2. Significantly longer VOT and lower F0 for aspirated stops as well as high temporal variability across repetitions of lenis stops were interpreted to indicate a strong effect of English on Korean stop contrasts for bilingual children. That is, the heavy use of VOT for Korean stop contrasts shows bilingual children's attention to the acoustic cue that are primarily employed in the dominant L2. Furthermore, inexperienced children, but not adults, were shown to create new L2 categories that are distinctive from the L1 within 6 months of L2 experience, suggesting greater independence between the two phonological systems. The implications of bilinguals' age at the time of testing to the degree and direction of L1-L2 interaction are further discussed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 2004

The force of articulation is different between voiced and voiceless consonants in the binary opposition system. However, the Korean voiceless stop consonants have a triple opposition system: lenis, aspirated, and glottalized. The aim of this study is to find the primary distinctive feature between the force of articulation and the aspiration for the three different types of Korean stops. Two native speakers of the Seoul dialect participated to this study. The corpus was composed of less than eight syllabic words containing consonants in word-initial position and intervocalic position. Radiocinematography and Mingography were used to analyze the articulatory tension and acoustic characteristics. Korean stops have independent features of articulatory tension and aspiration, in which the indices are different according to position. However, in this system which does not have the opposition of sonority, the force of articulation is the primary distinctive feature and the feature of aspiration is subsidiary.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.85-95
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• 2000

In this paper, the H1*-H2* measure is introduced and exact procedures for obtaining the H1*-H2* value are fully specified, The H1*-H2* measure (a corrected difference in dB between the first and second harmonics) has been devised to provide an acoustic correlate of the phonation mode of a vowel following a consonant. With this measure, we can investigate the phonation mode of a vowel that is free from the F1 amplitude perturbation effect caused by the preceding consonant, which is especially salient at the voicing onset position of the vowel. For identical research purposes, on the other hand, the H1-H2 measure (the observed difference in dB between the first and second harmonic) has been employed in many previous studies. This paper compares these two measures by illustrating experimental results of exploring post-release phonation modes of vowels following the different manner classes of stop consonants in Korean $\square$i.e., the tense, lenis, and aspirated stops.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.9-21
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• 2021

This study investigated whether Korean learners improve acoustic cue weights to identify Korean lenis and aspirated stops in the direction of native values through perception training that focused on contrasting the stops in various phonetic contexts. Nineteen native Chinese learners of Korean and two native Korean instructors for the perception training participated in the experiment. A training group and a non-training group were divided according to pretest results, and only the training group participated in the training for 5 days. To estimate the perceptual weights of the stop cues, a pretest and a posttest were conducted with stimuli whose stop cues (F0 and VOT) were systematically manipulated. Binary logistic regression analyses were performed on each learner's test results to calculate perceptual β coefficients, which estimate the perceptual weights of the acoustic cues used in identifying the stop contrast. The training group showed a statistically significant increase of 0.451 on average in the posttest for the coefficient values of the F0, which is the primary cue for the stop contrast, whereas the non-training group showed an insignificant increase of 0.246. The patterns of change in the F0 use after training varied considerably among individual learners.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.104-112
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• 2000

An evaluation of voice disorder has two methods. One is a perceptual analysis and the other is an acoustic analysis. All of these methods are just focused on sustained vowel. The analysis of conversational speech levels in voice disorder has not been achieved enough. The purpose of the present study is to compare two syllable words and sustained vowel in the vocal polyp patients and normal male speakers and to be applied on the vocal assessment and the voice therapy as a basic data. fifteen male patients with vocal polyp were the subject group. Fifteen healthy male were the control group for this study. The voices of the subject and control group, saved in MDVP of CSL were analyzed by its own analysis program. As a results, in subject group, the voice qualities between the vowel following lenis stop and the sustained vowel had no differences, and the voice qualities were different significantly between the vowel following heavily aspirated stop and the sustained vowel. In the control group the vowel fllowing stops and sustained vowel had also many differences in their voice quality, especially significant between the vowel following glottal stop and e sustained vowel.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.47-52
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• 2014

This study investigated how the degree of attention modulates English learners' perception of Korean stop contrasts. The contributions of VOT and F0 in perceiving Korean stops were examined while availability of attentional resources was manipulated using a dual-task paradigm. Results demonstrated the attentional modulation in the use of VOT, but not in F0: under less attention, the contribution of VOT to the perception of aspirated stops decreased, whereas that of lenis stops increased, which suggests more native-like performance. This implies that the role of attention in perceiving non-native contrasts might differ depending on how equivalent the acoustic and perceptual cues are between L1 and target L2 contrasts.