• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.11-16
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• 2016

This study explores the phoneme distribution and syllable structure of entry words in the CMU English Pronouncing Dictionary to provide phoneticians and linguists with fundamental phonetic data on English word components. Entry words in the dictionary file were syllabified using an R script and examined to obtain the following results: First, English words preferred consonants to vowels in their word components. In addition, monophthongs occurred much more frequently than diphthongs. When all consonants were categorized by manner and place, the distribution indicated the frequency order of stops, fricatives, and nasals according to manner and that of alveolars, bilabials and velars according to place. These results were comparable to the results obtained from the Buckeye Corpus (Yang, 2012). Second, from the analysis of syllable structure, two-syllable words were most favored, followed by three- and one-syllable words. Of the words in the dictionary, 92.7% consisted of one, two or three syllables. This result may be related to human memory or decoding time. Third, the English words tended to exhibit discord between onset and coda consonants and between adjacent vowels. Dissimilarity between the last onset and the first coda was found in 93.3% of the syllables, while 91.6% of the adjacent vowels were different. From the results above, the author concludes that an analysis of the phonetic symbols in a dictionary may lead to a deeper understanding of English word structures and components.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.69-87
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• 2006

This study aims to describe the vowel system of present-day American English and to discuss some of its phonetic variations due to regional differences. Fifteen speakers of American English from various regions of the United States produced the monophthongs of English. The vowel duration and the frequencies of the first and the second formant were measured. The results indicate that the distinction between the vowels [c] and [a] has been merged in most parts of the U.S. except in some speakers from eastern and southeastern parts of the U.S., resulting in the general loss of phonemic distinction between the vowels. The phonemic merger of the two vowels can be interpreted as the result of the relatively small functional load of the [c]-[a] contrast, and the smaller back vowel space in comparison to the front vowel space. The study also shows that the F2 frequencies of the high back vowel [u] were extremely high in most of the speakers from the eastern region of the U.S., resulting in the overall reduction of their acoustic space for high vowels. From the viewpoint of the Adaptive Dispersion Theory proposed by Liljencrants & Lindblom (1972) and Lindblom (1986), the high back vowel [u] appeared to have been fronted in order to satisfy the economy of articulatory gesture to some extent without blurring any contrast between [i] and [u] in the high vowel region.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.43-50
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• 2010

English vowels can be divided into monophthongs and diphthongs depending on the number of vocal tract shapes. Diphthongs are usually produced with more than one shape. This study attempts to collect acoustical data of English diphthongs published by Hillenbrand et al.(1995) online and to examine acoustic features of the diphthongs for phoneticians and English teachers. Sixty three American males and females were chosen after excluding those subjects with different target vowels or ambiguous formant tracks. The author used Praat to obtain the acoustical data systematically at eleven equidistant timepoints over the diphthongal segment. Obvious errors were corrected based on the spectrographic display of each diphthong. Results show that the formant trajectories of the diphthongs produced by the American males and females appeared quite similar. When the female formant values were uniformly normalized to those of the males, almost a perfect collapse occurred. Secondly, the diphthongal movements on the vowel space appeared not linear due to the coarticulatory gesture for the following consonant. Thirdly, the average duration of the diphthongs produced by the females was 1.156 times longer than that of the males while the pitch ratio between the two groups turned out to be 1.746 with a similar contour over measurement points. The author concludes that English diphthongs produced by various groups can be compared systematically when the acoustical values are obtained at proportional timepoints. Further studies will be desirable on the comparison of English diphthongs produced by native and nonnative speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.27-36
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• 2014

This study provided longitudinal examination of the Chinese learners' acquisition of Korean vowels. Specifically, I examined the Chinese learners' Korean monophthongs /i, e, ɨ, ${\Lambda}$, a, u, o/ that were created at the time of 1 month and 12 months, tried to verify empirically how they learn by dealing with their mother tongue, and Korean vowels through dealing with pattern of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (henceforth PAM) of Best (Best, 1993; 1994; Best & Tyler, 2007) and the Speech Learning Model (henceforth SLM) of Flege (Flege, 1987; Bohn & Flege, 1992, Flege, 1995). As a result, most of the present results are shown to be similarly explained by the PAM and SLM, and the only discrepancy between these two models is found in the 'similar' category of sounds between the learners' native language and the target language. Specifically, the acquisition pattern of /u/ and /o/ in Korean is well accounted for the PAM, but not in the SLM. The SLM did not explain why the Chinese learners had difficulty in acquiring the Korean vowel /u/, because according to the SLM, the vowel /u/ in Chinese (the native language) is matched either to the vowel /u/ or /o/ in Korean (the target language). Namely, there is only a one-to-one matching relationship between the native language and the target language. In contrast, the Chinese learners' difficulty for the Korean vowel /u/ is well accounted for in the PAM in that the Chinese vowel /u/ is matched to the vowel pair /o, u/ in Korean, not the single vowel, /o/ or /u/.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.221-228
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• 2009

The purpose of the study was to investigate the characteristics of the pronunciation of Korean vowels in patients with class III malocclusion. 11 adult male patients with class III malocclusion(mean ages 22.3 years) and four adult males with normal occlusion(mean ages 26.5 years) were selected for the analysis of eight Korean monophthongs /ㅣ, ㅔ, ㅐ, ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅗ, ㅡ, ㅜ/. The values and relationships of F1, F2 and F3 were derived from the stable section of target vowel in each sentence, and the analysis using formant plots and vowel triangles' distance and area was conducted to find the features of two groups' vowel distributions. Consequently, it was identified that the pronunciation of males patients with class III malocclusion showed high values of F1 in the low vowels, high values of F2 in the back vowels, and remarkably low position of /ㅏ/. The vowel triangle suggested that the triangle areas of male patients with class III malocclusion were shown wider vertically and narrower horizontally than those of males with normal occlusion. These characteristics could reflect the structural features of class III malocclusion such as the prognathic mandible, low tongue position, and advancement of back position of the tongue.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.373-377
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• 2010

Numerous quantitative and qualitative studies have already been published related to English vowels. However, only minimal amounts of studies based on the acoustic analysis of Korean vowels have been accomplished. The purpose of this study is to obtain sufficient quantitative data based on the acoustic aspects of Korean vowels produced by males between the ages of 20s and 30s. A total of 31 males in their 20s and 30s produced the five fundamental vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ by repeating each of them three times in the standard Korean dialect. Such speech productions were recorded with 'Cool edit' and F1, F2, F3, F4 were extracted through the MATLAB acoustic analysis program. Results indicated that the overall patterns of formants were similar to previous studies, except that the formant levels of F1 and F2 of the vowels produced in this study were generally lower than that in previous studies. Future studies need to focus on obtaining vowel data by considering other factors such as age and other speech materials.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.145-155
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• 2003

This study compared $F_{0}$ and the first three formants of eight Korean monophthongs produced by nine transgenders (male to female) to those of eighteen normal adults. Voice analysis was done by Praat (version 4.049). A one-way ANOVA with Tukey HSD post hoc tests were performed to determine statistical differences in $F_{0}$ and formant values obtained from transgenders, and normal male and female subjects. Results indicated that there was no significant difference in $F_{1}$ of /u/, /$\Lambda$/, and /o/, $F_{2}$ of /u/, /$\Lambda$/, and /i/ and $F_{3}$ of /u/ among the 3 groups (transgenders, normal males and normal females). However, in the comparison of transgenders vs. males, a significant difference was observed in $F_{0}$ of /o/, and $F_{2}$ of /i/, /a/, /e/, and /${\ae}$/ and $F_{3}$ of /e/. Furthermore, in the comparison of transgenders vs. females, a significant difference was also observed in $F_{0}$ of all vowels, $F_{1}$ of /i/, /$\alpha$/, /e/, /${\ae}$/, and /i/. $F_{2}$ of /i/, and /${\ae}$/, and $F_{3}$ of /i/, /$\alpha$/, /$\Lambda$/, /e/, /${\ae}$/, /i/, and /o/. Also, perceptual judgment of the transgenders' voice came out somewhat correlated strongly with their $F_{0}$ values but not much with the formant values. It was concluded that the transgenders' acoustic parameters are placed in between those of the normal males and females in. terms of fundamental and formant frequency analyses of vowels. Thus, it was assumed that those differences might stem from the transgenders' original big resonating cavities.