• 대한후두음성언어의학회지
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.24-32
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• 1991

Cleft palate or velopharyngeal incompetence shows many disorders and disabilities affecting speech transmission. including distortion. substitution. and the nasalization of the vowels. The nasalized vowels are produced primarily by lowering of the velum. resulting in opening a side passage for the air flow through the nasal cavity. These abnormal movements give rise to complex modification of the physical property of the sound or in the sound spectrum. The authors employed Sonagraph$^{\circledR}$ as a sound analyzer in order to ascertain the features which characterize the nasalization of vowels. Twenty healthy Korean male adult voluteers were analyzed in artificial conditions of anterior and posterior nasal obstruction. and velo-pharyngeal incompetence. The results were as follows : 1) Fundamental frequency was not changed by nasal obstruction or velopharyngeal incompetence. 2) There was no significant difference of the formant intensity between normal and nasal vowels. 3) In VPI, a decrease of the frequency of $F_2$ was observed in /e/ and /i/ vowels(p<0.001). 4) In VPI, the $F_2$ was frequently missed in /o/ and /u/ vowels. 5) In the consonant spectra of VPI, the 'release burst' was usually not observed.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제3권1호
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• pp.23-34
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• 2011

Many Korean children have difficulty learning English vowels. The gestures inside the oral and pharyngeal cavities are hard to control when they cannot see the gestures and the target vowel system is quite different from that of Korean. This study attempts to collect children's acoustic data of twelve English vowels published by Hillenbrand et al. (1995) online and to examine the acoustic features of English vowels for phoneticians and English teachers. The author used Praat to obtain the data systematically at six equidistant timepoints over the vowel segment avoiding any obvious errors. Results show inherent acoustic properties for vowels from the children's distribution of vowel duration, f0 and intensity values. Second, children's gestures for each vowel coincide with the regression analysis of all formant values at different timepoints regardless of the vocal fold and tract difference. Third, locus points appear higher than those of American males and females. Their gestures along the timepoints display almost similar patterns. From the results the author concludes that vowel formant trajectories provide useful and important information on dynamic articulatory gestures, which may be applicable to Korean children's education and correction of English vowels. Further studies on the developmental study of vowel formants and pitch values are desirable.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권4호
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• pp.201-207
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• 2013

This study is a follow-up study of Han and Kang (2013) and Kang and Han (2013) which examined cross-generational changes in the Korean vowels /o/ and /u/ using acoustic analyses of the vowel formants of these two vowels, their Euclidean distances and the overlap fraction values generated in SOAM 2D (Wassink, 2006). Their results showed an on-going approximation of /o/ and /u/, more evident in female speakers and non-initial vowels. However, these studies employed non-words in a frame sentence. To see the extent to which these two vowels are merged in real words in spontaneous speech, we conducted an acoustic analysis of the formants of /o/ and /u/ produced by two age groups of female speakers while reading a letter sample. The results demonstrate that 1) the younger speakers employed mostly F2 but not F1 differences in the production of /o/ and /u/; 2) the Euclidean distance of these two vowels was shorter in non-initial than initial position, but there was no difference in Euclidean distance between the two age groups (20's vs. 40-50's); 3) overall, /o/ and /u/ were more overlapped in non-initial than initial position, but in non-initial position, younger speakers showed more congested distribution of the vowels than in older speakers.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.3-11
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• 2012

The aim of this paper is to examine the phonetic realizations of English unstressed vowels produced by advanced Korean learners (KLs) of English compared with English native speakers (NSs) focusing on the comparative study of English words and English loanwords. The result shows that KLs are usually not native-like in producing the English unstressed vowel /ə/ and loanword orthography affects the way the KLs produce /?/. The vowel quality of the unstressed vowels produced by the KLs is different from that of the NSs. In duration and pitch, KLs show significantly less difference between the stressed and unstressed vowels than do the NSs. The KLs usually have a high pitch in the stressed and the last syllable while the NSs usually produce peak F0 in the stressed syllable. When the KLs have a similar vowel quality with that of the NSs, they produce a shorter duration of the unstressed vowels. However, there is no correlation between the realization of the pitch and the vowel quality in KLs speech.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제64호
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• pp.1-14
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to examine the acoustic perception different by formants change for profoundly hearing impaired children with cochlear implants. The subjects were 10 children after 15 months of experience with the implant and mean of their chronological age was 8.4 years and Standard deviation was 2.9 years. The ability of auditory perception was assessed using acoustic-synthetic vowels. The acoustic-synthetic vowel was combined with F1, F2, and F3 into a vowel and produced 42 synthetic sound, using Speech GUI(Graphic User Interface) program. The data was deal with clustering analysis and on-line analytical processing for perception ability of acoustic synthetic vowel. The results showed that auditory perception scores of acoustic-synthetic vowels for cochlear implanted children were increased in F2 synthetic vowels compaire to those of F1. And it was found that they perceived the differences of vowels in terms of distance rates between F1 and F2 in specific vowel.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권4호
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• pp.109-115
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• 2014

Fricated nuclei in Nuosu Yi were found to be more correctly described as fricated vowels, rather than syllabic fricatives due to the presence of clear formant structures typical of front vowels. In this exploratory study, two types of fricated nuclei were examined: retroflex "yr" and non-retroflex "y". The retroflex nucleus "yr" had higher F1 and lower F3 than non-retroflex "y", indicating a lower tongue height. On the other hand, F2 was found to correlate not with nucleus retroflexion, but instead with onset consonant retroflexion: F2 was higher following retroflex onsets, in both vowels. This effect was persistent through the entire vowel, suggesting a phonological effect, rather than a coarticulatory one. Interpretation of the F2 results require accompanying articulatory data since the usual coupling of F2 and tongue backness does not always hold for retroflex vowels. Examining the articulation of the fricated nuclei in Nuosu Yi is a direction for future research.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.119-124
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to compare the voice differences of persons with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease and a normal group according to five vowels. Eight persons with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease and a healthy control group of 22 were selected and every voice analyzed by MDVP. The first result showed that jitter measurements between the two group showed a significant statistical difference according to all vowels. Second, the two groups' shimmer measurements showed a significant statistical difference according to nearly all vowels. Third, jitter measurements between the five vowels were more relatively closely correlated persons with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease than the normal group. Fourth, shimmer figures between the five vowels more relatively closely correlated persons with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease than the normal group.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권2호
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• pp.55-64
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• 2014

This study measured formant bandwidths of profound hearing impaired children and examined the characteristics of their articulation. For this study, 10 cochlear implanted children(CI), 10 hearing aid children(HA) and 10 normal hearing children(NH) were asked to read 7 Korean vowels(/ɑ, ʌ, o, u, ɯ, i, ɛ/). The subjects' readings were recorded by NasalView and analyzed by Praat. The analysis of the formant bandwidths explains the degree of vocal fold opening and the characteristics of radiation. Through the analysis of formant bandwidth, we can see that the hearing-impaired maintain vocal fold tension when they speak high vowels and characteristics of radiation. Narrower B1 means better maintain vocal fold tension, wider B2 means more front and wider B3 means the rounder lips. CI's B1 was widest and NH's was narrowest. And females' B1 was wider than males'. Among vowels, B1 of /a/ was widest, and B1 of /i/ was narrowest. In the case of B2, HA and NH's B2 was wider than CI's. Females' B2 was wider than males'. And B2 of /i/ was widest, and B2 of /ʌ/ was narrowest. In the case of B3, NH's was widest, and CI's was narrowest. Males' was wider than females'. Among vowels, B3 of /o/ was widest, and B3 of /ɛ/ was narrowest. As a result, first, through the analysis of B1, we can find that NH and males could better maintain vocal fold tension than the hearing-impaired or females, and all children articulate /i/ with vocal fold tension than other vowels. Second, through the analysis of B2, NH and HA articulate vowels with the weaker rounded than CI does. And females articulate vowels with the weaker rounded than males do. Third, through the analysis of B3, NH articulate vowels with the rounder than HA or CI do, and males articulate vowels with the rounder than females do. Through the results, we can expect that the analysis of formant bandwidth will be applied to the therapy of articulation for the hearing-impaired with hearing aids or cochlear implant.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권4호
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• pp.99-107
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine the relative distances among English front vowels in a message produced by 47 Korean and American speakers in order to better instruct pronunciation skills of English vowels for Korean English learners. A Praat script was developed to collect the first and second formant values(F1 and F2) of eight words in each sound file which was recorded from an internet speech archive. Then, the Euclidean distances were measured between the three vowel pairs: [i-ɛ], [i-ɪ], and [ɛ-æ]. The first vowel pair [i-ɛ] was set as the reference from which the relative distances of the other two vowel pairs were measured in percent in order to compare the vowel sounds among speakers of different vocal tract lengths. Results show that F1 values of the front vowels produced by the Korean and American speakers increased from the high front vowel to the low front vowel wih differences among the groups. The Korean speakers generally produced the front vowels with smaller jaw openings than the American speakers did. Secondly, the relative distance of the high front vowel pair [i-ɪ] showed a significant difference between the Korean and American speakers while that of the low front vowel pair [ɛ-æ] showed a non-significant difference. Finally, the Korean speakers in the higher proficiency level produced front vowels with higher F1 values than those in the lower proficiency level. The author concluded that Korean speakers should produce the front high vowels distinctively by securing sufficient relative distance of the formant values. Further studies would be desirable to examine how strong the Korean speakers' English proficiency correlate with the relative distance of target words of comparable productions.

• 음성과학
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.93-103
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• 2007

The aims of this study were to examine the acoustic features of Korean and Japanese vowels, and to determine whether new phones that do not have counterparts in Japanese or similar phones that have counterparts improve more from learning. This study consisted of three parts. In Experiment I, a speech production test was performed to observe the acoustic features of Korean and Japanese vowels. In Experiment II, the speech production of Korean vowels produced by Koreans, advanced Japanese learners of Korean, and beginning Japanese learners of Korean was investigated. In Experiment III, a speech perception study of Korean vowels produced by the two Japanese learner groups was conducted to observe the effect of learning on acquiring L2 phones. The conclusion drawn from the study was that the similar phones produced by Japanese show more similarity with those of Koreans than new phones in terms of F1 and F2, but Japanese learners of Korean displayed more improvement in new phones from learning.