• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제59호
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between intelligibility and phonemic contrasts, and acoustic features in terms of speech development. A total of 212 Putonghua speaking children was participated in the experiment. There were phonemic contrasts significantly related with speech intelligibility: aspirated vs. fricative, retroflex vs. unretroflex, and front vs. back nasal vowel contrast. A regression analysis showed that 88% of the speech intelligibility could be predicted by these phonemic contrasts. Acoustic values were significantly related to the intelligibility of the Putonghua-speaking children's speech: voice onset time of unaspirated stops, and the duration of frication noise in fricatives.

• 인지과학
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.1-11
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• 2004

본 연구는 만 12-35개월 아동들의 발화에 나타나는 모음 대치 현상에 대한 고찰을 통하여 아동의 모음 체계 구성과 그 변화 과정을 밝히고자 하였다. 또한, 자질별로 모음 대치 현상이 일어나는 비율과 해당 대치음에 대한 산출율을 비교함으로써 분절음 대치 현상과 음 산출 사이의 상관관계 및 분절음 대치 현상의 원인을 함께 검토하였다. 그 결과 혓몸 자질에 의한 모음 변별이 원순성 자질에 의한 모음 변별보다 앞서서 이루어지는 것으로 나타났고, 그 시기는 각각 24개월 무렵과 36개월 이후로 밝혀졌다. 또한 변별이 전혀 안 되던 상태에서 변별이 완전해지는 상태로 이행하는 시기에 두 음소 사이의 일방향적 대치가 두드러지는 현상이 나타나는데, 이러한 현상은 어떤 음이 아동의 음운 체계에서 하나의 음소로 자리 잡기 시작하는 때에 해당 음의 변별적 자질을 다른 음에 확대하는 과잉 적용 현상으로 해석된다.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제22권8호
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• pp.694-702
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• 2003

이 연구는 말장애의 진단에 유용한 일음절 낱말대조 명료도 검사 (낱말명료도)의 타당도와 신뢰도를 얻기 위한 것이다. 첫번째로 낱말명료도의 타당성을 확인하기 위하여 문장명료도와의 상관을 구한 결과 상관은 .83으로 비교적 높았다. 두 번째로는 평가자들 간의 일치도를 분석하였다. 낱말명료도는 명료도 손상의 수준에 상관없이 평가자들간에 일정한 변산을 보였다. 마지막으로 낱말명료도 평가도구를 이용하여 마비말장애인의 명료도를 떨어뜨리는데 주요한 역할을 하는 음소대조 요인을 살펴본 결과 종성이 가장 오류가 많았으며 다음으로 초성, 중성의 순서였으나, 회귀분석 결과 초성이 전체 명료도에 미치는 영향이 가장 컸다.

• 음성과학
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• 제13권4호
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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.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제48호
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• pp.1-17
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• 2003

Among the types of dysarthria, spastic and flaccid types are the most prominent manifestations. The objectives of the present research are (1) to discover the phonetic contrasts that differentiate spastic dysarthria from flaccid dysarthria, (2) to analyze the degrees of predictability of each phonetic contrast for intelligibility in spastic and flaccid dysarthrias and to compare them. The 'phonemic contrast word intelligibility pairs' for dysarthric speakers were tested and proved to be useful for clinical assessment of and research on dysarthria. In the group of spastic type, it showed that initial fricative vs. affricate and front vs. back vowel contrasts are transmitted relatively less effectively than flaccid type. In the group of flaccid type, initial glottal vs null contrast is transmitted less effectively than spastic type. The overall intelligibility of spastic dysarthria was predicted by multiple regression analysis with 88% accuracy by three phonetic contrasts(initial fricative vs. affricate; front vs. back vowels; initial consonant correlates). And the intelligibility of flaccid dysarthria was predicted by two phonetic contrasts(initial nasal vs. stop, front vs. back vowels) with 60% accuracy.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• 제24권1E호
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• pp.28-33
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• 2005

This study was designed to suggest an assessment tool for analyzing the characteristics of Korean phonetic contrast intelligibility among dysarthric individuals. The intelligibility deficit factors of phonetic contrast in Korean dysarthric patients were analyzed through stepwise regression analysis. The 19 acoustic-phonetic contrasts proposed by Kent et al. (1999) have been claimed to be useful for clinical assessment and research on dysarthria. However, the test cannot be directly applied to Korean patients due to linguistic differences between English and Korean. Thus, it is necessary to devise a Korean word intelligibility test that reflects the distinct characteristics of the Korean language. To identify the speech error characteristics of a Korean dysarthric group, a Korean word list was audio-recorded by 3 spastic, 4 flaccid, and 5 mixed type of dysarthric patients. The word list consisted of monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) real word pairs. Stimulus words included 41 phonemic contrast pairs and six triplets. The results showed that the percentage of errors in final position contrast was higher than in any other position. Unlike the results of previous studies, the initial-position contrasts were crucial in predicting the overall intelligibility among Korean patients.

• 음성과학
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• 제7권4호
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• pp.93-105
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• 2000

The English schwa sound has special characteristics which are distinct from other vowels. It is non-phonemic and occurs only in an unstressed syllable. Compared with the English schwa, the Korean /e/ is a full vowel which has phonemic contrast. This paper had three aims. One was to see whether there is any relationship between English full vowels and their reduced vowel schwas. Second was to see whether there is any possible target in the English schwa sounds which are derived from different full vowels. The third was to compare the English non-phoneme vowel schwa and the Korean full vowel /e/ in terms of articulatory positions and duration. The study results showed that there is no relationship between each of the full vowels and its schwa. The schwa tended to converge into a possible target which was F1 456 and F2 1560. The Korean vowel /e/ seemed to have its distinct position speaker-individual which is different from the neutral tongue position. The evidence that the Korean /e/ is a back vowel was supported by the Seoul dialect speaker. In duration, the English schwa was much shorter than the full vowels, but there was no significant difference in length between the Korean /e/ and other Korean vowels.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.57-65
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• 2017

The current study explored how Korean-speaking children processed the multiple acoustic cues (VOT and f0) for the stop laryngeal contrast (/t'/, /t/, and /$t^h$/) and examined whether individual perceptual strategies could be related to a general cognitive ability performing executive functions (EF). 15 children (aged from 7 to 8) participated in the speech perception task identifying the three Korean laryngeal stops (3AFC) on listening to the auditory stimuli of C-/a/ with synthetically varying VOT and f0. They completed a series of EF tasks to measure working memory, inhibition, and cognitive shifting ability. The findings showed that children used the two cues in a highly correlated manner. While children utilized VOT consistently for the three laryngeal categories, their use of f0 was either reduced or enhanced depending on the phonetic categories. Importantly, the children's processing strategies of a f0 suppression for a tense-aspirated contrast were meaningfully associated with children's better cognitive abilities such as working memory, inhibition, and attentional shifting. As a preliminary experimental investigation, the current research demonstrated that listeners with inefficient processing strategies were poor at the EF skills, suggesting that cognitive skills might be responsible for developmental variations of processing sub-phonemic information for the linguistic contrast.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제11권4호
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• pp.63-70
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• 2019

This study investigated individual variability of L2 learners' categorical judgments of L2 stops by exploring English learners' perceptual processing of two acoustic cues (voice onset time [VOT] and f0) and working memory capacity as sources of variation. As prior research has reported that English speakers' greater use of the redundant cue f0 was responsible for gradient processing of native stops, we examined whether the same processing characteristics would be observed in L2 learners' perception of Korean stops (/t/-/t^h/). 22 English learners of L2 Korean with a range of L2 proficiency participated in a visual analogue scaling task and demonstrated variable manners of judging the L2 Korean stops: Some were more gradient than others in performing the task. Correlation analysis revealed that L2 learners' categorical responses were modestly related to individuals' utilizations of a primary cue for the stop contrast (VOT for L1 English stops and f0 for L2 Korean stops), and were also related to better working memory capacity. Together, the current experimental evidence demonstrates adult L2 learners' top-down processing of stop consonants where linguistic and cognitive resources are devoted to a process of determining abstract phonemic identity.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제3권4호
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• pp.45-53
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• 2011

Flemming and Johnson (2007) claim that there is a fundamental distinction between the mid central vowel [ə] and the high central vowel [?] in that [ə] occurs in an unstressed word-final position while [?] appears elsewhere. Compared to English counterparts, Korean [ə] and [?] are full vowels and they have phonemic contrast. The purpose of this paper is to explore the acoustic quality of two English reduced vowels produced by Korean learners and native speakers of English in terms of their two formant frequencies. Sixteen Korean learners of English and six native speakers of English produced four types of English words and two types of Korean words with different phonological and morphological patterns. The results show that Korean learners of English produced the two reduced vowels of English and their Korean counterparts differently in Korean and English words.