• MALSORI
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• no.33_34
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• pp.91-98
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• 1997

Auditory discrimination which represents a very basic and important perceptual skill in children is a necessary condition for effective learning. It is necessary, therefore, to devise a standardized test tool for a reliable assessment of the auditory discrimination ability of children. The Korean Auditory Discrimination Test(KADT) is a tentative test tool that the authors have devised to meet such demand, i.e., to test the auditory discrimination ability of Korean children, both normal and hearing- and speech-impaired, between the ages of 4 and 8. The KADT consists of 40 pairs of words arranged in a systematic manner, of which thirty are 'minimal pairs' of words and the rest homophonous synonyms. The 30 minimal pairs are composed in such a way that major phonological contrasts involving consonants and vowels at initial, medial and final positions are duly represented. The test score will be determined by the number of right responses made by the children. Further attempts will be made to refine and improve KADT in future.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2010

This study investigates the perception and production of English front vowels focusing on the distinction in /i/ vs /I/ and /$\varepsilon$/ vs /$\ae$/ by sixty-one Korean speakers. The first portion of this study focused on the perceptional discrimination by the subjects of two sets of English vowel contrasts, /i/ vs /I/ and /$\varepsilon$/ vs /$\ae$/. In the second portion of the study, the production of these vowels by the same subjects who had participated in the perceptional discrimination test was examined acoustically and subsequently compared with that of the control group comprised of native English speakers. The major results indicate that: (1) In perception tests, Korean subjects can discriminate between /i/ and /I/ relatively well, while many of them were not able to discriminate between /$\varepsilon$/ and /$\ae$/; (2) the Korean subjects, however, have difficulty producing a distinct version of these front vowels; and, (3) The relationship between the perception and production is not significant. These results were analyzed with the concept of "under-differentiation" and "reinterpretation of distinction," as well as how phonetic differences influenced the production and discrimination of front vowels by Korean speakers.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.233-247
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• 2004

This study explores sound alternations in a consonant cluster in which at least one consonant is a sonorant (a son/C cluster, hereafter). In this study, I argue that phonological processes affecting son/C clusters result from low perceptual salience rather than from the Syllable Contact Law as discussed in Vennemann (1988), Clements (1990), Rice & Avery (1991), Baertsch & Davis (2000), among others. That is, as a main factor motivating the alternations in the cluster, I consider contrasts of weak perceptibility triggered by phonetic similarity between two members of a cluster (Kawasaki 1982, Ohala 1992, 1993). Based on the findings from a typological survey in 31 different languages, I show that a speech perception-based account makes a correct prediction regarding the patterning of sonorant/sonorant sequences and that of obstruent/sonorant sequences, while the syllable contact account does not.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.53-59
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• 2017

The present study examined if individual listeners' perceptual variations were associated with their cognitive characteristics indexed by the Autistic Spectrum Quotient (AQ). This study first investigated the perception of the lexical pitch accent contrast in the Kyungsang Korean currently undergoing a sound change, and then tested if listeners' perceptual variations were correlated with their AQ scores. Eighteen Kyungsang listeners in their 20s participated in the perception experiment where they identified two contrastive accent words for auditory stimuli systematically varying F0 scaling and timing properties; the participants then completed the AQ questionnaire. In the results, the acoustic parameters reporting reduced phonetic differences across accent contrasts for younger Kyungsang generation played a reliable role in perceiving the HH word from HL, suggesting the discrepancy between the perception and the production in the context of sound change. This study also observed that individuals' perceptual variations were negatively correlated with their AQ sub scores. The present findings suggested that the sound change might appear differently between production and perception with a different time course, and deviant percepts could be explained by individuals' cognitive measure.

• Archives of design research
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.103-110
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• 2000

Hangul came to life as part of the East Asian culture of the Chinese ideograph. Korean letter-culture is starkly different from that of Western letter-culture. In the Orient, letters were sacred and incantory; they were objects of awe, which incorporated elements of the majestic, mysterious, and of ritual. Here we had cultural tradition that acknowledged the intrinsic value of the letters. And it was in this context that Hangul was born as a completely phonetic system of writing. However, the characteristics of Hangul are quite different from those of Chinese ideographs, which are designed to convey a certain meaning. Despite the fact that Hangul is phonetic, its roots lie most definitely in the image of Chinese ideographs. This is something that contrasts with the roots of the Latin alphabet, which have been lost in its long journey of evolution. As a phonetic writing system, a notable characteristic of Hangul is that it has this and the attributes of image. In other words, in that Hangul is a compound, it shares some of the same attributes as Chinese ideographs, but also in that it is a phonetic writing system it is dose to the Latin alphabet. Hangul is definitely a visual writing system that has its origins in the visual culture of Chinese characters as well as being functionally a highly developed phonetic writing system. In short, Hangul has both of these attributes in one writing system. These characteristics of Hangul, for us living in the era of the image, are parts that awaken us to the meaning of existence in our visual culture. Unique among the world's writing systems, the identity of Hangul typography will become none other than the essence of our visual culture.