• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.101-110
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• 2018

This study aimed to show that Selkirk's concept of resyllabification offers a better analysis than Kahn's ambisyllabification to account for phonetic resyllabification. We conducted two production experiments to investigate the acoustic characteristics of the English /s/ in real words and nonce words. Ten English native speakers and six English native speakers participated in experiment 1 and experiment 2, respectively. Three acoustic cues - frication duration, center of gravity and aspiration duration of word-medial /s/ - were measured. We found that these three cues of the word-medial /s/ were realized significantly differently depending on the stresshood and openness of the preceding syllable. We preferred Selkirk's resyllabification to Kahn's ambisyllabification to explain this result because the word-medial and intervocalic /s/ behaved as the coda (as opposed to the onset) when the preceding syllable was stressed and open. The result thus suggested that two conditions must be met for the resyllabification rule to apply in English: a word-medial consonant is resyllabified only when its preceding syllable is stressed and open.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.11-17
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• 2018

This study reports on a production experiment designed to investigate how Korean speaking learners of English produce English forms ending in stops. In a repetition experiment, Korean participants listened to English nonce words ending in a stop and repeated what they heard. English speakers were recruited for the same task as a control group. The experimental result indicated that the transcriptions of the Korean productions by English native speakers showed vowel insertion in only 3% of productions although the pronunciation of English final stops showed that noise intervals after the closure of final stops were significantly longer for Korean speakers than for English speakers. This finding is inconsistent with the loanword data where 49% of words showed vowel insertion. It is also not compatible with the perceptual similarity approach, which predicts that because Korean speakers accurately perceive an English final stop as a final consonant, they will insert a vowel to make the English sound more similar to the Korean sound.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.121-125
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• 2018

This paper describes procedures of changing and measuring voice quality in terms of jitter. Jitter synthesis method was applied to the TD-PSOLA analysis system of the Praat software. The jitter component is synthesized based on a Gaussian random noise model. The TD-PSOLA re-synthesize process is used to synthesize the modified voice with artificial jitter. Various vocal jitter parameters are used to measure the change in quality caused by artificial systematic jitter change. Synthetic vowels, natural vowels and short sentences are used to check the change in voice quality through the synthesizer model. The results shows that the suggested method is useful for voice quality control in a limited way and can be used to alter the jitter component of voice.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.173-177
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• 2018

Purpose: The primary goal of this study was to discover whether the articulatory diadochokinesis (sequential motionrate, SMR) collected using the Motor Speech Disorder Assessment (MSDA) software module can diagnose dysarthria and determine its severity. Methods: Two subject groups, one with spastic dysarthria (n=26) and a control group of speakers (n=30) without neurological disease, were set up. From both groups, the SMR was collected by MSDA at a time, and then analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: For the parameters of syllable rate, jitter, and the mean syllable length (MSL) at the front and back, the control group displayed better results than the dysarthria patients. Conclusions: At the level of articulatory diadochokinesis, the results showed that the use of MSDA software in clinical practice was generally suitable for quickly recording the parameters of syllable rate, jitter, and mean syllable length.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.65-66
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• 2019

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 2019

Lateral approximants are well known as having complex articulatory characteristics, which vary cross-linguistically, across speakers, and across utterances. However, less attention has been paid to the articulation of Korean laterals, which do not contrast with a rhotic and may thus exhibit greater-than-normal variability. The focus of this study is to investigate the general articulatory characteristics of the Korean lateral [l] as well as the articulatory variation using novel 3D ultrasound imaging methods. The results of this study revealed significant between-speaker variation and some vowel-dependent variation with regard to the articulation of the Korean lateral [l], which has not been reported previously. Even though all participants in this study showed an anterior occlusion, the place of articulation and the size of the occlusion varied greatly across speakers. The data also revealed that left-right asymmetry is present in the articulation of the Korean lateral. The individual variation of the Korean lateral [l] suggests that it has a large articulatory-acoustic space for variation, since it has no contrasting sound that causes perceptual confusion.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.15-20
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• 2021

In line with recent attention to the multimodal expression of politeness, the present study examined the association between polite speech and acoustic features through the analysis of vowels produced in casual and polite speech contexts in Korean. Fourteen adult native speakers of Seoul Korean produced the utterances in two social conditions to elicit polite (professor) and casual (friend) speech. Vowel duration and the first (F1) and second formants (F2) of seven sentence- and phrase-initial monophthongs were measured. The results showed that polite speech shares acoustic similarities with vowel production in clear speech: speakers showed greater vowel space expansion in polite than casual speech in an effort to enhance perceptual intelligibility. Especially, female speakers hyperarticulated (front) vowels for polite speech, independent of speech rate. The implications for the acoustic encoding of social stance in polite speech are further discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.37-44
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• 2021

Preliminary findings are reported from five experiments testing the perceived naturalness of word tokens whose vowel durations are altered. The stimuli were minimal pairs of English words ending in a voiced/voiceless plosive. Results show an asymmetric effect of shortening and lengthening of the vowel on the perceived naturalness of the word. Incremental shortening of vowel duration initially shows a stable degree of perceived naturalness but rapidly deteriorates beyond a certain point. On the contrary, only a small degree of lengthening of the vowel made the perceived naturalness of the word quickly decay, but there was a floor effect such that the perceived degree of naturalness does not lower beyond a certain level. Further, the tokens with the original vowel duration were not always scored higher than the stimuli with a small degree of shortening. Future studies should address the issue of speaking rate and the ratio between the vowel and the stop closure duration to better understand the phenomenon. The issue investigated here has implications on the role of prototypical exemplars in the perception of phonotactic naturalness.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 2021

Voice onset time (VOT) is known to be a primary acoustic cue that differentiates voiced from voiceless stops in the world's languages. While much attention has been given to the sound change of Korean stops, little attention has been given to that of English stops. This study examines VOT of stop consonants as produced by English speakers in comparison to Korean speakers to see whether there is any VOT change for English stops and how the effects of stop, place, gender, and individual on VOT differ cross-linguistically. A total of 24 native speakers (11 Americans and 13 Koreans) participated in this experiment. The results showed that, for Korean, the VOT merger of lax and aspirated stops was replicated, and, for English, voiced stops became initially devoiced and voiceless stops became heavily aspirated. English voiceless stops became longer in VOT than Korean counterparts. The results suggest that, similar to Korean stops, English stops may also undergo a sound change. Since it is the first study to be revealed, more convincing evidence is necessary.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.57-61
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• 2020

Previous research has indicated that the patterns of phonetic modulations induced by prominence are not consistent across languages but are conditioned by sound systems specific to a given language. Most studies examining the prominence effects in Korean have been restricted to segments in word-initial and phrase-initial positions. The present study, thus, set out to explore the prominence effects for Korean stop consonants in word-medial intervocalic positions. A total of 16 speakers of Seoul Korean (8 males, 8 females) produced word-medial intervocalic lenis and aspirated stops with and without prominence. The prominence was induced by contrast focus on the phonation-type contrast, that is, lenis vs. aspirated stops. Our results showed that F0 of vowels following both lenis and aspirated stops became higher when the target stops received focus than when they did not, whereas voice onset time (VOT) and voicing during stop closure for both lenis and aspirated stops did not differ between the focus and no-focus conditions. The findings add to our understanding of diverse patterns of prominence-induced strengthening on the acoustic realizations of segments.