• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.111-116
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• 2016

The Nasometer is most commonly used to assess the presence and degree of resonance problems in clinical settings and it provides nasalance scores to identify the acoustic correlates of nasality. Nasalance scores are influenced by factors related to speakers and speech stimuli. This study aims to examine the effect of vowel context and length of stimuli and age on nasalance scores. The participants were 20 adults and 45 children ranging in age from 3 to 5 years. The stimuli consisted of 12 sentences containing no nasal consonants. The stimuli in the three vowel contexts (low, high, and mixed) consisted of 4, 8, 16, and 31-syllable long sentences. Speakers were asked to repeat each stimulus after examiner. The results indicated significant effects of vowel contexts and stimulus length on nasalance scores. The nasalance scores for the high vowel contexts were significantly higher than those for the mixed and low vowel contexts. The nasalance scores for the mixed vowel contexts were significantly higher than those for the low vowel contexts. Speakers had higher nasalance scores for 4-syllable long sentences and 31-syllable long sentences than for 16-syllable long sentences. The effect of age on nasalance scores was not significant. The results of the study suggest that the vowel context and length of speech stimuli should be carefully considered when interpreting the nasalance scores.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.1-6
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• 2017

This study examined how early bilingual children produce sounds in their two languages articulated with the same manner of articulation but at different places of articulation. English affricates are palato-alveolar and Korean affricates are alveolar. This study analyzed the frequencies of center of gravity (COG), spectral peak (SP), and the second formant (F2) of word-initial affricates in English and Korean produced by twenty-four early Korean-English bilingual children (aged 4 to 7), and compared them with those of monolingual counterparts in the two languages. If early Korean-English bilingual children produce palato-alveolar affricates in English and alveolar affricates in Korean, they may produce Korean affricates with higher COGs, SPs, and F2s than English affricates. The early Korean-English bilingual children at the age of 4 produced English and Korean affricates with similar COGs, SPs, and F2s, and the COGs, SPs, and F2s of their Korean affricates were similar to those of the Korean monolingual counterparts. However, the early bilingual children at the age of 5 to 7 had lower COGs and SPs for English affricates with higher F2s compared to Korean affricates, and the COGs, SPs, and F2s of their English affricates were similar to those of the English monolingual counterparts.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.7-15
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the different aspects of word-initial liquid sounds in Korean according to generations. Five women in their 50s and seven in their 20s participated in the experiment. We examined FL (formant of liquids) and voice sustained time by using Praat software. Three English native speakers were asked to judge the Korean speakers' recorded speech samples for marking [l] or [r] using evaluation sheet. The results of the two experiments revealed three important aspects. First, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in the FL of the words 'racket' and 'ruby.' Second, we found statistically significant differences in 'rhythm', 'ruby' and 'litter' from the measurement of the duration of the acoustic data. Third, there was no difference in pronunciation between the two groups according to the phonemes of the original language. The results of this study showed that it is difficult to say that the duration of word-initial liquids and the phoneme difference of the original language are indicators to distinguish the word-initial liquids between generations. Also, it was seen that the pronunciation of Korean word-initial liquid sounds varied across generations.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.67-74
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• 2017

An increase in speech intelligibility has been found in Clear Speech compared to conversational speech. Clear Speech is defined by decreased articulation rates and increased frequency and length of pauses. The objective of the present study was to investigate improvement in immediate speech intelligibility in 10 patients with Parkinson's disease (age range: 46 to 75 years) using Clear Speech. This experiment has been performed using the Phonatory Aerodynamic System 6600 after the participants read the first sentence of a Sanchaek passage and the "List for Adults 1" in the Sentence Recognition Test (SRT) using casual speech and Clear Speech. Acoustic and aerodynamic parameters that affect speech intelligibility were measured, including mean F0, F0 range, intensity, speaking rate, mean airflow rate, and respiratory rate. In the Sanchaek passage, use of Clear Speech resulted in significant differences in mean F0, F0 range, speaking rate, and respiratory rate, compared with the use of casual speech. In the SRT list, significant differences were seen in mean F0, F0 range, and speaking rate. Based on these findings, it is claimed that speech intelligibility can be affected by adjusting breathing and tone in Clear Speech. Future studies should identify the benefits of Clear Speech through auditory-perceptual studies and evaluate programs that use Clear Speech to increase intelligibility.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

The current study investigated the productions of /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/ in Kyungsang Korean, which is known for undergoing a dispersion for the younger generation. Specifically, to identify the nature of /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/ in Kyungsang Korean, this study examined the linguistic and social factors affecting directions and degrees of the /ɨ/-/${\Lambda}$/ dispersion. Sixteen young speakers of Kyungsang Korean repeated 112 (near) minimal pairs containing the two target vowels. The formant values of each production as well as the Euclidean distance between the two vowels were analyzed for four manipulated factors: gender (male vs. female), the existence of carrier phrases (words in isolation vs. words with a carrier phrase), the lexical status of stimulus words (real-word pairs vs. nonsense-word pairs), and the vowel position within a word (word-initial positions vs. word-final positions). The results indicated that the female speakers produced the two target vowels more distinctively than the male speakers, and so did when the words were produced in isolation. The results also revealed that the Euclidean distances were greater for the real-word pairs and in word-initial positions. Overall, the results suggested that the Kyungsang Korean speakers in their 20s could distinctively produce the two vowels /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/, but this vowel dispersion is not a completed process, but an ongoing one.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.99-106
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• 2017

Clinical data about vocal nodules have seldom been reported, even though vocal nodules are commonly diagnosed in outpatient speech and voice clinic. This study aims to investigate clinical characteristics of the patients who are diagnosed with vocal nodules. This study analyzed the data for 10 years from the 319 patients diagnosed with vocal nodules (45 males and 274 females with the mean age of 39.4 ranging from 2 to 83) in terms of gender, age, occupation, voice change initiation pattern, change with time, throat clearing, smoking history, type of voice abuse, acoustic analysis, maximum phonation time, GRBAS, and VHI. Thirteen patients (4.08%) had unilateral vocal nodule and 306 patients (95.9%) had bilateral vocal nodule, the majority of which had a pattern of asymmetry (73.9%). The glottal closure pattern was hourglass in 72.1% of patients, posterior chink in 17.9% of patients, and irregular in 7.9% of patients. The most common occupational category was professional voice users (43.4%). The voice abuse pattern included excessive talking in 96 patients (76.8%), loud voice in 78 (62.4%) patients, and excessive singing in 17 patients (21.6%). The patients showed worse scores in G, B, and S than in R and A for the GRBAS evaluation. The most recommended treatment for vocal nodules was voice therapy. The current clinical data will be helpful for treatment planning for the patients of vocal nodule.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

It was shown in speech production studies that the preparation unit of spoken word production is language particular, such as onset phonemes for English and Dutch, syllables for Mandarin Chinese, and morae for Japanese. However, there have been inconsistent results on whether the onset phoneme is a planning unit of spoken word production in Korean. In this study, two sets of experiments investigated possible influences of task demands on the phonological preparation in native Korean adults, namely, implicit priming and word naming with the form preparation paradigm. Only the word naming task, but not the implicit priming task, showed a significant onset priming effect, even though there were significant syllable priming effects in both tasks. Following the attentional theory ($O^{\prime}S{\acute{e}}aghdha$ & Frazer, 2014), these results suggest that task demands might play a role in the absence/presence of onset priming effects in Korean. Native Korean speakers could maintain their attention to the shared onset phonemes in word naming, which is not very demanding, while they have difficulties in allocating their attention to such units in a more cognitive-demanding implicit priming, even though both tasks involve accessing phonological codes. These findings demonstrate that there are cross-linguistic differences in the first selectable unit in preparation of spoken word production, but within a single language, the preparation unit might not be immutable.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.115-122
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• 2017

This study attempts to determine the extent to which late talkers are at the risk of delayed phonological development, in order to identify groups at risk and to find factors affecting delayed phonological development. A group of 1,452 children (51% boys, 49% girls) were recruited from the nationwide Panel Study on Korean Children. The current study collected data from 418 children who were previously identified as late-talkers (LT) at their age of three on average (Time 1: expressive vocabulary test) and three years later (Time 2: phonological test). Their phonological outcomes of the Time 2 were analyzed and then compared to those of a group of 1,056 children with typical language development (NLT: no late-talkers) at the age of three in terms of the number of incorrect consonants, and the speech sound disorders rating scores. LT showed a lower articulation score than NLT, and boys showed a lower score than girls. These findings indicate that the late onset of speech and the gender of young children could be potential risk factors of speech sound disorders.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.59-67
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• 2017

Regardless of their intention, listeners tend to assess speakers' personalities based on the sounds of the speech they hear. Assessment criteria, however, have not been fully investigated to indicate whether there is any relationship between the acoustic cue of produced speech sounds and perceived personality impression. If properly investigated, the potential relationship between these two will provide crucial insights on the aspects of human communications and further on human-computer interaction. Since human communications have distinctive characteristics of simultaneity and complexity, this investigation would be the identification of minimum essential factors among the sounds of speech and perceived personality impression. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to identify significant associations between the speech sounds and perceived personality impression of speaker by the listeners. Twenty eight subjects participated in the experiment and eight acoustic parameters were extracted by using Praat from the recorded sounds of the speech. The subjects also completed the Neo-five Factor Inventory test so that their personality traits could be measured. The results of the experiment show that four major factors(duration average, pitch difference value, pitch average and intensity average) play crucial roles in defining the significant relationship.