• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.93-103
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• 2003

This study examines the high-low pitch range differences between Korean and native English speakers' utterances of 36 English sentences, and explores the role of the pitch fluctuation range in the pronunciation assessment. Findings are: i) Korean speakers implement half as much pitch fluctuation as the native speakers with the achievement rate of, on an average, 47%. Especially, pitch fluctuation range is below the average in the sentence types of exclamation, yes-no & wh-questions, ii) the reason why Korean speakers' pitch fluctuation range is only half the range of the native speakers is that Korean speakers do not raise the pitch at certain sentence positions so much as the native speakers, and iii) the range of pitch fluctuation plays an important role in distinguishing the utterances of the native speakers from those of Korean speakers, but does not in rating the English utterances among Korean speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.131-138
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• 2014

A close-copy stylization of intonation curve was used for an acoustical analysis of emotional speech. For the analysis, 408 utterances of five emotions (happiness, anger, fear, neutral and sadness) were processed to extract acoustical feature values. The results show that certain pitch point features (pitch point movement time and pitch point distance within a sentence) and sentence level features (pitch range of a final pitch point, pitch range of a sentence and pitch slope of a sentence) are affected by emotions. Pitch point movement time, pitch point distance within a sentence and pitch slope of a sentence show no significant difference between male and female participants. The emotions with high arousal (happiness and anger) are consistently distinguished from the emotion with low arousal (sadness) in terms of these acoustical features. Emotions with higher arousal show steeper pitch slope of a sentence. They have steeper pitch slope at the end of a sentence. They also show wider pitch range of a sentence. The acoustical analysis in this study implies the possibility that the measurement of these acoustical features can be used to cluster and identify emotions of speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.33-39
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• 2010

This study investigates the effect of pitch range reset in Korean listeners' processing of syntactically ambiguous participle structures. Unlike Japanese and English,in Korean, the downtrend or the reset of pitch range does not consistently differentiate Accentual Phrases (AP), a lower level of phrasing, from Intonational Phrases (IP), a higher level of phrasing. Therefore, we explore Korean listeners' comprehension patterns for syntactically ambiguous speech strings varying in 1) the relative height of F0 peaks across prosodic units, and 2) the types of prosodic phrasing, to see whether pitch range reset informs the recovery of syntactic structure even though it is not reflected in the intonational hierarchy in Korean. The results show that the hierarchical level of prosodic phrasing affects the parsing pattern of syntactic ambiguity. The pitch range reset also cued the location of syntactic boundaries, but this effect was confined to phrases across AP.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.21-30
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• 2014

This study aims to discuss pitch slope on Korean intonation curve in spontaneous speech data. For this study, 656 utterances were taken in the spoken corpus and used 'close-copy stylization'. And then the physical feature of pitch movements was extracted for the study. The pitch slope was calculated on the basis of time and pitch range in each utterance. As a result, the average and distribution of pitch slope is similar between men and women in the range of the pitch movement except for essential differences. The slope of pitch movement confirms that there are no differences between men and women. Pitch slope on a scale of -10 to 10 is 90% of the entire pitch slope; pitch slope that moves by time scale without curve is 33.1%; pitch slope that moves half of the pitch bandwidth during the average time for pitch movement is 23.4%; pitch slope that moves 100% of pitch bandwidth during a half of the average time for pitch movement is 10.4%. Those results imply the possibility of standardization methods of Korean intonation by pitch slope.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.97-105
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• 2015

This research mainly focuses on intonational characteristics of synchronous English speech. Intonation contours were extracted from 1,848 utterances produced in two different speaking modes (solo vs. synchronous) by 28 (12 women and 16 men) native speakers of English. Synchronous speech is found to be slower than solo speech. Women are found to speak slower than men. The effect size of speech rate caused by different speaking modes is greater than gender differences. However, there is no interaction between the two factors (speaking modes vs. gender differences) in terms of speech rate. Analysis of pitch point features has it that synchronous speech has smaller Pt (pitch point movement time), Pr (pitch point pitch range), Ps (pitch point slope) and Pd (pitch point distance) than solo speech. There is no interaction between the two factors (speaking modes vs. gender differences) in terms of pitch point features. Analysis of sentence level features reveals that synchronous speech has smaller Sr (sentence level pitch range), Ss (sentence slope), MaxNr (normalized maximum pitch) and MinNr (normalized minimum pitch) but greater Min (minimum pitch) and Sd (sentence duration) than solo speech. It is also shown that the higher the Mid (median pitch), the MaxNr and the MinNr in solo speaking mode, the more they are reduced in synchronous speaking mode. Max, Min and Mid show greater speaker discriminability than other features.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.151-164
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• 2004

This study examined the use of intonation in children with single word sentences and investigated the communicative functions of pitch range and pitch direction. Two children aged 13months were observed in interaction with their mothers for 10 months. The vocalizations were coded separately for communicative function and for prosodic feature. Results show that level tones are used most frequently, and pitch range is higher for request than declaration or answer and lower for answer than request or declaration. And trends in prosodic contours were observed in request, declaration, and answer respectively. For one child, rising tones were frequently associated with request whereas rising-falling tone with declaration. For the other child, rising-level tones were more frequently associated with request whereas falling-level appeared more often in conjunction with declaration. These trends appeared more distinct in proportion as they grow in months. This result indicate that the way to express communicative functions transfer gradually from differentiating pitch range to diversify pitch direction.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.79-90
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• 2014

An intonation curve stylization was used for an acoustical analysis of English speech. For the analysis, acoustical feature values were extracted from 1,848 utterances produced with normal and fast speech rate by 28 (12 women and 16 men) native speakers of English. Men are found to speak faster than women at normal speech rate but no difference is found between genders at fast speech rate. Analysis of pitch point features has it that fast speech has greater Pt (pitch point movement time), Pr (pitch point pitch range), and Pd (pitch point distance) but smaller Ps (pitch point slope) than normal speech. Men show greater Pt, Pr, and Pd than women. Analysis of sentence level features reveals that fast speech has smaller Sr (sentence level pitch range), Sd (sentence duration), and Max (maximum pitch) but greater Ss (sentence slope) than normal speech. Women show greater Sr, Ss, Sp (pitch difference between the first pitch point and the last), Sd, MaxNr (normalized Max), and MinNr (normalized Min) than men. As speech rate increases, women speak with greater Ss and Sr than men.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.101-108
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• 2014

This study investigates the relation among pitch range differences, speech rate and realization of stress. To identify the realization of the stress, vowel formants and durational differences of stressed and unstressed vowels are measured. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes nine sentences. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean speakers' pitch range is less than 50% of the native speakers; (2) There is a significantly negative relation between high-low pitch range and speech rate; (3) The vowel qualities and durations of the stressed and unstressed vowels are related to the speech rate. But these are not related to the high-low pitch range.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.377-386
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to compare the vocal range between the older and young adults depending on the absence and presence of pitch cues. Participants were 44 older adults aged from 60 to 85 years and 59 college students aged from 19 to 25 years. Each participant was instructed to vocalize for examining the possible highest pitch to the lowest pitch in two conditions; with and without pitch cues. Without pitch cues, the maximum and minimum pitch of male participants was higher in the older adults than in the young adults group, while the minimum pitch of females was lower in the older adults group than in the young adults group. When presented with pitch cues, young adults could expand their vocal range, but the older adults showed no significant changes in produced vocal ranges. The results indicate that the range of voice in older adults may be affected by aging and these results can be beneficial when selecting the appropriate range of song for singing activities with older adults.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.31-39
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• 2001

Bandwidth and Pitch Range are very important in the area of distinguish of phone which is one of many areas of phonetics and distinguish the individual way of phone. So if each constitution has a trait in its phone, they are important to judge the constitutions. In this report we try to understand the relativity between constitutions and Formant Bandwidth, Pitch Range and the number of syllables in a minute which are important to distinguish the phone. And we try to make judging the constitutions objective. 1. We analyzed Formant Bandwidth and there are some differences between constitutions but it doesn't have any importance in the statistics. 2. We analyzed Pitch Range and there are some differences between constitutions but it doesn't have any importance in the statistics. 3. We analyzed the number of syllables in a minute and there are some differences between constitutions but it doesn't have any importance in the statistics. As mentioned above there are differences between constitutions in Formant Bandwidth, Pitch Range and the numbers of syllables in a minute, but they don't have any importance in the statistics. However if we increase the number of samples and remove noise, there will be great possibility to find some important meanings.