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

Previous studies have reported on the overlapping of $F_1$ and $F_2$ distribution for the vowels /o/ and /u/ produced by young Korean speakers of the Seoul dialect. It has been suggested that the overlapping of /o/ and /u/ occurs due to sound change. However, few studies have examined whether speech rate influences the overlapping of /o/ and /u/. On the other hand, previous studies have reported that the overlapping of /o/ and /u/ in syllable produced by male speakers is smaller than by female speakers. Few reports have investigated on the overlapping of the two vowels in read speech produced by male speakers. In the current study, we examined whether speech rates affect overlapping of /o/ and /u/ in read speech by male and female speakers. Read speech produced by twelve young adult native speakers of Seoul dialect were recorded in three speech rates. For female speakers, discriminant analysis showed that the discriminant rate became lower as the speech rate increases from slow to fast. Thus, this indicates that speech rate is one of the factors affecting the overlapping of /o/ and /u/. For male speakers, on the other hand, the discriminant rate was not correlated with speech rate, but the overlapping was larger than that of female speakers in read speech. Moreover, read speech by male speakers was less clear than by female speakers. This indicates that the overlapping may be related to unclear speech by sociolinguistic reasons for male speakers.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.177-184
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• 2005

In this paper, we proposed a new hearing aid algorithm to improve SNR(signal to noise ratio) of noisy speech signal and speech perception. The proposed hearing aid algorithm is a multi-band loudness compensation based independent component analysis (ICA). The proposed algorithm was compared with a conventional spectral subtraction algorithm on behind-the-ear type hearing aid. The proposed algorithm successfully separated a target speech signal from background noise and from a mixture of the speech signals. The algorithms were compared each other by means of SNR. The average improvement of SNR by ICA based algorithm was 16.64dB, whereas spectral subtraction algorithm was 8.67dB. From the clinical tests, we concluded that our proposed algorithm would help hearing aid user to hear clearly a target speech in noisy conditions.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.41-53
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to determine how elementary school students' self-acceptance, social support and internal locus of control affect their speech anxiety. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 570 fifth and sixth graders attending 4 elementary schools located in Seoul. A total of 534 surveys were completed and were analyzed with SPSS WIN 12.0 including frequency test, t-test, Pearson's correlations analysis, simultaneous multiple regression and hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, among self-acceptance, social support, internal locus of control and speech anxiety, gender affected speech anxiety. Second, speech anxiety was most affected by self-acceptance, followed by social support, internal locus of control and gender in the order of mention. Third, social support had moderating effects on the relationship between self-acceptance and speech anxiety.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.137-168
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to prepare the basis for a more objective evaluation of oral fluency by comparing speech patterns of Korean native speakers and L2 Korean learners. For this purpose, the current study focused on the analysis of speech materials of the 21st century Sejong spoken corpus and Korean learner corpus. We compared the oral fluency of Korean native speakers and Korean learners based on speech rate, pause, and discourse markers. The results show that the pattern of Korean learners is different to that of Korean native speakers in all aspects of speech rate, pause, and discourse markers; even though proficiency of Korean leaners show increase, they could not reach the oral fluency level of Korean native speakers. At last, based on these results of the analysis, we added suggestions for setting the evaluation criteria of oral fluency of Korean learners.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.163-179
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• 1999

For the set up, management and repair of a mobile communication system, continuous estimation of speech quality is required. Speech quality measurement can be conducted by listener's judgement in a subjective test such as MOS (Mean Opinion Score) test. However, this method is laborious, expensive and time-consuming, it is advisable to predict subjective speech quality via objective measures. This paper presents a robust objective speech quality measure, PLP-CMS (Perceptual Linear Predictive-Cepstral Mean Subtraction), which can predict subjective speech quality in mobile communication systems. PLP-CMS has a high correlation with subjective quality owing to PLP (Perceptual Linear Predictive) analysis and shows a robust performance not being influenced by PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) channel effects due to CMS (Cepstral Mean Subtraction). To prove the performance of our proposed algorithm, we carried out subjective and objective quality estimation on speech samples which are variously distorted in a real mobile communication system. As a result, we demonstrated that PLP-CMS has a higher correlation with subjective quality than PSQM (Perceptual Speech Quality Measure) and PLP-CD (Perceptual Linear Predictive-Cepstral Distance).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2017

This study investigates the effect of voice quality on speech intelligibility and the relationship between voice quality and intelligibility for children with spastic CP. We recruited 36 children with spastic CP (mean age 10.43 year, 17 girls, 19 boys, spastic type 34, mixed 2) from a special school and a rehabilitation hospital. Voice samples for the perceptual analysis of voice quality were extracted from a sustained vowel /a/ and were rated on the GRBAS scales by two experienced speech language pathologists. Ten adult subjects with no hearing problems evaluated speech intelligibility for the 37 words listed in the Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children on a 7-point interval scale. The children with spastic CP were divided into three groups according to the rated G scores on the GRBAS scales (G1(n)=10, G2(n)=13, G3(n)=13). Analyses of ANCOVA and Pearson correlation showed that there was a significant difference in speech intelligibility among three groups. There was also a significant correlation in G scale (grade), A scale (asthenia), B scale (breathy) score, and speech intelligibility. These findings suggest that poor speech intelligibility of spastic CP might be related to asthenia and breathiness. Vocal intensity should be increased and vocal functioning should be improved for speech therapy to improve speech intelligibility of the children with spastic CP.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.2
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• pp.25-44
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• 1997

When listening the various speech synthesis systems developed and being used in our country, we find that though the quality of these systems has improved, they lack naturalness. Moreover, since the voice color of these systems are limited to only one recorded speech DB, it is necessary to record another speech DB to create different voice colors. 'Voice Color' is an abstract concept that characterizes voice personality. So speech synthesis systems need a voice color control function to create various voices. The aim of this study is to examine several factors of voice color control rules for the text-to-speech system which makes natural and various voice types for the sounding of synthetic speech. In order to find such rules from natural speech, glottal source parameters and frequency characteristics of the vocal tract for several voice colors have been studied. In this paper voice colors were catalogued as: deep, sonorous, thick, soft, harsh, high tone, shrill, and weak. For the voice source model, the LF-model was used and for the frequency characteristics of vocal tract, the formant frequencies, bandwidths, and amplitudes were used. These acoustic parameters were tested through multiple regression analysis to achieve the general relation between these parameters and voice colors.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.73-80
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to analyze perceptual and spectral/cepstral measurements in patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia(ADSD). Sixty participants with gender and age matched individuals(30 ADSD and 30 controls) were recorded in reading a sentence and sustained the vowel /a/. Acoustic data were analyzed acoustically by measuring CPP, L/H ratio, mean CPP F0 and CSID, and auditory-perceptual ratings were measured using GRBAS. The main results can be summarized as below: (a) the CSID for the connected speech was significantly higher than for the sustained vowel (b) the G, R and S for the connected speech were significantly higher than for the sustained vowel (c) Spectral/cepstral parameters were significantly correlated with the perceptual parameters, and (d) the ROC analysis showed that the threshold of 13.491 for the CSID achieved a good classification for ADSD, with 86.7% sensitivity and 96.7% specificity. Spectral and cepstral analysis for the connected speech is especially meaningful on cases where perceptual analysis and clinical evaluation alone are insufficient.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.15B no.1
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• pp.17-24
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• 2008

This paper proposes Sasang constitution classification through speech signals analysis values and comparison. For this, this paper wishes to propose Taeumin classification method of output values signals that comes out speech signal analysis to connect with process classification of Soeumin through skin diagnosis by first step in the whole system configuration to provide for objective index of Sasang constitution. First of all, these characteristic of voices wish to extract phonetic elements that each Sasang constitution groups' clear features. Also, we wish to classify Taeumin through constitution groups' difference and similarity on the basis of results value. Finally, the effectiveness of this method is verified through the experiments.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.73-80
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• 2020

In this study, a method for measuring the jitter component in continuous speech is presented. In the conventional jitter measurement method, pitch variabilities are commonly measured from the sustained vowels. In the case of continuous speech, such as a spoken sentence, distortion occurs with the existing measurement method owing to the influence of prosody information according to the sentence. Therefore, we propose a method to reduce the pitch fluctuations of prosody information in continuous speech. To remove this pitch fluctuation component, a curve representing the fluctuation is obtained via polynomial interpolation for the pitch track in the analysis interval, and the shift is removed according to the curve. Subsequently, the variability of the pitch frequency is obtained by a method of measuring jitter from the trajectory of the pitch from which the shift is removed. To measure the effects of the proposed method, parameter values before and after the operations are compared using samples from the Kay Pentax MEEI database. The statistical analysis of the experimental results showed that jitter components from the continuous speech can be measured effectively by proposed method and the values are comparable to the parameters of sustained vowel from the same speaker.