• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.229-238
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• 2010

This study investigates the differences in acoustic parameters in vowel space across hearing loss, gender and vowels. The parameters include F1, F2, Euclidean Distance between vowels, and vowel triangular area comprised of /i/, /a/ and /u/. For this study, 20 hearing-impaired and normal hearing adults as a control group were asked to read 7 Korean vowels (/a, $\wedge$, o, u, w, i, $\varepsilon$/). Subjects' readings were recorded by NasalView and analyzed by Praat. Results showed that F1 were significantly higher in the hearing impaired group than in the normal hearing group, higher in the female group than in male group, and higher in low vowels than in high vowels. And the means of F2 was significantly higher in the hearing impaired group than in normal hearing group, higher in high vowels than in low vowels, and there was no difference between male and female group. Secondly, Euclidean distance between vowels was significantly shorter in the hearing-impaired group than in the normal group. Finally, acoustic vowel space area was significantly smaller in the hearing-impaired group than in the normal hearing group. The hearing-impaired group showed that front vowels tended to be backed and back vowels to be fronted.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.37-44
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• 2021

While recent acoustic studies have reported associations of fronted sibilants (fricatives /s s⁎/ and affricates /tɕ tɕ⁎/) with gender in Seoul Korean, there have not been any studies examining the relationship of the variants with adult speakers' ages. The current study analyzes sibilant productions from 39 adult speakers born between 1942 and 2008 (19 females) in terms of spectral peak frequencies (SPFs) in frication, an acoustic index of place of articulation (POA). The results indicate some phonetic contexts where higher sibilant SPFs, i.e., fronter POAs, are associated with younger adults and those fronted variants are realized in a gender-differentiated manner -- tense affricates and word-initial tense fricatives before /i/ in the females' productions, and word-medial tense fricatives before /a/ in the males' productions. The findings confirm that the distributions of the fronted sibilants are accounted for not only by the speakers' gender but also by their ages, indicating that the fronted variants are innovative forms of realizing sibilants in Seoul Korean. In addition, the current results convincingly show that the fronted sibilant variants are not mere reflections of individuals' physiological differences since they are not observed across all of the examined phonetic contexts.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.579-584
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• 2010

Purpose : The number of the repatriated Korean students who had overseas study at early ages is increasing. They received foreign education, they can speak international languages, but they have many difficulties in articulation and intonation of the Korean language. This study aims to measure closure and aspiration duration, length of consonants, length of subsequent vowels, and ratio of consonants against subsequent vowels in vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) syllables. Methods : This study compares the acoustic and phonetic characteristics of repatriated and native students, the ratio of articulation error of Korean plosives, the closure and aspiration duration, and the ratio of the aspiration duration against the closure duration. Results : The ratio of articulation error of Korean plosives between repatriated and native students is 19% and 2%, respectively. The closure duration was significantly longer in repatriated students than in native students. The aspiration duration was significantly longer in repatriated students than in native students. No difference was found in the ratio of aspiration duration against closure duration between the native and repatriated students. Conclusion : This study can be a good reference for estimating the phonetic difficulties of Korean elementary students who had overseas study at early ages.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.526-534
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• 2001

Purpose : The objective of this study is to ascertain whether the positive exists among the frenum length, the tongue movement and the speech and to present the normal range of tongue movement and guidelines for the choice of surgery, observation if necessary. Materials and Methods : 180 patients were evaluated. We divided 180 patients into 6 group by age. Each group was separated as follows; the age of 2.5-4, 5-6, 7-9, 10-12, 16-18. We measured the frenal length, the range of tongue motion and evaluated the speech so that we really questioned about the positive relationship between the tongue-tie and speech. We let the patient exercise the protrusive both(right, left) laterotrusive superior movement of the tongue. During these movements, we measured the distance between the vermilion border and the tongue tip. We also measured the distance from the tongue tip to the point contacting the upper lip with dorsum of the tongue during the maximal protrusive movement of the tongue. Three linear measurement of the anterior, inferior segment of the tongue including the lingual frenum, are made. These measurements are as follows: 1. Distance A. Free anterior portion of the tongue from the point of frenular insertion to the tongue tip. 2. Distance B. The distance from the initiating point of the lingual frenum to the point connecting the two sublingual carundcles to the lingual frenum perpendicularly. 3. Distance C. The distance from the point contacting the line crossing the sublingual caruncles with the lingual frenum to the terminating point of the lingual frenum. We transform three linear measures into a statistical ratio, A/(A-B+C), representing the length of the free portion of the tongue compared with the total sublingual dimensions. In addition, we assessed the speech through Picture Consonant Articulation Test(PCAT) and tried to find out the relationship between the length of the lingual frenum and speech. Conclusion : As people are born, they have small and restricted tongue. As people grow old, tongue motions are more liberate, and unrestricted and they can speak so freely. Therefore we suggest that until age 5, oral and maxillofacial surgeons postpone the surgery if not urgent, evaluate the maximal lingual motions and PCAT according to this article and observe their changes.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.10B no.2
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• pp.169-178
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• 2003

This study outlines two viewpoints the classification of phone likely unit (PLU) which is the foundation of korean large vocabulary speech recognition, and the effectiveness of Chiljongseong (7 Final Consonants) and Paljogseong (8 Final Consonants) of the korean language. The phone likely classifies the phoneme phonetically according to the location of and method of articulation, and about 50 phone-likely units are utilized in korean speech recognition. In this study auditory phonetical knowledge was applied to the classification of phone likely unit to present 45 phone likely unit. The vowels 'ㅔ, ㅐ'were classified as phone-likely of (ee) ; 'ㅒ, ㅖ' as [ye] ; and 'ㅚ, ㅙ, ㅞ' as [we]. Secondly, the Chiljongseong System of the draft for unified spelling system which is currently in use and the Paljongseonggajokyong of Korean script haerye were illustrated. The question on whether the phonetic value on 'ㄷ' and 'ㅅ' among the phonemes used in the final consonant of the korean fan guage is the same has been argued in the academic world for a long time. In this study, the transition stages of Korean consonants were investigated, and Ciljonseeng and Paljongseonggajokyong were utilized in speech recognition, and its effectiveness was verified. The experiment was divided into isolated word recognition and speech recognition, and in order to conduct the experiment PBW452 was used to test the isolated word recognition. The experiment was conducted on about 50 men and women - divided into 5 groups - and they vocalized 50 words each. As for the continuous speech recognition experiment to be utilized in the materialized stock exchange system, the sentence corpus of 71 stock exchange sentences and speech corpus vocalizing the sentences were collected and used 5 men and women each vocalized a sentence twice. As the result of the experiment, when the Paljongseonggajokyong was used as the consonant, the recognition performance elevated by an average of about 1.45% : and when phone likely unit with Paljongseonggajokyong and auditory phonetic applied simultaneously, was applied, the rate of recognition increased by an average of 1.5% to 2.02%. In the continuous speech recognition experiment, the recognition performance elevated by an average of about 1% to 2% than when the existing 49 or 56 phone likely units were utilized.

• Korean Journal of Cleft Lip And Palate
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2009

Oronasal fistula are a well-known complication of surgical treatment of cleft palate, occurring most frequently in the alveolus and hard palate. Previous reports have demonstrated that oronasal fistulas, particularly if greater than l cm in diameter, had an adverse effect on speech. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the relationship between the size of the fistula and the influence on velopharyngeal function. The site and size of the fistula were indicated on graph paper with calipers and measured in $mm^2$. Speech assessment was carried out using a Nasometer, VPI articulation differential test, spectrography. Patient whose fistulas affected their speech had significantly larger fistulas than those whose fistulas did not. The study shows that the larger the fistula, the greater the risk of hypernasality and nasal emission, but even small fistulas can cause speech problems. If obstruction of the nasal passage is eliminated in a patient with a previously asymptomatic fistula, it may result in a fistula becoming symptomatic, resulting in hypernasality and nasal emission. In conclusion, even small fistulas can influence speech production and should be considered before any treatment is planned. The study lends support to early closure of oronasal fistulas, particularly before pharyngeal flap surgery is contemplated.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.67-78
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• 2019

Objective : The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of hand tapping on the accuracy and the fluency of speech production in children with speech sound disorder(SSD) and their typically developing peers(TD). Methods : The study subjects were 15 SSD children and 15 TD children aged 4, 5, and 6 years of age. Subjects were asked to give a picture name without hand tapping in the first experimental condition, and with hand tapping in the second experiment condition. Results : The results showed that hand tapping significantly increased disfluency in TD, whereas in SSD. it did not affect the accuracy or fluency of speech production. In addition, TD demonstrated a significant positive correlation with the changes of accuracy and disfluency due to hand tapping, whereas SSD had no correlation. Conclusion : We discussed the possibility that hand tapping could serve as an obstacle distracting attention from SSD and TD, acting as a motor gesture to facilitate phonological processing when facing the difficulty in lexical retrieval for SSD.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.63-72
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• 2020

This study aims to develop a video-based smart utterance deep analyser (SUDA) application that analyzes semiautomatically the utterances that child and mother produce during interactions over time. SUDA runs on the platform of Android, iPhones, and tablet PCs, and allows video recording and uploading to server. In this device, user modes are divided into three modes: expert mode, general mode and manager mode. In the expert mode which is useful for speech and language evaluation, the subject's utterances are analyzed semi-automatically by measuring speech and language factors such as disfluency, morpheme, syllable, word, articulation rate and response time, etc. In the general mode, the outcome of utterance analysis is provided in a graph form, and the manger mode is accessed only to the administrator controlling the entire system, such as utterance analysis and video deletion. SUDA helps to reduce clinicians' and researchers' work burden by saving time for utterance analysis. It also helps parents to receive detailed information about speech and language development of their child easily. Further, this device will contribute to building a big longitudinal data enough to explore predictors of stuttering recovery and persistence.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.13-21
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• 2011

The present study investigated the effects of two different sources of prosodic strengthening, i.e., boundary and accent, in the articulation of English high front vowels, /i/ and /I/. The vowels were investigated in vowel-initial ('eat' vs. 'it'), /h/-initial ('heat' vs. 'hit') and /p/-initial words ('Pete' vs. 'pit'), which were placed in varying prosodic conditions. Using Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA), the tongue dorsum positions in the x and y dimensions, the lip opening and the jaw opening (lowering) were measured. With respect to the boundary-induced strengthening, results showed that /i/ and /I/ in vowel-initial words ('eat' - 'it') are produced with a higher tongue position in the domain-intial than domain-medial positions. The fact that the vowels only in the vowel-initial condition showed the domain-intial strengthening (DIS) effect suggests that the DIS effect is localized mainly to the initial position (the locality account). As for the accent-induced strengthening, vowels were produced with a more fronted tongue position and larger lip opening in accented than unaccented positions. This suggests that the presence of accent increases overall sonority of the vowels in various prosodic contexts, and enhances primarily the frontedness of the front high vowels. Taken together, the results indicate that the two types of prosodic strengthening are articulatorily realized differently, supporting the view that they are encoded separately in the speech planning process. The present study also showed the distinction between the two high front vowels in the tongue position (in both the frontedness and the height dimensions), while the jaw did not seem to contribute to the distinction robustly, suggesting that the tongue contributes more in distinguishing the two vowels than the jaw does.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.743-749
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• 2007

Today, we can use radio communication device anywhere-anytime. Sometimes, we use the device in acoustic noise environment. The acoustic noise makes many problems in communication system. In acoustic noise environment, speaker cannot send clear information to receiver, because the received signal includes both speech signal and noise signal. A digital filter is useful to remove noise to get desired signal. One of methods is the adaptive digital filter using the adaptive noise canceller that automatically adjust filter parameters. This thesis addresses articulation algorithms against actual acoustic noises by means of two adaptive filtering methods. One is the adaptive noise canceller with two input channels and another is the spectral subtraction filter with one input channel. The experimental result from the proposed filter shows that the adaptive noise canceller is useful to reduce the non-stationary noises, while the spectral amplitude filter is effective for stationary noises.