• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.326-336
• /
• 2022

This study aims to examine Korean learners' production of American English vowel focused on feature analysis. Specifically, the present study adopts feature analysis so that vowel production is analyzed in terms of vowel features as well as overall segmental accuracy. To this end, 22 Korean college students participated in a production test which contained 11 English vowels /i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ, oʊ, ɔ, ʊ, u, ʌ/. The results revealed that the degree of difficulty varied depending on features; the Korean participants showed higher accuracy for front/back features than for tongue height features and tense/lax features. In particular, the participants had more difficulty producing back vowels and non-high vowels than front vowels and high vowels with respect to tongue height features and lip rounding features. Among the individual vowels, /eɪ/ showed the highest accuracy in feature analysis. On the other hand, /ɑ, ɔ, ʌ/ showed low accuracy with respect to height features and lip rounding features, and high vowels /i, ʊ, u/ showed low accuracy with respect to tense/lax features. As for the correlation between the vowel features, tongue height features and lip rounding features are significantly correlated. Also, tongue height features and tense/lax features showed a strong correlation. Finally, pedagogical implications for teaching English vowels were further discussed based on the findings of the current study.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.826-832
• /
• 2016

In this paper, we propose a tongue diagnosis system for determining the presence of specific taste crack area as a first step in the digital tongue diagnosis system that anyone can use easily without special equipment and expensive digital tongue diagnosis equipment. Training DB was developed by the Haar-like feature, Adaboost learning on the basis of 261 pictures which was collected in Oriental medicine. Tongue candidate regions were detected from the input image by the learning results and calculated the average value of the HUE component to separate only the tongue area in the detected candidate regions. A tongue area is separated through the Connected Component Labeling from the contour of tongue detected. The palate regions were divided by the relative width and height of the tongue regions separated. Image on the taste area is converted to gray image and binarized with each of the average brightness values. A crack in the presence or absence was determined via Connected Component Labeling with binary images.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2019

This study explored the relationship between accurate vowel production and proficiency levels in L2 English produced by Korean EFL adult learners. To this end, nine English vowels /i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɔ, ɑ, ʊ, u/ were selected and adjacent vowels paired up (e.g., /i/-/ɪ/, /u/-/ʊ/, /ɛ/-/æ/, /ʌ/-/ɔ/, /ɔ/-/ɑ/). The spectral features of the pairs were measured instrumentally, namely F1 (indicating tongue height) and F2 (indicating tongue backness). Meanwhile, the durations as well as spectral features of the tense and lax counterparts in /i/-/ɪ/ and /u/-/ʊ/ were measured, as both temporal and spectral features are important in distinguishing them. The findings of this study confirm that higher-rated speakers were better able to distinguish the contrasts in the front vowel pairs /i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/æ/ than lower-rated learners, but in the central and back vowel pairs /u/-/ʊ/and /ʌ/-/ɔ/ (though not /ɔ/-/ɑ/), Korean EFL learners generally showed difficulty distinguishing adjacent vowels with spectral cues. On the other hand, the durations of the tense and lax vowels showed that the lower-rated speakers were less able to use the temporal feature to differentiate tense vowels from their lax counterparts, unlike previous studies that found that in general Korean learners depend excessively on the temporal cue to distinguish tense and lax vowels.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.27_28
• /
• pp.27-56
• /
• 1994

Processes involving the change of vowel height are natural enough to be found in many languages. It is essential to have a better feature specification for vowel height to grasp these processes properly, Standard Phonology adopts the binary feature system, and vowel height is represented by the two features, i.e., [\pm high] and [\pm low]. This has its own merits. But it is defective because it is misleading when we count the number of features used in a rule to compare the naturalness of rules. This feature system also cannot represent more than three degrees of height, We wi31 discard the binary features for vowel height. We consider to adopt the multivalued feature [n high] for the property of height. However, this feature cannot avoid the arbitrariness resulting from the number values denoting vowel height. It is not easy to expect whether the number in question is the largest or not It also is impossible to decide whether a larger number denotes a higher vowel or a lower vowel. Furthermore this feature specification requires an ad hoc condition such as n > 3 or n \geq 2, whenever we want to refer to a natural class including more than one degree of height The altelnative might be Particle Phonology, or Dependency Phonology. These might be apt for multivalued vowel height systems, as their supporters argue. However, the feature specification of Particle Phonology will be discarded because it does not observe strictly the assumption that the number of the particle a is decisive in representing the height. One a in a representation can denote variant degrees of height such as [e], [I], [a], [a ] and [e ]. This also means that we cannot represent natural classes in terms of the number of the particle a, Dependency Phonology also has problems in specifying a degree of vowel height by the dependency relations between the elements. There is no unique element to represent vowel height since every property has to be defined in terms of the dependency relations between two or more elements, As a result it is difficult to formulate a rule for vowel height change, especially when the phenomenon involves a chain of vowel shifts. Therefore, we suggest a new feature specification for vowel height (see Chapter 3). This specification resorts to a single feature H and a few >'s which refer exclusively to the degree of the tongue height when a vowel is pronounced. It can cope with more than three degrees of height because it is fundamentally a multivalued scalar feature. This feature also obviates the ad hoc condition for a natural class while the [n high] type of multivalued feature suffers from it. Also this feature specification conforms to our expection that the notation should become simpler as the generality of the class increases, in that the fewer angled brackets are used, the more vowels are included, Incidentally, it has also to be noted that, by adopting a single feature for vowel height, it is possible to formulate a simpler version of rules involving the changes of vowel height especially when they involve vowel shifts found in many languages.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.504-509
• /
• 1994

Achondroplasia is characterized by undergrowth of long bones and cartilages and by low height. The name of this disease had been called classical chondrodystrophy, dyschondroplasia, chondrodystrophy and micromelia before Parrot reported the term of this disease as Achondroplasia. We are reporting in this paper on an 3-year and 4-month-old boy with achondroplasia. The dental findings are as follows: 1. Open bite and relatively mandibular prognathism were observed in the front teeth. 2. The size, number, shape, structure of the teeth were usual and the tongue was a little bigger than the normal. 3. The metacarpal bones were short and broadening. Mesial, distal border of the prox. phalanges were irregular and also trabecular pattern was abnormal in the hand-wrist P-A view. 4. According to lat. cephalometric analysis, the cranial basis was underdeveloped.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
• /
• v.37 no.4
• /
• pp.473-476
• /
• 2010

Purpose: Torus palatinus is a bony prominence at the middle of the hard palate. The size varies from barely discernible to very large, from flat to lobular. This oral exostosis is not a disease or a sign of disease, but if large, may be a problem. So, we present the clinical and histopathologic features and applied therapy and provide a comprehensive review of the rare case of the symptomatic exostoses. Methods: A 37-year-old woman had slowly growing exophytic nodular mass of the bone that arises the midline suture of the hard palate. The patient was concerned about discomfort associated with movement of her tongue and about frequent irritation of the palatal mucosa during mastification of the hard food. The patient had a large, unilobulated torus palatinus. It extended from the area adjacent to the canine to a point beyond the junction with the soft palate. The mass was oblong in shape, measuring about 3 cm long, 2 cm wide, and 0.8 cm in height. Results: Before surgical intervention a CT was obtained for the sake of estimating the thickness of the bone between the exostoses and the maxillary antrum and floor of the nose. The surgical procedure was performed with the patient under general anesthesia. Removal of the exostosis was performed after midline mucoperiosteal incision with osteotome and diamond burr. Histologic finding revealed decalcified dense bony tissue, the presence of lacunae, and normal osteocytes. Conclusion: Surgical removal is recommended when one or more of the following condition exist: interference with the construction of prosthesis, interference with oral function, irritation or pathology of the overlying tissue, inability of the patient to maintain proper oral hygiene, and fear of malignancy or other psychologic trauma. We report a rare case of the torus arising in hard palate with symptoms.