• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.261-274
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• 1997

In spite of the presumed importance of the strap muscles on laryngeal valving and speech production, there is little research concerning the physiological role and the functional differences among the strap muscles. Generally, the strap muscles have been shown to cause a decrease in the fundamental frequency(Fo) of phonation during contraction. In this study, an in vivo canine laryngeal model was used to show the effects of strap muscles on the laryngeal function by measuring the Fo, subglottal pressure, vocal intensity, vocal fold length, cricothyroid distance, and vertical laryngeal movement. Results demonstrated that the contraction of sternohyoid and sternothyroid muscles corresponded to a rise in subglottal pressure, shortened cricothyroid distance, lengthened vocal fold, and raised Fo and vocal intensity. The thyrohyoid muscle corresponded to lowered subglottal pressure, widened cricothyroid distance, shortened vocal fold, and lowered Fo and vocal intensity. It was postulated that the mechanism of altering Fa and other variables after stimulation of the strap muscles is due to the effects of laryngotracheal pulling, upward or downward, and laryngotracheal forward bending, by the external forces during strap muscle contraction.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2002

Voice onset time (VOT) is defined as the time interval from the oral release of a stop consonant to the onset of glottal pulsing in the following vowel. VOT is a temporal characteristic of stop consonants that reflects the complex timing of glottal articulation relative to supraglottal articulation. There have been many reports on efforts to clarify the acoustical and physiological properties that differentiate the three types of Korean stops, including acoustic, fiberscopic, aerodynamic and electromyographic studies. In the acoustic and fiberscopic studies for stop consonants, the voice onset time and glottal width during the production of stops has been known as the longest and largest in the heavily aspirated type followed by the slightly aspirated type and unaspirated types. The thyroarytenoid and posterior cricoarytenoid muscles were physiologically inter-correlated for differentiating these types of stops. However, a review of the English literature shows that the fine movement of the mucosal edges of the vocal folds during the production of stops has not been well documented. In recent. years, a new method for high-speed recording of laryngeal dynamics by use of a digital recording system allows us to observe with fine time resolution. The movements of the vocal fold edges were documented during the period of stop production using a fiberscopic system of high speed digital images. By observing the glottal width and the visual vibratory movements of the vocal folds before voice onset, the heavily aspirated stop was characterized as being more prominent and dynamic than the slightly aspirated and unaspirated stops.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.169-176
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• 2008

This study was intended to analyze difference of vocal folds movements between upon wakeup and in several hours later in the morning. The difference of vocal fold movements was compared with fundamental frequency and a range of fundamental frequencies from maximum to minimum. The participants were 30 female adults between 20 and 29 years old. Voice samples were collected from their reading sentence (Jeong, 1993). The first sampling was conducted within 5 minutes after wakeup, while the second on 1 hour after the first sampling. Finally, the third voice sample was collected on 6 hours after the second sampling. The results of this study were as follows: First, fundamental frequency of the participants were by hour significantly time-dependent(F=7.843). Post-hoc multiple comparison (LSD) was conducted to determine when the difference could be observed. The result showed significant differences between upon wakeup and 6 hours later (p< .001) and between 1 hour later and 6 hours later (p< .05). Second, there were a significantly time-dependent ranges of fundamental frequencies of participants by hour (F=3.130). According to the results of the LSD analysis the significant differences in range of fundamental frequencies were found between upon wakeup and 1 hour later and also between wakeup and 6 hours later (p< .05). The results above indicate that vocal fold movements upon wakeup is different from those of several hours later.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.126-130
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• 2009

Arytenoid motion has long been recognized as complex. Misunderstandings about the specifics of arytenoid motion remain prevalent. The resultant misunderstandings have led to erroneous or suboptimal clinical approaches to the treatment of vocal fold immobility. A thorough understanding of the anatomy of the arytenoid and cricoid cartilages, the cricoarytenoid joint, and related ligaments, muscles, and other structures is essential in order to fully understand laryngeal motion disorders. Arytenoid motion occurs in three directions. Movements involving a change anteriorly and posteriorly, as well as vertically, are due to the revolving or pitchlike motion of the arytenoid along the minor axis of the cricoid's elliptically shaped facet. The medial and lateral movements are due to the orientation of the arytenoid which in turn is determined by the forward, lateral, and inferior inclination of the cricoid-arytenoid facet. During adduction it is the outward angulation of the vocal process from the body of the arytenoid that allows the entire length of the vocal proceses to approximate one another and to have this meeting occur at the proper vertical height.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.804-814
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• 2000

In this paper, we propose an effective method to detect the regions of interests in the Videostrobokymography System. Videostrobokymography system is a medical image processing system for extracting automatically the diagnosis parameters from the irregular vibratory movements of the vocal fold. We detect the regions of interests through three steps. In the first step, we remove the noise in the input image and we find the minimum energy value in each frame. In the second step, we computed the edge by everage value for the one line. In the third step, the regions of interests can be extracted by using the Merge Algorithm which uses the variance of luminance as the feature points. We experimented this method for the vocal fold images of nineteen patients. In consequence, the regions of interests are detected in most vocal fold images. The method proposed in this study is efficient enough to extract the region of interests in the vocal fold images with the frame rate of 40 frames/second and the resolution of 200${\times}$280 pixels.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.89-97
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• 2006

The stop consonants in Korean are classified into three types according to the manner of articulation as unaspirated (UA), slightly aspirated (SA) and heavily aspirated (HA) stops. Both the UA and the HA types are always voiceless in any environment. Generally, the voice onset time (VOT) could be measured spectrographically from release of consonant burst to onset of following vowel. The VOT of the UA type is within 20 msec of the burst, and about 40-50 msec in the SA and 50-70 msec in the HA. There have been many efforts to clarify properties that differentiate these manner categories. Umeda, et $al^{1)}$ studied that the fundamental frequency at voice onset after both the UA and HA consonants was higher than that for the SA consonants, and the voice onset times were longest in the HA followed by the SA and UA. Han, et $al^{2)}$ reported in their speech synthesis and perception studies that the SA and UA stops differed primarily in terms of a gradual versus a relatively rapid intensity build-up of the following vowel after the stop release. Lee, et $al^{3)}$ measured both the intraoral and subglottal air pressure that the subglottal pressure was higher for the HA stop than for the other two stops. They also compared the dynamic pattern of the subglottal pressure slope for the three categories and found that the HA stop showed the most rapid increase in subglottal pressure in the time period immediately before the stop release. $Kagaya^{4)}$ reported fiberscopic and acoustic studies of the Korean stops. He mentioned that the UA type may be characterized by a completely adducted state of the vocal folds, stiffened vocal folds and the abrupt decreasing of the stiffness near the voice onset, while the HA type may be characterized by an extensively abducted state of the vocal folds and a heightened subglottal pressure. On the other hand, none of these positive gestures are observed for the SA type. Hong, et $al^{5)}$ studied electromyographic activity of the thyroarytenoid and posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) muscles during stop production. He reported a marked and early activation of the PCA muscle associated with a steep reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle before voice onset in the production of the HA consonants. For the production of the UA consonants, little or no activation of the PCA muscle and earliest and most marked reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle were characteristic. For the SA consonants, he reported a more moderate activation of the PCA muscle than for the UA consonant, and the least and the latest reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle. Hong, et $al^{6)}$ studied the observation of the vibratory movements of vocal fold edges in terms of laryngeal gestures according to the different types of stop consonants. The movements of vocal fold edges were evaluated using high speed digital images. EGG signals and acoustic waveforms were also evaluated and related to the vibratory movements of vocal fold edges during stop production.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 2003

The devoicing vowel is a phonological process whose contrast in sonority is lost or reduces in a particular phonetic environment. Phonetically, the vocal fold vibration originates from the abduction/adduction of the glottis in relation to supraglottal articulatory movements. The purpose of this study is to investigate Korean vowel devoicing by means of experimental instruments. The interrelated laryngeal adjustments and aerodynamic effects for this voicing can clarify the redundant articulatory gestures relevant to the distinctive feature of sonority. Five test words were selected, being composed of the high vowel /i/, between the fricative and strong aspirated or lenis affricated consonants. The subjects uttered the test words successively at a normal or at a faster speed. The EMG, the sensing tube Gaeltec S7b and the High-Speech Analysis system and MSL II were used in these studies. Acoustically, three different types of speech waveforms and spectrograms were classified, based on the voicing variation. The intraoral air pressure curves showed differences, depending on the voicing variations. The activity patterns of the PCA and the CT for devoicing vowels appeared differently from those showing the partially devoicing vowels and the voicing vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.31-37
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• 2018

Pitch trajectories reflect a continuous variation of vocal fold movements over time. This study examined the pitch trajectories of English vowels produced by 139 American English speakers, statistically analyzing their trajectories using the Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs). First, Praat was used to read the sound data of Hillenbrand et al. (1995). A pitch analysis script was then prepared, and six pitch values at the corresponding time points within each vowel segment were collected and checked. The results showed that the group of men produced the lowest pitch trajectories, followed by the groups of women, boys, then girls. The density line showed a bimodal distribution. The pitch values at the six corresponding time points formed a single dip, which changed gradually across the vowel segment from 204 to 193 to 196 Hz. The normality tests performed on the pitch data rejected the null hypothesis. Nonparametric tests were therefore conducted to discover the significant differences in the values among the four groups. The GAMMs, which analyzed all the pitch data, produced significant results among the pitch values at the six corresponding time points but not between the two groups of boys and girls. The GAMMs also revealed that the two groups were significantly different only at the first and second time points. Accordingly, the methodology of this study and its findings may be applicable to future studies comparing curvilinear data sets elicited by experimental conditions.