• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제7권3호
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• pp.79-88
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• 2015

English vowels are difficult to teach and learn because both teachers and learners cannot show or see shapes of vocal tract inside their own mouth cavities. The aim of this study is to examine what kind of changes occur in production and perception of English vowels by college students before and after lessons in order to provide fundamental materials for teaching students English vowels. Fifteen volunteer female students attending an English phonetics course participated in the lessons for one and half a month period. Formant values of vowels produced and perceived before and after the lessons were obtained using Flying Popcorn and Praat. Results showed that a produced vowel space after the lessons was greater than that before the lessons with no significant difference. Distances between some adjacent corner vowels were too close to be distinguished. Secondly, perceived vowels before and after the lessons were almost the same. Here again, some adjacent vowels were closely spaced. Thirdly, three groups which were divided by the length of the distance between the vowel /i-${\ae}$/ showed similar patterns in their perception and production. Generally the vowel space expanded from [u] to [${\ae}$]. The author concluded that there was no drastic improvement of vowel perception and production within a short period of time. Further studies would be desirable to examine how successful any long-term English vowel lessons would be and which methods should be taken to evaluate students' achievements proposed here.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제3권1호
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• pp.23-34
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• 2011

Many Korean children have difficulty learning English vowels. The gestures inside the oral and pharyngeal cavities are hard to control when they cannot see the gestures and the target vowel system is quite different from that of Korean. This study attempts to collect children's acoustic data of twelve English vowels published by Hillenbrand et al. (1995) online and to examine the acoustic features of English vowels for phoneticians and English teachers. The author used Praat to obtain the data systematically at six equidistant timepoints over the vowel segment avoiding any obvious errors. Results show inherent acoustic properties for vowels from the children's distribution of vowel duration, f0 and intensity values. Second, children's gestures for each vowel coincide with the regression analysis of all formant values at different timepoints regardless of the vocal fold and tract difference. Third, locus points appear higher than those of American males and females. Their gestures along the timepoints display almost similar patterns. From the results the author concludes that vowel formant trajectories provide useful and important information on dynamic articulatory gestures, which may be applicable to Korean children's education and correction of English vowels. Further studies on the developmental study of vowel formants and pitch values are desirable.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.43-50
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• 2010

English vowels can be divided into monophthongs and diphthongs depending on the number of vocal tract shapes. Diphthongs are usually produced with more than one shape. This study attempts to collect acoustical data of English diphthongs published by Hillenbrand et al.(1995) online and to examine acoustic features of the diphthongs for phoneticians and English teachers. Sixty three American males and females were chosen after excluding those subjects with different target vowels or ambiguous formant tracks. The author used Praat to obtain the acoustical data systematically at eleven equidistant timepoints over the diphthongal segment. Obvious errors were corrected based on the spectrographic display of each diphthong. Results show that the formant trajectories of the diphthongs produced by the American males and females appeared quite similar. When the female formant values were uniformly normalized to those of the males, almost a perfect collapse occurred. Secondly, the diphthongal movements on the vowel space appeared not linear due to the coarticulatory gesture for the following consonant. Thirdly, the average duration of the diphthongs produced by the females was 1.156 times longer than that of the males while the pitch ratio between the two groups turned out to be 1.746 with a similar contour over measurement points. The author concludes that English diphthongs produced by various groups can be compared systematically when the acoustical values are obtained at proportional timepoints. Further studies will be desirable on the comparison of English diphthongs produced by native and nonnative speakers.

• 대한의용생체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한의용생체공학회 1996년도 추계학술대회
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• pp.114-117
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• 1996

In this study, remote articulation training system which connects the hearing disabled trainee and the speech therapist via B-ISDN is introduced. The hearing disabled does not have the hearing feedback of his own pronunciation, and the chance of watching his speech organs' movement trajectory will offer him the self-training of articulation. So the system has two purposes of self articulation training and trainer's on-line checking in remote place. We estimate the vocal tract articulatory movements from the speech signal using inverse modelling and display the movement trajectory on the sideview of human face graphically. The trajectories of trainees' articulation is displayed along with the reference trajectories, so the trainee can control his articulating to make the two trajectories overlapped. For on-line communication and ckecking training record, the system has the function of video conferencing and transferring articulatory data.

• 한국음향학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국음향학회 1994년도 FIFTH WESTERN PACIFIC REGIONAL ACOUSTICS CONFERENCE SEOUL KOREA
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• pp.893-898
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• 1994

In this paper, the influence of voice source estimation and modeling on speech synthesis and coding is examined and then their new estimation and modeling techniques are proposed and verified by computer simulation. It is known that the existing speech synthesizer produced the speech which is dull and inanimated. These problems are arised from the fact that existing estimation and modeling techniques can not give more accurate voice parameters. Therefore, in this paper we propose a new voice source estimation algorithm and modeling techniques which can not give more accurate voice parameters. Therefore, in this paper we propose a new voice source estimation algorithm and modeling techniques which can represent a variety of source characteristics. First, we divide speech samples in one pitch region into four parts having different characteristics. Second, the vocal-tract parameters and voice source waveforms are estimated in each regions differently using sequential SVD. Third, we propose composite source model as a new voice source model which is represented by weighted sum of pre-defined basis functions. And finally, the weights and time-shift parameters of the proposed composite source model are estimeted uning EM(estimate maximize) algorithm. Experimental results indicate that the proposed estimation and modeling methods can estimate more accurate voice source waveforms and represent various source characteristics.

• 한국산학기술학회논문지
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• 제21권6호
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• pp.679-686
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• 2020

본 논문에서는 화자인식 성능 향상을 위해 음원에서 개선된 특징추출 방식과 최소 분류 오차 기반의 다중 특징 벡터 스코어에 대한 가중치 추정을 사용하여 스코어 결합을 제안하였다. 제안한 특징 벡터는 Glottal Flow에서 무의미한 정보구간인 평탄한 스펙트럼 구간을 제거하기 위하여 저역통과 필터를 수행한 신호에서 인지적 선형 예측 캡스트럼 계수, 왜도, 첨도를 추출하여 구성하였다. 제안한 특징 벡터는 종래의 음원에서 멜-주파수 캡스트럼 계수, 인지적 선형 예측 캡스트럼 계수를 추출하여 가우시안 혼합 모델로 모델링한 화자인식 시스템을 개선하기 위해 사용된다. 또한, 스코어 추정과정의 신뢰성을 높이기 위하여 기존의 스코어의 확률 분포를 사용하여 가중치를 추정하는 대신 제안한 특징 벡터에서 평가된 점수와 종래의 특징 벡터에서 평가된 점수에 대하여 최소 분류 오차 기법으로 가중치를 추정하여 스코어를 결합함으로써 최적의 화자를 찾는다. 실험 결과 제안한 특징 벡터가 화자를 인식하는데 유효한 정보를 포함하고 있는 것을 확인하였다. 또한, 최소 분류 오차 기반의 다중 특징 파라미터 스코어를 결합하여 화자인식을 수행하였을 때, 종래의 화자인식 성능보다 더 우수한 성능을 나타내는 것을 확인할 수 있으며, 특히 가우시안 혼합 모델이 낮을 때 더 높은 성능향상을 보였다.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제23권1호
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• pp.61-74
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• 2004

본 논문에서는 채널 환경에 강인한 화자 인식 시스템을 위하여 문맥과 화자에 종속적인 켑스트럼 추출 방법과 추출된 켑스트럼에서 화자 정보의 손실을 최소화하는 채널 정규화 방법을 제안하였다. 제안된 추출 방법은 화자의 고유한 피치를 이용한 피치 동기 분석 방법에 기반을 두어 켑스트럼을 추출한다. 따라서 일명 피치 동기 켑스트럼 (PSC)은 유성음 구간에서 성도의 임펄스 응답을 보다 정확하게 표현할 수 있다. 또한 피치는 채널 환경에서 스펙트럼에 비해 강인하므로 피치 동기 켑스트럼은 채널에 의한 스펙트럼의 왜곡을 보상할 수 있다. 제안된 채널 정규화방법인 포먼트 평활화 피치 동기 켑스트랄 평균 차감법 (FBPSCMS)은 포먼트 평활화 켑스트랄 평균 차감법을 PSC에 적용하여 프레임 내 처리의 정확도를 개선시킨다. 제안된 방법들의 화자 인식 성능을 비교하기 위해 남자 112명과 여자 56명에 대해 WMIT과 전화선 환경의 NTIMIT을 이용한 화자 식별을 수행하였다. 실험 결과 피치 동기 LPCC는 기존 단구간 켑스트럼과 비교하여 에러 감소율을 최대 7.7%까지 향상시켰고, FBPSCMS는 극점 필터링 CMS에 비해 보다 안정되고 낮은 에러율을 나타내었다.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제14권4호
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• pp.89-95
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• 1995

파형부호화법은 음성신호에서 잉여성분 제거과정을 통해 유용한 파형의 꼴을 단순히 보존하는 방법이다. 음성합성분야에서 고음질의 파형부호화법은 분석에 의한 합성방식으로 주로 적용된다. 그렇지만 이러한 부호화법에서 파라미터들은 여기용과 성도 여파기용으로 분리되지 않기 때문에 이 파형부호화법을 규칙에 의한 합성 방식으로 사용하기는 어렵다. 파형부호화합을 규칙합성에 적용하려면 운율조절을 위해 피치변경법이 필요하다. 본 논문에서는 시간축 스케일링과 주파수상에서의 스펙트럼 보정을 통해 파형부호화법에서 피치를 변경할 수 있는 새로운 피치변경법을 제안하였다. 이 방식은 파형의 위상성분을 보존하는 시간-주파수 혼성법이고, 50%의 피치변경을 수행하였을 때 2.5%정도의 스펙트럼 왜곡을 나타내었다.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권4호
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• pp.99-107
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine the relative distances among English front vowels in a message produced by 47 Korean and American speakers in order to better instruct pronunciation skills of English vowels for Korean English learners. A Praat script was developed to collect the first and second formant values(F1 and F2) of eight words in each sound file which was recorded from an internet speech archive. Then, the Euclidean distances were measured between the three vowel pairs: [i-ɛ], [i-ɪ], and [ɛ-æ]. The first vowel pair [i-ɛ] was set as the reference from which the relative distances of the other two vowel pairs were measured in percent in order to compare the vowel sounds among speakers of different vocal tract lengths. Results show that F1 values of the front vowels produced by the Korean and American speakers increased from the high front vowel to the low front vowel wih differences among the groups. The Korean speakers generally produced the front vowels with smaller jaw openings than the American speakers did. Secondly, the relative distance of the high front vowel pair [i-ɪ] showed a significant difference between the Korean and American speakers while that of the low front vowel pair [ɛ-æ] showed a non-significant difference. Finally, the Korean speakers in the higher proficiency level produced front vowels with higher F1 values than those in the lower proficiency level. The author concluded that Korean speakers should produce the front high vowels distinctively by securing sufficient relative distance of the formant values. Further studies would be desirable to examine how strong the Korean speakers' English proficiency correlate with the relative distance of target words of comparable productions.

• 대한후두음성언어의학회지
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.96-101
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• 2007

Laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) is the retrograde movement of gastric contents into the larynx, pharynx, and upper aero-digestive tract. LPR differs from gastroesophageal reflux in that it is often not associated with heartburn and regurgitation symptoms. Otolaryngological manifestations of acid reflux include a wide range of pharyngeal and laryngeal symptoms. Belafsky et al. developed a useful self-administered tool, the reflux symptom index (RSI), for assessing the degree of LPR symptoms. Patients are asked to use a 0 to 5 point scale to grade the following symptoms: 1) hoarseness or voice problems; 2) throat clearing; 3) excess throat mucus or postnasal drip ; 4) difficulty swallowing; 5) coughing after eating or lying down; 6) breathing difficulties ; 7) troublesome or annoying cough; 8) sensation of something sticking or a lump in the throat; 9) heartburn, chest pain, indigestion or stomach acid coming up. A RSI score greater than 13 is considered abnormal. As there is no validated instrument to document the physical findings and severity of LPR, Belafsky et al. developed an eight-item clinical severity scale for judging laryngoscopic finding, the reflux finding score (RFS). They rated eight LPR-associated findings on a scale from 0 to 4 : subglottic edema, ventricular obliteration, erythema/hyperemia, vocal-fold edema, diffuse laryngeal edema, posterior commissure hypertrophy, granuloma/granulation tissue, and thick endolaryngeal mucus. A RFS score of greater than 7 was found to suggest LPR-associated laryngitis. Although both indices (RSI and RFS) are widely used, there is some controversy about their validity (sensitivity and specificity) and reliability (intra-rater and inter-rater) in LPR diagnosis and treatment. We discuss the validity and reliability of RSI and RFS with literature review.