• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.49-65
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• 2006

Recently, several theories on the digital speech signal processing expanded the communication boundary between human beings and machines drastically. The aim of this study is to collect dialectal speech in Korea on a large scale and to establish a digital speech data base in order to provide the data base for further research on the Korean dialectal and the creation of value-added network. 528 informants across the country participated in this study. Acoustic characteristics of vowels and consonants are analyzed by Power spectrum and Spectrogram of CSL. Test words were made on the picture cards and letter cards which contained each vowel and each consonant in the initial position of words. Plot formants were depicted on a vowel chart and transitions of diphthongs were compared according to dialectal speech. Spectral times, VOT, VD, and TD were measured on a Spectrogram for stop consonants, and fricative frequency, intensity, and lateral formants (LF1, LF2, LF3) for fricative consonants. Nasal formants (NF1, NF2, NF3) were analyzed for different nasalities of nasal consonants. The acoustic characteristics of dialectal speech showed that young generation speakers did not show distinction between close-mid /e/ and open-mid$/\epsilon/$. The diphthongs /we/ and /wj/ showed simple vowels or diphthongs depending to dialect speech. The sibilant sound /s/ showed the aspiration preceded to fricative noise. Lateral /l/ realized variant /r/ in Kyungsang dialectal speech. The duration of nasal consonants in Chungchong dialectal speech were the longest among the dialects.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.137-143
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• 2006

The aim of this paper is to investigate the prosodic characteristics of Korean distant speech. Four speakers (2 males and 2 females) produced 36 2-syllable words in both distant-talking and normal environments. totaling 288 spoken 2-syllable words. The results showed that ratios of second syllable to first syllable in vowel duration and vowel energy were significantly larger in the distant-talking environment compared to the normal environment and f0 range also bigger in the distant-talking environment. In addition, 'HL%' contour boundary tone in the second syllable and/or 'L+H' contour tone in the first syllable were used in the distant-talking environment.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2013

This study investigated how acoustic characteristics (i.e., duration, F1, F2) of English high front vowels /i, ɪ/ are modulated by boundary- and prominence-induced strengthening in native vs. non-native (Korean) speech production. The study also examined how the durational difference in vowels due to the voicing of a following consonant (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless) is modified by prosodic strengthening in two different (native vs. non-native) speaker groups. Five native speakers of Canadian English and eight Korean learners of English (intermediate-advanced level) produced 8 minimal pairs with the CVC sequence (e.g., 'beat'-'bit') in varying prosodic contexts. Native speakers distinguished the two vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2, whereas non-native speakers only showed durational differences. The two groups were similar in that they maximally distinguished the two vowels when the vowels were accented (F2, duration), while neither group showed boundary-induced strengthening in any of the three measurements. The durational differences due to the voicing of the following consonant were also maximized when accented. The results are discussed further in terms of phonetics-prosody interface in L2 production.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.50-55
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• 1996

Acoustic analysis study was performed on 20 normal subjects by speaking nonsense syllables composed of Korean bilabial stops$(/P, P^{\star}, P^{h}/)$ and their preceding and/or following vowel /a/ (that is, $[pa, p^{\star}a, p^{h}a, apa, ap^{\star}a, ap^{h}a]$) with an ultraminiature pressure, sensor. in their mouths. Speech materials were phonated twice, once with a moderate voice, another time with a loud voice. The acoustic signal and intraoral pressure were recorded simultaneously on computer. By these procedures, we were to measure the intraoral pressure, closure duration and VOT of Korean bilabial stops, and to compare the values one another according to the intensity of phonation and the position of the target consonants. Intraoral pressure was measured by the peak intraoral pressure value of Its wave closure duration by the time interval between the onset of intraoral pressure build-up and the burst meaning the release of closure ; Voice onset time(VOT) on by the time interval between the burst and the onset or glottal vibration. Heavily aspirated bilabial stop consonant /$p^h$/ showed the highest intraoral pressure value, unaspirated /$p^{\star}$/, the second, slightly aspirated /P/, the lowest. The syllable initial bilabial stops showed higher intraoral pressure than word initial stops, and the value of loudly phonated consonants were higher than moderate consonants. The longest closure duration period was that of /$p^{\star}$/ and the shortest, /P/, and the duration was longer in word initial position and in the moderate voice. In VOT, the order of the longest to shortest was $/{p^h}/, /p/, /{p^\star}/$, and the value was shorer when the consonant was in intervocalic position and when it was phonated with a loud voice.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.390-398
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• 1996

Acoustic analysis study was performed on 20 normal subjects by speaking nonsense syllables composed of Korean bilabial stops(/p, $p^{*}$/, ph/) and their Preceding and/or following vowel /a/(that is, [pa, $p^{*}a$, pha, apa, $ap^{*}a$, apha]) with an ultraminiature pressure sensor in their mouths. Speech materials were phonated twice, once with a moderate voice, another time with a loud voice. The acoustic signal and intraoral pressure were recorded simultaneously on computer. By these procedures, we were to measure the intraoral pressure, closure duration and VOT of Korean bilabial stops, and to compare the values one another according to the intensity of phonation and the position of the target consonants. Intraoral pressure was measured by the peak intraoral pressure value of its wave; closure duration by the time interval between the onset of intraoral pressure build-up and the burst meaning the release of closure; Voice onset time(VOT) by the time interval between the burst and the onset of glottal vibration. Heavily aspirated bilabial stop consonant /ph/ showed the highest intraoral pressure value, unaspirated /p$^{*}$/, the second, slightly aspirated /p/, the lowest. The syllable initial bilabial stops showed higher intraoral pressure than word initial stops, and the value of loudly phonated consonants were higher than moderate consonants. The longest closure duration period was that of /$p^{*}$/ and the shortest, /p/, and the duration was longer in word initial position and in the moderate voice. In VOT, the order of the longest to shortest was /ph/, /p/, /$p^{*}$/, and the value was shorter when the consonant was in intervocalic position and when it was phonated with a loud voice.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.2E
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• pp.71-76
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• 2005

Compared to normal speech, distant-talking speech is characterized by the acoustic effect due to interfering sound and echoes as well as articulatory changes resulting from the speaker's effort to be more intelligible. In this paper, the acoustic features for distant-talking speech due to the articulatory changes will be analyzed and compared with those of the Lombard effect. In order to examine the effect of different distances and articulatory changes, speech recognition experiments were conducted for normal speech as well as distant-talking speech at different distances using HTK. The speech data used in this study consist of 4500 distant-talking utterances and 4500 normal utterances of 90 speakers (56 males and 34 females). Acoustic features selected for the analysis were duration, formants (F1 and F2), fundamental frequency, total energy and energy distribution. The results show that the acoustic-phonetic features for distant-talking speech correspond mostly to those of Lombard speech, in that the main resulting acoustic changes between normal and distant-talking speech are the increase in vowel duration, the shift in first and second formant, the increase in fundamental frequency, the increase in total energy and the shift in energy from low frequency band to middle or high bands.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.159-170
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to find out the ability of coordination of the articulatory motor and the ability of control of the respiration and laryngeal for spastic dysarthria by acoustic analysis. The sustained of vowel /a/ and repetition of syllable /pa/ in 15 normal and 10 spastic dysarthria were measured. Multi-Speech, MDVP, and MSP were used for data recording and analysis. As a result, the mean DDK rate in the spastic group was significantly slower than in the normal. The maximum phonation time in the spastic group ($4.80{\pm}1.94$) was shorter than in the normal ($11.20{\pm}3.72$). The DDKjit in the spastic group was significantly higher than in the normal. The DDKsla was reduced in the spastic group. The mean syllable duration in the spastic group (146.2ms) was significantly longer than in the normal (75.8ms). The mean energy was reduced in the spastic group. The range of Fo was greater than in the normal. The frequency perturbation (jitter, vFo) and amplitude perturbation (shimmer, vAm) were higher than in the normal group. The NHR was higher than in the normal group. The parameters of this were significantly difference between the spastic dysarthria and the normal (p<0.05). Finally, the spastic dysarthria has short respiration, slow speech rate, and voice quality problem. The these results will help to establish a plan and the intervention of treatment.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.11
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• pp.67-70
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• 1997

In this paper, we evaluated the character of speech of hearing impaired person (HIP) who acquire his hearing loss after the youth. It is usually observed that severe HIP decreased not only speech perception but also vocalization. so there is a need for sensitive and quantitative measures or the assesment of the speech of the HIP to serve both diagnostic and prognosic purposes, 7 HIP and 12 normal hearing person(NHP) were studied with pure tone test and speaking test using word/sentence table which consists of vowel(a:), mono and two syllables and a sentence. we analyzed formant frequency, pitch, sound intensity, speech duration of HIP and NHP speech. According to the results, in the HIP's speech we find that formant frequency was shifted, first-formant prominence was reduced, the dynamic range of sound intensity was decreased, speech duration was prolonged. In the next, we expect the correlation between hearing and speech character of HIP is cleared through analysis of more acoustic parameters and precise selection of HIP group.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.15-22
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• 2009

Prominence of speech, which is often called 'accent,' affects the fluency of speaking American English greatly. In this paper, we present an accurate prominence detection method that can be utilized in computer-aided language learning (CALL) systems. We employed pitch movement, overall syllable energy, 300-2200 Hz band energy, syllable duration, and spectral and temporal correlation as features to model the prominence of speech. After the features for vowel syllables of speech were extracted, prominent syllables were classified by SVM (Support Vector Machine). To further improve accuracy, the differences in characteristics of neighboring syllables were added as additional features. We also applied a speech recognizer to extract more precise syllable boundaries. The performance of our prominence detector was measured based on the Intonational Variation in English (IViE) speech corpus. We obtained 84.9% accuracy which is about 10% higher than previous research.