• 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.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.686-698
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• 1989

In this paper, The new algorithm of spectrum moment for format frequency estimation is proposed. The second oder and the third order spectrum moment, which reflect variance and skewness of a spectrum pattern, respectively, is utilized to adjust the frequency region for estimation precision of format frequency. As the results. the F1-F2 diagram reported 8 Korean vowels for man and woman and that we found articulation method of vowel and vowel, vowel and consonant.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.210-216
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• 1997

Many tools have been used to evaluate the voice abnormalities of velopharyngeal insufficiency(VPI). The aim of study was to obtain the objective evaluation method of VPI by comparing the acoustic and nasalance data of experimentally induced VPI group and those of normal control group. Ten healthy young men were included in this study Mild and severe VPI were experimentally induced by retracting velopharyngeal movement. Using the nasometer, we obtained the nasalance score of the sustained oral vowels and those of three types of nasometer passages and the slope scores of nasogram of nasal words. And we analysed the change of formant frequencies for the sustained oral vowels and the changes of various parameters of hyper-tnasality by the computerized speech analysis system. The nasalance score of sustained /a/ was increased significantly in VPI conditions. There was no changes in the slope score of nasogram. On the acoustic speech analysis, the second formant frequencies of vowel /e/ and /i/ were decreased significantly in VPI conditions. This results suggested that the measurement of nasalance score and formant frequency might be useful in the evaluation of VPI.

• 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.12 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2020

This study aims to compare the acoustic characteristics of vowel phonation in children with spastic and dyskinetic cerebral palsy (CP). Thirty-four children aged 4-12 years with CP participated in the study (spastic 26, dyskinetic 8). Voice samples for the acoustic analysis were extracted from a sustained vowel /a/. All acoustic measures were made using Praat. Group differences were compared by an independent t-test or Welch-Aspin test, if the equivalence assumption was not met. The results of this study are as follow. First, maximum phonation time(MPT) was significantly shorter for the dyskinetic CP than for the spastic CP. Second, shimmer percent was significantly increased in the dyskinetic CP than in the spastic CP. Lastly, there were no significant group differences in both the first formant and the second formant. These findings indicate that the dyskinetic CP has a poorer respiratory capacity and poorer laryngeal function than the spastic CP. On the other hand, both groups have a comparable ability to articulate the vowel /a/. The results of the present study help speech language pathologists identify the speech motor control ability of children with two types of CP (spastic and dyskinetic) and help to make an intervention plan associated with a specific type of CP.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.139-156
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• 2001

Speech intelligibility in patients with complete dentures is an important clinical problem depending on the material used. The objective of this study was to investigate the speech of two edentulous subjects fitted with a complete maxillary prosthesis made of two different palatal materials: chrome-cobalt alloy and acrylic resin. Three patients with complete dentures in the experiment group and ten people in the controls groups participated in the experiment. CSL, Visi-Pitch were used to measure speech characteristics. The test words consisted of a simple vowel /e/, meaningless three syllabic words containing fricative, affricated and stops sounds, and sustained fricative sounds /s/ and /$\int$/. The analysis speech parameters were vowel and lateral formants, VOT, sound durations, sound pressure level and fricative frequency. Data analysis was conducted by a series of paired T-test. The findings like the following: (1) Vowel formant one of patients with complete denture is higher than that of the control group (p<0.05), while lateral formant three of patients with complete denture is lower than that of the control group (p<0.0l). (2) Patients with complete denture produced lower speech intelligibility with low fricative frequency (/$\int$/) than control group (p<0.0). The speech intelligibility of patients with metal prosthesis was higher than that of those with resin prosthesis (p<0.05). (3) Fricative, lateral and stop sound durations of patients with complete denture were longer than those of the control group (p<0.01 and p<0.05), respectively. Total sound durations of patients with metal prosthesis were similar to that of the control group (p<0.05), while those with resin prosthesis had a shorter duration (p<0.01). This implied that those with metal prosthesis had higher speech intelligibility than those with resin prosthesis. (4) Patients with complete denture had higher sound pressure levels /t/ and /c/ than the control group (p<0.01). However, sound pressure levels for /c/ of patients with metal prosthesis or resin prosthesis was similar to the control group (p<0.05). (5) Patients with complete denture had higher fundamental frequency than the control group (p<0.01).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.3-16
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• 2010

This study aims at setting the hierarchy of difficulty of the 7 Korean monophthongs for Mongolian learners of Korean according to Prator's theory based on the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. In addition to that, it will be shown that the difficulties and errors for Mongolian learners of Korean as a second or foreign language proceed directly from this hierarchy of difficulty. This study began by looking at the speeches of 60 Mongolians for Mongolian monophthongs; data were investigated and analyzed into formant frequencies F1 and F2 of each vowel. Then, the 7 Korean monophthongs were compared with the resultant Mongolian formant values and are assigned to 3 levels, 'same', 'similar' or 'different sound'. The findings in assessing the differences of the 8 nearest equivalents of Korean and Mongolian vowels are as follows: First, Korean /a/ and /$\wedge$/ turned out as a 'same sound' with their counterparts, Mongolian /a/ and /ɔ/. Second, Korean /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/ turned out as a 'similar sound' with each their Mongolian counterparts /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/. Third, Korean /ɨ/ which is nearest to Mongolian /i/ in terms of phonetic features seriously differs from it and is thus assigned to 'different sound'. And lastly, Mongolian /$\mho$/ turned out as a 'different sound' with its nearest counterpart, Korean /u/. Based on these findings the hierarchy of difficulty was constructed. Firstly, 4 Korean monophthongs /a/, /$\wedge$/, /i/, /e/ would be Level 0(Transfer); they would be transferred positively from their Mongolian counterparts when Mongolians learn Korean. Secondly, Korean /o/, /u/ would be Level 5(Split); they would require the Mongolian learner to make a new distinction and cause interference in learning the Korean language because Mongolian /o/, /u/ each have 2 similar counterpart sounds; Korean /o, u/, /u, o/. Thirdly, Korean /ɨ/ which is not in the Mongolian vowel system will be Level 4(Overdifferentiation); the new vowel /ɨ/ which bears little similarity to Mongolian /i/, must be learned entirely anew and will cause much difficulty for Mongolian learners in speaking and writing Korean. And lastly, Mongolian /$\mho$/ will be Level 2(Underdifferentiation); it is absent in the Korean language and doesn‘t cause interference in learning Korean as long as Mongolian learners avoid using it.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.140-148
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• 1999

The use of obturator is the prosthetic rehabilitation approach for restoration of the defected maxillary shape and function for the patients with palatal defect. The obturator can change the shape of vocal tract and nasality, but few reports on the effects of the change were presented. So, the authors performed the experimental study to compare the difference between the sizes of vowel triangles produced by maxillectomized patients before and after obturator-wearing and to consider how much improvement in speech intelligibility can be expected by obturator wearing. The 8 patients who were totally maxillectomized due to palatal cancer were participated as subjects. They produced 5 vowels(/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/) before and after obturator-wearing. The formants of the vowels were analyzed by the spectrogram of CSL, and their speech intelligibility were judged by normal 8 listeners. As results, the frequency of the first and the second formant showed no significant difference between the articulation before and after wearing, but the comparison of the sizes of vowel triangles, related with the speech intelligibility, showed significant difference. The vowel triangle of the articulation after wearing was larger than that of the articulation before wearing. /i/ showed the lowest speech intelligibility score among the vowel articulation before wearing. After wearing obturators, their scores increased on the whole, especially, in /a/, but the intelligibility of /u/ decreased after wearing.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.247-252
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to suggest the visual teaching method for the English vowel pronunciation, especially for the hearing-impaired who mostly rely on the visual aids, based on the SVM technique. By extracting phonetic features using the SVM technique from the sounds that are hard to hear by ear, the lip shapes for each vowel were refined. The lip shape refinement for vowels is advantageous in that language learners can easily see the movement of articulators by eye, and it is helpful for learning and teaching English vowels for the hearing-impaired.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.1324-1335
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• 1991

In this paper, a phoneme separation and an establishment of discriminative pattern of Korean phonemes are studied on experiment. The separation uses parameters such as pitch extraction, glottal peak pulse width of each pitch. speech duration. envelope and amplitude bias. The first pitch is extracted by deviations of glottal peak and width. energy and normalization on a bias on the top of vowel envelope. And then, it traces adjacent pitch to vowel in whole. On vewel, amethod to be reduced gliding pattern and the possible of vowel distinction to be used just second formant are proposed, and shrinking pitch waveform has nothing to do with pitch length is estimated. A pattern of envelope, spectrum, shrinking waveform, and a method of analysis by mutual relation among phonemes and manners of articulation on consonant are detected. As experimental results, 90% on vowel phoneme, 80% and 60% on initial and final consonant are discriminated.