• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.165-177
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• 2004

Western singers voice have been studied in music science since the early 20th century. However, Korean traditional singers voice have not yet been studied scientifically. This study is to find the physiological and acoustic characteristics of Pansori singers voices. Western singers participated for comparative purposes. Ten western singers and ten Pansori singers participated in this study. The subjects spoke and sung seven simple vowels /a, e, i, o, u, c, w/. An analysis of Glottal image was done by Scope View and acoustic characteristics of speech and singing voice were analyzed by CSL. The results are as follows: (1) Glottal gestures of Pansori singers showed asymmetric vocal folds. (2) Singing vowel formants of Pansori singers showed breathiness based on Spectrogram. (3) Music formant of western singers appeared in around 3kHz area, however, Pansori singers formant appeared in low frequency area. Modulation of vibrato showed 6 frequency per sec in case of western singers. Pansori singers showed no deep modulation of vibrato on spectrogram.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.7-16
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• 2005

The purpose, this experimental study was to identify pronunciation difficulties between male and female Korean speakers in their articulation of English vowels. Ten English mono-syllabic words were spoken six times by six male and six female college students. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by Pitch Works. Results show that Korean female speakers uttered English vowels more similar to those uttered by English native speakers than did Korean male speakers. While Korean male speakers could not readily distinguish between /i/ and /I/, /u/ and /v/, and /$\epsilon$/ and /ae/, respectively, Korean female speakers had difficulty only with /$\epsilon$/ and /ae/. The tentative results suggests that on the whole Korean speakers have difficulty in discriminating tense vowels from lax vowels, and they also have articulatory problems pronouncing low and back vowels such as /ae/. /a/ and /c/.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.201-214
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• 2002

In the Japanese language, there is a phonological contrast between not only initial stops, but also non initial in voiced and voiceless sounds. But in the Korean language, voiced sounds do not appear in the initial. Due to this, pronunciation of voiced sounds in the initial will be difficult for Korean. Through this research, I analyzed the minimal pairs by voiced/voiceless sounds of Japanese and Korean, and perception experiment in which Japanese listened to Korean speakers' pronunciations. Japanese pronunciations showed distinct acoustic differences between voiced and voiceless stops, especially in VOT. The duration of vowels after voiced stops was longer than that of voiceless ones. Vowel pitches after voiceless stops were higher. On the other hands, Korean showed three patterns of voiced sounds. There were-VOT values as native speakers, +VOT, and nasal formant tended to occur before prenasalized stops. Koreans pronounced voiceless sounds in strong aspirated, unaspirated, or tense sounds. Finally, Japanese judged sounds with not only -VOT values and prenasalized, but also with +VOT values as voiced. This suggests that we may not consider VOT values as the unique feature of voicing, and that such other phonetic characteristics as the following vowel lengthening should be included here.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.99-108
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• 2000

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate characteristics of English vowels as spoken by Korean speakers. Ten English mono-syllabic words were spoken six times by six male college students who were born and raised in Seoul. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by the PC Quirer. Results showed that Korean speakers similarly pronounced /i/ and /I/, /u/ and /$\upsilon$/, and /$\varepsilon$/ and /${\ae}$/ respectively. It seems that Korean speakers can not differentiate tense vowels(/i/, /u/) from lax vowels(/i/, /$\upsilon$/) and pronounce low vowels such as /${\ae}$/, /a/, /c/ clearly. It is necessary that Korean speakers practice the correct movements of the jaw, tongue, and lips when they pronounce English vowels.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.193-206
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• 2001

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate characteristics of English vowels uttered by Korean regional dialect speakers. Ten English mono-syllabic words, and eight Korean mono-syllabic words, were uttered six times by nine female graduate students from three areas: Seoul, Yongnam and Honam. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by the PC Quirer. Results showed that Seoul dialect speakers uttered English vowels more similar to those uttered by English native speakers than did the other dialect speakers. In particular, Yongnam dialect speakers have articulatory problems pronouncing the back vowels(/u/, /$\upsilon$/, /c/), while Honam dialect speakers have problems pronouncing the front vowels(/i/. /I/, /$\varepsilon$/, /$\ae$/). Even though each group has different problems pronouncing English vowels, Korean speakers generally have difficulty in discriminating tense vowels(/i/ and /u/) from the lax vowels(/I/ and /$\upsilon$/). It appears that the width of Korean speakers' articulatory movements is comparatively narrower than those of native English speakers.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.69-87
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• 2006

This study aims to describe the vowel system of present-day American English and to discuss some of its phonetic variations due to regional differences. Fifteen speakers of American English from various regions of the United States produced the monophthongs of English. The vowel duration and the frequencies of the first and the second formant were measured. The results indicate that the distinction between the vowels [c] and [a] has been merged in most parts of the U.S. except in some speakers from eastern and southeastern parts of the U.S., resulting in the general loss of phonemic distinction between the vowels. The phonemic merger of the two vowels can be interpreted as the result of the relatively small functional load of the [c]-[a] contrast, and the smaller back vowel space in comparison to the front vowel space. The study also shows that the F2 frequencies of the high back vowel [u] were extremely high in most of the speakers from the eastern region of the U.S., resulting in the overall reduction of their acoustic space for high vowels. From the viewpoint of the Adaptive Dispersion Theory proposed by Liljencrants & Lindblom (1972) and Lindblom (1986), the high back vowel [u] appeared to have been fronted in order to satisfy the economy of articulatory gesture to some extent without blurring any contrast between [i] and [u] in the high vowel region.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.413-420
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• 2008

Objective : To investigate the therapeutic effect of scalp acupuncture on dysarthria after stroke. Methods : A-B model in single subject research. The experimental group of 7 members received scalp acupuncture and the control group of 5 nothing for dysarthria itself. Five single vowels were recorded by voice recorder and measured for 1st & 2nd formant. By the formants, a vowel space was made according to each one of the patients. Praat program was used for evaluation. Results : 4 cases in the experimental group showed significant change and just 1 case of the none-operated group got better. Conclusion : In this study, it's proven that acupuncture treatment might have positive efficacy on dysarthria cases. At this moment, more clinical reports are needed for objective oriental medical study.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.191-206
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• 2018

Purpose : This study investigated the correlation between speech intelligibility and acoustic measurements of speech sounds produced by the children with speech sound disorders and children without any diagnosed speech sound disorder. Methods : A total of 60 children with and without speech sound disorders were the subjects of this study. Speech samples were obtained by having the subjects? speak meaningful words. Acoustic measurements were analyzed on a spectrogram using the Multi-speech 3700 program. Speech intelligibility was determined according to a listener's perceptual judgment. Results : Children with speech sound disorders had significantly lower speech intelligibility than those without speech sound disorders. The intensity of the vowel /u/, the duration of the vowel /${\omega}$/, and the second formant of the vowel /${\omega}$/ were significantly different between both groups. There was no difference in voice onset time between the groups. There was a correlation between acoustic measurements and speech intelligibility. Conclusion : The results of this study showed that the speech intelligibility of children with speech sound disorders was affected by intensity, word duration, and formant frequency. It is necessary to complement clinical setting results using acoustic measurements in addition to evaluation of speech intelligibility.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2009.01a
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• pp.441-445
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• 2009

We have developed a real-time software tool to extract a speech feature vector whose time sequences consist of three groups of vector components; the phonetic/acoustic features such as formant frequencies, the phonemic features as outputs on neural networks, and some distances of Japanese phonemes. In those features, since the phoneme distances for Japanese five vowels are applicable to express vowel articulation, we have designed a switch, a volume control and a color representation which are operated by pronouncing vowel sounds. As examples of those vowel interface, we have developed some speech training tools to display a image character or a rolling color ball and to control a cursor's movement for aurally- or vocally-handicapped children. In this paper, we introduce the functions and the principle of those systems.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.73-80
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• 2013

Formant is one of the essential vocal features for research of voice production, recognition and synthesis. Numerous studies were established on foreign languages including English vowels. However, studies related to Korean were done with a limited number of voice data. In this study, we compare four formants according to age and gender using a large number of Korean monophthongs. A total of 2614 Korean speakers participated in our experiments. We summarize statistical results by mean and standard deviation for each formant of five monophthongs. The results show a notable difference in each age and gender group. A quantitative study based on a large dataset is suggested for future studies on Korean speech sounds.