• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.3-9
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• 2009

Acoustically English vowels are defined primarily by formant values. The measurements of the values have been usually made at a few time points of the vowel segment despite the fact that the majority of English vowel formants vary dynamically throughout the segment. This study attempts to collect acoustic data of the nine English vowels published by Hillenbrand et al. (1995) online and to examine the acoustic features of the English vowels for phoneticians and English teachers. The author used Praat to obtain the data systematically at six equidistant timepoints over the vowel segment. Obvious errors were corrected based on the spectrographic display of each vowel. Results show that the first two formant trajectories are important to separate the nine vowels within the front- or back-vowel groups. The third formant trajectories appear comparable except those of the high vowels. Second, the back vowels leave longer traces on the vowel space toward the locus of the following consonant /d/. Third, each vowel has inherent duration, pitch, and intensity patterns. The results match the findings of Yang (2009). From the results, the author concludes that dynamic spectral changes are important in specifying acoustic characteristics of English vowels. Further studies on the application of the vowel trajectories to English pronunciation lessons or on perceptual experiment of synthesized vowels are desirable.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.44-58
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• 1994

The formants of the 9 Korean standard vowels(which used by the average people of Seoul, central-area of the Korean peninsula) were measured by analysis with the linear predictive coding(LPC) and fast Fourier transform(FFT). The author already had reported the constriction area for the Korean standard vowels, and with the existing data, the distance from glottis to the constriction area in the vocal tract of each vowel was newly measured with videovelopharyngograms and lateral Rontgenograms of the vocal tract. We correlated the formant frequencies with the distance from glottis to the constriction area of the vocal tract. Also we tried to correlate the formant frequencies with the position of tongue in the vocal tract which is divided into 2 categories : The position of tongue in oral cavity by the distance from imaginary palatal line to the highest point of tongue and the position in pharyngeal cavity by the distance from back of tongue to posterior pharyngeal wall. This study was performed with 10 adults(male : 5, female : 5) who spoke primary 9 Korean standard vowels. We had already reported that the Korean vowel [i], [e], $[{\varepsilon}]$ were articulated at hard palate level, [$\dot{+}$], [u] were at soft palate level, [$\wedge$] was at upper pharynx level and the [$\wedge$], [$\partial$], [a] in a previous article. Also we had noted that the significance of pharyngeal cavity in vowel articulation. From this study we have concluded that ; 1) The F$_1$ is related with the oral cavity articulated vowel [i, e, $\varepsilon$, $\dot{+}$, u]. 2) Within the oral cavity articulated vowel [i, e, $\varepsilon$, $\dot{+}$, u] and the upper pharynx articulated vowel [o], the F$_2$ is elevated when the diatance from glottis to the constriction area is longer. But within the lower pharynx articulated vowel [$\partial$, $\wedge$, a], the F$_2$ is elevated when the distance from glottis to the constriction area is shorter. 3) With the stronger tendency of back-vowel, the higher the elevation of the F$_1$ and F$_2$ frequencies. 4) The F$_3$ and F$_4$ showed no correaltion with the constriction area nor the position of tongue in the vocal tract 5) The parameter F$_2$- F$_1$, which is the difference between F$_2$ frequency and F$_1$ frequency showed an excellent indicator of differenciating the oral cavity articulated vowels from pharyngeal cavity articulated vowels. If the F$_2$-F$_1$ is less than about 600Hz which indicates the vowel is articulated in the pharyngeal cavity, and more than about 600Hz, which indicates that the vowel is articulated in the oral cavity.

• MALSORI
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• no.62
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• pp.1-17
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate and quantitatively describe the acoustic characteristics of current Korean monophthongs. Recordings were made of 33 men and 27 women producing the vowels /i, e, ${\epsilon}$, a, ${\partial}$, o, u, i/ in a carrier phrase "This character is ___." A listening test was conducted in which 19 participants judged each vowel. F1, F2, and F3 were measured from the vowels judged as intended vowels by more than 17 people from the listening test. Analysis of formant data shows some interesting results including the undeniable confirmation of the 7-vowel system in modern Korean. It turns out that quite different sounding Korean vowels and English vowels happen to have very similar formant measurements. Also the difference between "citation-form reading" vs. "natural utterance reading" is discussed.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.209-213
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• 2004

The aim of this paper is to analyze vowel in voice imitation, and to find the invariable phonetic features of the speaker. In this paper we examined the formants of vowel /a, u, i/. The results of the present are as follows : (1) Speakers change their vocal tract cavity features. (2) F1 changes easily compared to $F2{\sim}F3{\sim}F4$. (3) F3-F2 appears to be constituent for a speakers identification in vowel /a/ and F4-F2 in vowel /i/.

• MALSORI
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• no.64
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• pp.1-14
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to examine the acoustic perception different by formants change for profoundly hearing impaired children with cochlear implants. The subjects were 10 children after 15 months of experience with the implant and mean of their chronological age was 8.4 years and Standard deviation was 2.9 years. The ability of auditory perception was assessed using acoustic-synthetic vowels. The acoustic-synthetic vowel was combined with F1, F2, and F3 into a vowel and produced 42 synthetic sound, using Speech GUI(Graphic User Interface) program. The data was deal with clustering analysis and on-line analytical processing for perception ability of acoustic synthetic vowel. The results showed that auditory perception scores of acoustic-synthetic vowels for cochlear implanted children were increased in F2 synthetic vowels compaire to those of F1. And it was found that they perceived the differences of vowels in terms of distance rates between F1 and F2 in specific vowel.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.101-108
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• 2014

This study investigates the relation among pitch range differences, speech rate and realization of stress. To identify the realization of the stress, vowel formants and durational differences of stressed and unstressed vowels are measured. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes nine sentences. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean speakers' pitch range is less than 50% of the native speakers; (2) There is a significantly negative relation between high-low pitch range and speech rate; (3) The vowel qualities and durations of the stressed and unstressed vowels are related to the speech rate. But these are not related to the high-low pitch range.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.15-20
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• 2021

In line with recent attention to the multimodal expression of politeness, the present study examined the association between polite speech and acoustic features through the analysis of vowels produced in casual and polite speech contexts in Korean. Fourteen adult native speakers of Seoul Korean produced the utterances in two social conditions to elicit polite (professor) and casual (friend) speech. Vowel duration and the first (F1) and second formants (F2) of seven sentence- and phrase-initial monophthongs were measured. The results showed that polite speech shares acoustic similarities with vowel production in clear speech: speakers showed greater vowel space expansion in polite than casual speech in an effort to enhance perceptual intelligibility. Especially, female speakers hyperarticulated (front) vowels for polite speech, independent of speech rate. The implications for the acoustic encoding of social stance in polite speech are further discussed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.171-184
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• 2001

American English vowels and Korean vowels were compared by the plotformant method. For American English vowels, six General American English speakers pronounced English words in the b_t environment. For Korean vowels eight Kyongsang dialect speakers and eight Seoul dialect speakers pronounced Korean words in the environments of k_t, p_t and t_t. The formant plots were obtained by plotting F1/F2 tokens of 13 American English vowels on the F1xF2 plane. In spite of personal variations the 13 vowel spaces of all six American English speakers maintained their relative positions with some overlaps. Clear distinctions were made between i-I, e-$\varepsilon$, u-$\sigma$, and o-c. The domain of c and $\alpha$ overlapped for three American English speakers, but it did not for three other speakers. The 8 Korean vowel spaces of Kyongsang dialect speakers and Seoul dialect speakers were very similar and maintained their relative positions. No distinction was made between e and $\varepsilon$. In contrast with American English e which is a neutral vowel, Korean e was a back vowel. The comparison of 13 American English vowel positions and 8 Korean Vowel positions is expected to shed some light on the errors of English vowel pronunciation of Korean learners.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.51-70
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• 2000

Twenty normal and 20 severe-to-profound hearing-impaired subjects participated in the present study. The two groups are matched by their chronological age. Each subject made a recording of three vowels of /i/, /a/, and /u/, and nine $VC_{plosive}V$ (hereafter, VCV) disyllables of /epe/, /ep'e/, /$ep^{h}e$/, /ete/, /et'e/, /$et^{h}e$/, /eke/, /ek'e/, and /$ek^{h}e$/, each five times. Formant frequencies of $F_1,\;F_2,\;and\;F_3$ were measured for the three vowels and six measures were made for the nine disyllables. The six measures were (1) the total duration of the disyllable, (2) the duration of the first vowel, (3) the duration of the closed period, (4) the ratio of the first vowel over the first vowel plus the closure period of the consonant, (5) the duration of the aspiration, and (6) the duration of the second vowel. Results shows that the three formants and each of the measures were significantly different between the two groups of subjects.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.19-27
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• 2008

Several studies on the pronunciation of English vowels point out that Korean learners have difficulty distinguishing English tense and lax vowel pairs. The acoustic comparisons of those studies are mostly based on the formant measurement at one time point of a given vowel section. However, the English lax vowels usually show dynamic changes across their syllable peaks and subjects' English levels account for various conflicting results. The purposes of this paper are to compare the temporal duration and dynamic formant tracks of English tense and lax vowel pairs produced by five Korean and five American males. The subjects were graduate students of an American state university. Results showed that both the Korean and American males produced the vowels with comparable durations. The duration of the front tense-lax vowel pair was longer than that of the back vowel pair. From the formant track comparisons, the American males produced the tense and lax pairs much more distinctly than the Korean male speakers. The results suggest that the Korean males should pay attention to the F1 and F2 movements, i.e., the jaw and tongue movements, in order to match those of the American males. Further studies are recommended on the auditorily acceptable ranges of F2 variation for the lax vowels.