• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.3-10
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• 2014

This study investigated whether Korean vowels, /ɨ/ and /u/, are distinctively perceived after a labial consonant given the fact that native and Sino-Korean nouns showed only vowel /u/ after a labial consonant while this pattern was massively broken by the recent introduction of loanwords. For this purpose, a perception experiment was conducted with $V_1C_1V_2$ sequences in which different vowels /a, i, u/ and consonants /p, t, k/ occurred in $V_1$ and $C_1$ before the target $V_2$, /ɨ/ and /u/. The data was produced by six speakers each from two different age groups, Age20 and Age40/50 in the read speech style. The results showed that consonant /p/ attracted significantly more responses of /u/ from /VCɨ/ sequences and significantly less responses of /u/ from /VCu/ sequence than the other consonants did in both age groups. Furthermore, Age20 group showed significantly less percentage of /u/ responses than Age40 group when the preceding consonant was /p/ regardless of the target vowel. We suggest therefore that unlike the traditional belief of labial assimilation, there is neutralization after a labial consonant in which vowels /ɨ/ and /u/ are often realized as any sound between two vowels, /ɨ/ and /u/. That is, this vowel change is not categorial but it rather produces an ambiguous stimulus which attracts different responses from different listeners. Ambiguous stimulus was produced due to coarticulatory efforts in speech production and perceptual compensation. We also argue that there is generational difference such that Age40/50 group speakers showed stronger tendency to produce /u/ after a labial consonant regardless of whether the target vowel was /ɨ/ or /u/.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.39
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• pp.381-406
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• 2015

Russian nasal consonants / m /, / n / have a feature value not only [+consonant] in common with obstruents, but also [+sonorant] in common with vowels. Nasal / m /(bi-labial) and / n /(dental) have the same place of articulation but different manner of articulation. The feature value of / m / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, -cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, +voic], and that of / n / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, +cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, + voic]. There is a difference in feature [cor] value of / m / and / n /. In this study it is confirmed that it is a fact that the Russian nasal consonants behave differently from the other consonants in each phonological phenomenon due to their phonological characteristics. The preceding voiced obstruent is changed to an unvoiced one in a process where the last voiceless obstruent in the consonant cluster ' voiced obstruent + nasal /m/ + voiceless obstruent' skips the nasal consonant and spreads its feature value to the preceding voiced obstruent transparently because of the feature [+sonorant] of the nasal consonant. The coronal nasal /n/ participates in a palatalization with the following palatal actively and palatalize preceding plain consonants passively because of markedness hierarchy such as 'Velar > Labial > Coronal'. But the labial nasal /m/ is palatalized with the following velar palatal actively and participates in a palatalization with the following coronal palatal passively. This result helps us confirm the phonological difference of /m/ and /n/ in a palatalization. When the a final consonant is nasal, the unvoicing phenomenon of a final consonant doesn't occur. In such a case as cluster 'obstruent + nasal' the feature value [voiced] of the preceding obstruent doesn't change, but the following nasal can assimilate into the preceding obstruent. When continuing the same nasals / -nn- / in a consonant cluster, the feature value [+cont] of a weak position leads the preceding nasal / n / to be changed into [-cont] / l /. Through the analysis of the frequency of occurrences of consonants in syllabic onsets and codas that should observe the 'Sonority Sequence Principle', the sonority hierarchy of nasal consonants has been confirmed. In a diachronic perspective following nasal / m /, / n / there is a loss of the preceding labial stop and dental stop. But in clusters with the velar stop+nasal, the two-component cluster has been kept phonetically intact.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.239-252
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• 1993

This study was done to analyze phonetic dysfunction and the effect of orthognathic surgery to phonation in the patients of mandibular prognathism. 20 persons were chosen as normal group and 20 patients of mandibular prognathism as abnormal for this study. 5 vowel sounds-'ㅏ(a)', 'ㅔ(e)', 'ㅣ(i)', 'ㅗ(o)', 'ㅜ(u)' and 14 consonant sounds-'ㄱ(g)', "ㄴ(n), 'ㄷ(d)', 'ㄹ(l)', 'ㅁ(m)', 'ㅂ(b)', 'ㅅ(s)', 'ㅇ(ng)', 'ㅈ(j)', 'ㅊ(ch)', 'ㅋ(k)', 'ㅌ(t)', 'ㅍ(p)', 'ㅎ(h)', were checked. We recorded these sounds in the period of preopration, postop. 12 months, postop. 24 months. A Formant ratio and a length of consonant time were studied with discriminant analysis. As a result of the study, the following conclusion were gained. 1. As a result of the analysis on vowel dysfunction patiensts of mandibular prognathism, more than 80% of men patients showed the dysfunction in prelingual sound 'ㅔ(e)' and 'ㅣ(i)'. More than 70% of women patients showed the dysfunction in all vowel. 2. One year later from the orthognathic surgery, men patients showed a marked improvement in 'ㅏ(a)'. The next were 'ㅗ(o)', 'ㅜ(u)' and 'ㅣ(i)'. Women patients showed a marked improvement in 'ㅜ(u)'. 3. Two year later from the orthognathic surgery, men patients showed a marked improvement in prelingual sound 'ㅔ(e)' and postlingual sound 'ㅗ(o)'. Women patients showed a marked improvement in 'ㅏ(a)'. More than 20% of patients showed the phonetic improvement compared with the condition of the postop. 12 months. 4. As a result of the analysis on consonant dysfunction patient of mandibular prognathism. more than 80% of men patients showed the dysfunction in lingual sound 'ㅅ(s)'. Most women patients showed the dysfunction in labial sound 'ㅁ(m)' and lingual sound 'ㄴ(n)'. More than 50% of patients showed the dysfunction in labial sound and lingual sound. 5. One year later from the orthognathic surgery. men patients showed a complete improvement in hard palatal sound 'ㅈ(j)'. The next were labial sound 'ㅂ(b)', lingual sound 'ㅅ(s)', soft palatal sound 'ㄱ(g)' and 'ㅋ(k)'. Women patients showed a marked improvement in soft palatal sound 'ㅇ(ng)' and 'ㄱ(g)'. 6. Two year later from the orthognathic surgery, all patients showed remarkable improvement in consonant sounds. except for labial sound 'ㅁ(m)', 'ㅍ(p)' and lingual sound 'ㄴ(n)'. The improvement ratio was increased as the time was going on compared with the condition of postop 12 months.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.12
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• pp.186-191
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• 2006

The perception of English labial consonants was investigated via experiment where 40 Korean EFL learners identified nonwords with the target labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The overall result showed that the proportion of perception accuracy of the target consonants was rather low, amounting to only 55%. There was also a positional effect since the accuracy rates for perceiving the four target consonants differed by position. Specifically, the average accuracy rate of the target consonant identification was higher in intervocalic position before stress (70%) and initial onset position (67%) than in intervocalic position after stress (45%) and final coda position (36%). Further, the accuracy rate for [f] is was high in all prosodic locations except intervocalic position after stress. The perception patterns were accounted for by the markedness and perceptual factors in conjunction with stress location.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.83-88
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• 2022

Hunminjeongeum had 17 initial consonant letters. Among them, five consonant letters, those are ㄱ (牙音, molar sound letter), ㄴ (舌音, lingual sound letter), ㅁ(脣音, labial sound letter), ㅅ (齒音, dental sound letter), ㅇ (喉音, guttural sound letter), were served as chief consonants. There was no argument that consonant letters were made by symbolizing the shape of vocal organs during phonation of them. It could be phoniatrically explained that all of five chief consonants were morphologically symbolized from left lateral view of vocal tract during articulation. Although 'ㄱ' was known as molar sound, it was not modeled the shape of molar tooth but modeled the shape of tongue at molar teeth bearing area. The same principle applies to 'ㅅ', and it was represented the shape of upper surface of anterior tongue instead of incisor teeth. 'ㄴ' was a lingual sound and directly shaped the shape of tongue. 'ㄷ' was made by addition of a stroke 'ㅡ' meaning hard palate above 'ㄴ'. 'ㅁ' was represented the shape of lateral view of anterior mouth. 'ㅇ' was looked like shaping left lateral view of laryngopharyngeal space.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.28-38
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• 2004

The Hun-Min-Jeong-Eum(訓民正音) has been created under the political purpose that is to unite politics and cultures through a philosophical harmony of the confucianism as well as the Buddhism under the periodical circumstance that includes the change of a dynasty and a revolution in culture. The creating work has been greatly affected by the theoretical divination, that is the confucian ideas of North-Song dynasty which has been highly elaborated in those days. The shape of the characters of the Hun-Min-Jeong-Eum(訓民正音) has been influenced by the ancient letters existing at the time (especially Ga-Rim-To 加臨多), it has been throughly readjusted and recreated based on the philosophy. The consonant uses the Three-Pillars(三才)(ㅇ, ㅁ, △) in the style of the five elements and each velar-lingual-labial-dental-guttural sounds (牙舌脣齒喉音) is applicable to five elements also a 'ㅇ' is equivalent to the heaven, a 'ㅁ' to the earth. a '△' to the man. The vowel uses the five elements of ㅗ(water). ㅏ(wood), ㅜ(fire), ㅓ(metal), ㆍ(five-soil), ─(ten-soil) in the style of the Three-Pillars(三才) of ㆍ, ㅡ, ㅣ and the first created letters(初出字), and the secondary created letters(再出字) each can be attached to the eight trigrams(八卦). The consonant has 17 letters and the vowel has 11 letters, therefore the total number of the letters is 28. and those are equivalent to the 28 constellation(二十八宿) of the astronomy. Contrary to the underlying principle that has been applied during the time of the creation of the letters, when the consonant and the vowel are used, the consonant refers to the heaven (天), and the vowel refers to the earth(地). a consonant take a part in making a point on the starting place of the pronounce, a vowel take a part in the keeping the energy to the end.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.455-464
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• 2009

Based on the observation that Korean speakers of English have difficulties in producing English fricatives, a perception experiment was designed to investigate whether Korean speakers also have difficulties perceiving English labial consonants including fricatives. Forty Korean college students were asked to perform a multiple-choice identification test. The consonant perception test consisted of nonce words which contained English labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The general perception pattern was that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV. The difficulties in perceiving the English targets resulted mainly from bidirectional manner confusion between stop and fricative across all prosodic locations. The other types of misidentification were due to place confusion as well as voicing confusion. Place confusion was generated mostly by the target [f] in all prosodic position due to acoustic properties. Voicing confusion was heavily influenced by prosodic position. The misperception of the participants was accounted for by phonetic properties and/or the participants' native language properties.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2009

We investigated the perceptual structure of Korean consonants by analyzing the confusion among consonants in various vowel contexts. The 36 CV syllable types combined by 18 consonants and 2 vowels (/i/ and /u/) were presented with masking noises or in degraded intensity. The confusion data were analyzed by the INDSCAL (Individual Difference Scaling), ADCLUS (Additive Clustering) and the probability of the transmitted information. The results were compared with those of a previous study with /a/ vowel context (Bae and Kim, 2002). The overall results showed that the laryngeal features-aspiration, lax and tense-are the most salient features in the perception of Korean consonant regardless of vowel contexts, but the perceptual saliency of place features varies across vowel conditions. In high vowel (front and back vowel) contexts, sibilant consonants were perceptually salient compared to in low vowel contexts. In back vowel contexts, grave (labial and velar) consonants were perceptually salient. These findings imply that place features and vowel features strongly interact in speech perception as well as in speech production. All statistical measures from our confusion data ensured that the perceptual structure of Korean consonants correspond to the hierarchical structure suggested in the feature geometry (Clements, 1991). We discuss the link between speech perception and production as the basis of phonology.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.29-38
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• 2009

This study investigated the interaction between consonants and vowels in Korean syllable perception using a speeded classification task (Garner, 1978). Experiment 1 examined whether listeners analytically perceive the component phonemes in CV monosyllables when classification is based on the component phonemes (a consonant or a vowel) and observed a significant redundancy gain and a Garner interference effect. These results imply that the perception of the component phonemes in a CV syllable is not linear. Experiment 2 examined the further relation between consonants and vowels at a subphonemic level comparing classification times based on glottal features (aspiration and lax), on place of articulation features (labial and coronal), and on vowel features (front and back). Across all feature classifications, there were significant but asymmetric interference effects. Glottal feature.based classification showed the least amount of interference effect, while vowel feature.based classification showed moderate interference, and place of articulation feature-based classification showed the most interference. These results show that glottal features are more independent to vowels, but place features are more dependent to vowels in syllable perception. To examine the three-way interaction among glottal, place of articulation, and vowel features, Experiment 3 featured a modified Garner task. The outcome of this experiment indicated that glottal consonant features are independent to both the place of articulation and vowel features, but the place of articulation features are dependent to glottal and vowel features. These results were interpreted to show that speech perception is not abstract and discrete, but nonlinear, and that the perception of features corresponds to the hierarchical organization of articulatory features which is suggested in nonlinear phonology (Clements, 1991; Browman and Goldstein, 1989).

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.207-207
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• 1996

The neutral tone is one of the most important distinguishing features in Beijing Mandarin, but there are two completely different views on its linguistic function: a special tone(Xu, 1980) versus weak stress(Chao, 1968). In this paper, the acoustic manifestation of the neutral tone will be explored to show that it is closely related to weak stress. 122 disyllabic words in which the second syllable carries the neutral tone, including 22 stress pairs, were uttered by a native male speaker of Beijing dialect and analysed by Kay Digital Sonagraph 5500-1. The results of the acoustic analysis are presented as follows: 1) The first two formants of the medial and the syllabic vowel moves towards that of central vowel with a greater magnitude in the syllable with the neutral tone than in the syllable with any of the four normal tones. Also the vowel ending, and nasal coda /n/ and / / in the syllable with the neutral tone tends to be deleted. 2) In the syllables with the neutral tone, there are strong carryover coarticulations between the medial and syllabic vowel and the preceding unvoiced consonant. In general, the vowel is affected to move towards the position of the central vowel with more greater magnitude by coronal consonant than by labial or velar consonant. 3) In the syllable with the neutral tone, when and only when it precedes a syllable with tone-4, the high vowel following [f], [ts'], [s], [ts'], [s], [tc'] or [c] tends to be voiceless. 4) It can be seen from the acoustical results of 22 stress pairs that the duration of the syllable with the neutral tone is on the average reduced to 55% of that of the syllable with the four normal tones, and the duration of the final in the syllable with neutral tone is on the average reduced to 45% of that of the final in the syllable with the four normal tones(Lin & Yan 1980). 5) The FO contour of the neutral tone is highly dependent on the preceding normal tone(Lin & Yan 1993). For a number of languages it has been found that the vowel space is reduced as the level of stress placed upon the vowel is reduced(Nord 1986). Therefore we reach the conclusion that the syllable with neutral tone is related to weak stress(Lin & Yan 1990). The neutral tone is not a special tone because the preceding normal tone.