• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.73-79
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• 2014

Alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/ are learned last for normal children in the speech development process for Koreans. These are especially difficult to articulate for hearing-impaired children often causing articulation errors. The acoustic phonetic evaluation uses testing tools to provide indirect and object information. These objective resources can be compared with standardized resources on speech when interpreting the results of a test. However, most previous studies in Korea did not consider acoustic studies that used the spectrum moment values of hearing-impaired children. Therefore, this study was conducted to compare the characteristics of hearing-impaired children's pronunciation of fricative sounds using spectrum moment values. For this purpose, the study selected a total of 10 hearing-impaired children (5 boys and 5 girls) currently in 3rd or 5th grade and attending one of the elementary schools in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. For the selection process, their age, type of hearing aid, implantation of hearing aid (CI) before two years of age, hearing capacity (dB) before and after wearing the hearing aid, duration of speech rehabilitation, and time of learning alveolar fricative sounds were all considered. Also, 10 normal children (5 boys and 5 girls) were selected among 3rd or 5th grade students attending one of the elementary schools in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. The subjects were asked to read the carrier sentence, "I say _______," including a list of 12 meaningless syllables composed of CV and VCV syllables, including alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/ and vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/. The recorded resources were processed through the Time-frequency Analysis Software Program to measure M1 (mean), M2 (variance), M3 (skewness), and M4 (kurtosis) of the fricative noise. No significant differences were found when comparing spectrum threshold values in the acoustic phonetic characteristics of hearing-impaired children and normal children in alveolar fricative sound pronunciation according to vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/, and syllable structure (CV, VCV) other than, for M3 in the comparison of groups according to disability. In the comparison of syllable structures, there were statistically significant differences in M1, M2, M3, and M4 with clinical significance. However, there was no significant difference in results when comparing the alveolar fricative sounds according to the vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.117-128
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• 2015

This paper investigates the acoustic-perceptual relation between Korean dent-alveolar fricatives and the English voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in varied prosodic contexts (e.g., stress, accent, and word initial position). The denti-alveolar fricatives in Korean show a two-way distinction, which can be referred to as either plain (lenis) /s/ or fortis /$s^*$/. The English alveolar voiceless fricative /s/ that corresponds to the two Korean fricatives would be placed in a one-to-two non-native phoneme mapping situation when Korean listeners hear English /s/. This raises an interesting question of how the single fricative of English perceptually maps into the two-way distinction in Korean. This paper reports the acoustic-perceptual mapping pattern by investigating spectral properties of the English stimuli that are heard as either /s/ or /$s^*$/ by Korean listeners, in order to answer the two questions: first, how prosody influences fricatives acoustically, and second, how the resultant properties drive non-native listeners to interpret them as segmental features instead of as prosodic information. The results indicate that Korean listeners' responses change depending on the prosodic context in which the stimuli are placed. It implies that Korean speakers interpret some of the information provided by prosody as segmental one, and that the listeners take advantage of the information in their judgment of non-native phonemes.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.129-136
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• 2012

Korean alveolar fricatives are late-developing speech sounds. Most previous research on phonemes used individual words or pseudo words to produce sounds, but word-level phonological analysis does not always reflect a child's practical articulation ability. Also, there has been limited research on articulation development looking at speech production by grammatical morphemes despite its importance in Korean language. Therefore, this research examines the articulation development and phonological patterns of the /s/ phoneme in terms of morphological types produced in children's spontaneous conversational speech. The subjects were twenty-two typically developing 3- and 4-year-old Koreans. All children showed normal levels in three screening tests: hearing, vocabulary, and articulation. Spontaneous conversational samples were recorded at the children's homes. The results are as follows. The error rates decreased with increasing age in all morphological contexts. Also, error percentages within an age group were significantly lower in lexical morphemes than in grammatical morphemes. The stopping of fricative sounds was the main error pattern in all morphological contexts and reduced as age increased. This research shows that articulation performance can differ significantly by morphological contexts. The present study provides data that can be used to identify the difficult context for articulatory evaluation and therapy of alveolar fricative sounds.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.169-184
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• 2002

Korean has two types of voiceless alveolar fricatives: a non-tense fricative /$S^{h}$ and a tense fricative /s'/. Twenty native speakers of Korean produced five pairs of isolated words containing word initial $S^{h}V$ and /s'V/ sequences where V was any one of five (/a, e, i, o, u/) of Korean vowels. Acoustic measures such as duration, fricative noise prominent frequency, energy change of following vowel, and fundamental frequency at vowel onset were examined. Results showed that among the parameters, aspiration noise duration of /s'/ in mid and low vowel contexts was less than 21 ms. In a perception experiment, where only the aspiration noise interval of the /$S^{h}$/ tokens was incrementally reduced, some listeners shifted perception from /$S^{h}$/ to /s'/.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.127-134
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• 2018

This study aims to explain the difficulties children with articulation and phonological disorders have in producing alveolar fricative sounds. The study will perform a comparative analysis revealing how ordinary children produce alveolar fricative sounds through five different acoustic variables, and consequently identifying objective differences, compared to children with articulation and phonological disorders. Therefore, this study compared and analyzed the differences between 10 children with articulation and phonological disorders and 10 ordinary children according to a phonation type of alveolar fricative sounds (/s/ and /$s^*$), a type of vowel (/i/, /ε/, /u/, /o/, /ɯ/, /ʌ/, /ɑ/), and a structure of syllables (CV, VCV) through acoustic variables including a central moment, skewness, kurtosis, a center of gravity and variance. That is, children with articulation and phonological disorders, when compared to ordinary children, have difficulties with concentrating an agile and momentary friction with strength when articulating alveolar fricative sounds, which uses strong energy and accompany tension. Furthermore, the values of alveolar fricative sounds of children with articulation and phonological disorders appeared to spread evenly over the average range, which means that the range of overall the standard deviation values for children with functional phonological disorders is wider than that of ordinary children. For a future study, if the mispronounced sounds relating to omission, substitution, and addition can be compared and analyzed for various target groups, it could be used effectively to help children with functional phonological disorders.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.37-46
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• 2010

This study investigates acoustic characteristics of English and Korean voiceless sibilant fricatives as they appear before the three vowels, /i/, /$\alpha$/ and /u/. Three measurements - duration, center of gravity and major spectral peak - are employed to compare acoustic properties and vowel effect for each fricative sound. This study also investigates the question of whether Korean sibilant fricatives are acoustically similar to the English voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ or to the palato-alveolar /$\int$/. The results show that in the duration of frication noise, English /$\int$/ is the longest and Korean lax /s/ the shortest of the four sounds. It is also observed that English alveolar /s/ has the highest value, whereas Korean /s/ shows the lowest value in the frequency of center of gravity. In terms of major spectral peak, while English /s/ reveals the highest frequency, English /$\int$/ shows the lowest value. In addition, evidence indicates that there is a strong vowel effect in the fricative sounds of both languages, although the vowel effect patterns of the two languages are inconsistent. For instance, in the major spectral peak, both Korean lax /s/ and tense /$s^*$/ show significantly higher frequencies before the vowel /$\alpha$/ than before the other vowels, whereas both English /s/ and /$\int$/ exhibit significantly higher frequencies before the vowel /i/ than before the other vowels. These results indicate that Korean sibilant fricatives are acoustically distinct from both English /s/ and /$\int$/.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.41-48
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• 2018

This study examined the acoustic characteristics of Korean alveolar fricatives of normal children. Developing children aged 3 and 7, typically produced 2 types of nonsense syllables containing alveolar fricative /sV/ and /VsV/ sequences where V was any one of three corner vowels (/i, a, and u/). Stimuli containing the speech materials used in a production experiment were presented randomly to 12 speech language pathologists (SLPs) for a perception test. The SLPs responded by selecting one of seven alternative sounds. Acoustic measures such as duration of frication noise, normalized intensity, skewness, and center of gravity were examined. There was significant difference in acoustic measures when comparing vowels. Comparison of syllable structures indicated statistically significant differences in duration of frication noise and normalized intensity. Acoustic parameters could account for the perceptual data. Relating the acoustic and perception data by means of logistic regression suggests that duration of frication noise and normalized intensity are the primary cues to perceiving Korean fricatives.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.107-115
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• 2015

In this paper English word-final /s/ and /z/ produced by English and Korean speakers were investigated. The durations and maximum intensities of these fricatives with those of their preceding vowels were compared. In the English speakers' productions, they relied on the ratio of the durations of them as well as the ratio of the maximum intensities of them. In their productions, the /s/ was long in duration and high in maximum intensity and its preceding vowel was short in duration whereas the /z/ was short in duration and low in maximum intensity and its preceding vowel was long in duration. However, the maximum intensities of the preceding vowels were not different in their productions. But in the Korean speakers' productions, they relied on neither the ratio of the durations of them nor the ratio of the maximum intensities of them. In their productions, the /s/ and the /z/ were not different in durations, but the duration of the preceding vowel of the /s/ was shorter than that of /z/, and the maximum intensities of the /s/ and /z/ as well as their preceding vowels were not different. Based on these results we can conclude that in distinguishing /CVs/ and /CVz/ words, English speakers used durations and intensities of the word-final fricatives in addition to durations of the vowels whereas Koreans used only durations of the vowels.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.319-329
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• 2016

The present study was to test if breathing training in melodic intonation therapy (MIT) ameliorated the articulation intelligibility of Broca's aphasics or not. The experimental group did breathing training (2 stages) that preceded the MIT. In order to evaluate the efficacy of the MIT intervention, the VOT (Voice Onset Time), the TD (Total Delay), the voice sound intensity and the expiratory volume of the subjects, closely associated with articulation intelligibility were measured before and after the intervention. It was shown that, in the experimental group after the MIT intervention, the VOT and TD were increased on bilabial/p/, alveolar consonant /t/, and soft palatal /k/(p < 0.05), but no significant differences were found on affricate /c/ and fricative /s/(p > 0.05). In the control group, no significant increases in the VOT and TD were observed on all articulation points(p > 0.05). The voice sound intensity which influences the verbal articulation increased in the experimental group after the intervention(p < 0.05), whereas no significant changes were observed in the control group. In conclusion, the breathing training in the MIT was found to result in improving the articulation intelligibility of Broca's aphasiacs.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.77-102
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• 1994

Many studies have been made on the masticatory and esthetic effects of prosthodontic treatments, but few on the restoration of pronunciation, especially in complete denture wearers. The purpose of this study is to provide a basis that could be of help to the complete denture wearers' speech adaptation by analyzing the influence of the palatal coverage upon the duration of consonants and vowels with the method of experimental phonetics. For this study, metal plates and resin plates were made for 3 male subjects in their twenties, who have good occlusion, and do not have speech and hearing disorders. Then 8 Korean consonants and 4 Korean vowels were selected, systemically considering phonetic variants such as the place and manner of articulation, lenis/fortis, mutual effect of each phoneme, etc. They were combined into meaningless tested words in the form of /VCV/, and were included in the carrier sentences. Each informant uttered the sentences 1) without the plate, 2) with the metal plate, 3) with the resin plate. The recorded data were analyzed through the waveform of sounds and spectrogram by using the program SoundEdit, Signalize, Statview 512+for the Macintosh computer. The duration of each segment was measured by searching for the boundaries between the preceding vowels and consonants, and between the consonants and the following vowels. The study led to the conclusion that. 1. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the tested words increased and the duration increased more with the resin plate than with the metal plate. 2. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the preceding vowels, consonants, and following vowels increased, but the temporal structure of the tested words was maintained. 3. As for the manner of articulation, fricative /s/(ㅅ) was greatly influenced by both kinds of palatal plates. 4. As for the place of articulation, alveolar sounds /d/(ㄷ), /n/(ㄴ) were greatly influnced by the kinds of palatal plates, and the velar sounds /n/(ㅇ), /g/(ㄱ) were influenced by the platal plates, but the kind of the palatal plates did not show any significance. 5. As for the lenis/fortis, lenis was influenced more by the kind of the palatal plates. 6. As for the influence of vowels upon each segment in the tested words, palatal vowel /i/(ㅣ) had greater influence than pharyngeal vowel /a/(ㅏ), and following vowels than preceding vowels.