• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.274-274
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• 1996

This presents the preliminary results from work in progress of a paired study of the acquisition of voiceless stops by Spanish speakers learning English, and American English speakers learning Spanish. For this study the hypothesis was that the American speakers would have no difficulty suppressing the aspiration in Spanish unaspirated stops; the Spanish speakers would have difficulty acquiring the aspiration necessary for English voiceless stops, according to Eckman's Markedness Differential Hypothesis. The null hypothesis was proved. All subjects were given the same set of disyllabic real words of English and Spanish in carrier phrases. The tokens analyzed in this report are limited to word-initial voiceless stops, followed by a low back vowel in stressed syllables. Tokens were randomized and then arranged in a list with the words appearing three separate times. Aspiration was measured from the burst to the onset of voicing(VOT). Both the first language (Ll) tokens and second language (L2) tokens were compared for each speaker and between the two groups of language speakers. Results indicate that the Spanish speakers, as a group, were able to reach the accepted target language VOT of English, but English speakers were not able to reach the accepted range for Spanish, in spite of statistically significant changes of p<.OOl by speakers in both groups of learners. A closer analysis of the speech samples revealed wide variability within the speech of native speakers of English. Not only is variability in English due to the wide range of VOT (120 msecs. for English labials, for example) but individual speakers showed different patterns. These results are revealing for the demands requied in experimental designs and the number of speakers and tokens requied for an adequate description of different languages. In addition, a simple report of means will not distinguish the speakers and the respective language learning situation; measurements must also include the RANGE of acceptability of VOT for phonetic segments. This has immediate consequences for the learning and teaching of foreign languages involving aspirated stops. In addition, the labelling of spoken language in speech technology is shown to be inadequate without a fuller mathematical description.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 2004

The force of articulation is different between voiced and voiceless consonants in the binary opposition system. However, the Korean voiceless stop consonants have a triple opposition system: lenis, aspirated, and glottalized. The aim of this study is to find the primary distinctive feature between the force of articulation and the aspiration for the three different types of Korean stops. Two native speakers of the Seoul dialect participated to this study. The corpus was composed of less than eight syllabic words containing consonants in word-initial position and intervocalic position. Radiocinematography and Mingography were used to analyze the articulatory tension and acoustic characteristics. Korean stops have independent features of articulatory tension and aspiration, in which the indices are different according to position. However, in this system which does not have the opposition of sonority, the force of articulation is the primary distinctive feature and the feature of aspiration is subsidiary.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.409-414
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• 1996

The aim of this paper is to research on the actual condition of Koreans' Spanish consonants pronunciation with an emphasis on describing the phonetic different of Korean speakers and Spanish speakers. 40 Spanish words were chosen for the speech sampling, and 10 Spanish majoring Korean students from Seoul or Kyunggi Province and 3 Spanish speakers form Castile, Spain participated in the interview. The most noticeable phonetic differences of Korean speakers' pronunciation comparing with Spanish speakers are abstracted as follows: 1) The voiced stops are pronounced voiceless or weak voiced. 2) The voiced stops are slightly aspirated. 3) The length of voiceless consonants is quite longer than the length of proceeding vowel. 4) Fricatives and affricates are somewhat fronter, and weaker in the degree of friction. 5) There is a strong tendency to geminate dental lateral /l/ such as 'pelo' and to vocalize palatal lateral /$\rightthreetimes$/ such as 'calle' 6) Unlike in Spanish speech flap $\mid$r$\mid$ and trill [r] are pronounced similarly in Korean speech.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.89-97
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• 2006

The stop consonants in Korean are classified into three types according to the manner of articulation as unaspirated (UA), slightly aspirated (SA) and heavily aspirated (HA) stops. Both the UA and the HA types are always voiceless in any environment. Generally, the voice onset time (VOT) could be measured spectrographically from release of consonant burst to onset of following vowel. The VOT of the UA type is within 20 msec of the burst, and about 40-50 msec in the SA and 50-70 msec in the HA. There have been many efforts to clarify properties that differentiate these manner categories. Umeda, et $al^{1)}$ studied that the fundamental frequency at voice onset after both the UA and HA consonants was higher than that for the SA consonants, and the voice onset times were longest in the HA followed by the SA and UA. Han, et $al^{2)}$ reported in their speech synthesis and perception studies that the SA and UA stops differed primarily in terms of a gradual versus a relatively rapid intensity build-up of the following vowel after the stop release. Lee, et $al^{3)}$ measured both the intraoral and subglottal air pressure that the subglottal pressure was higher for the HA stop than for the other two stops. They also compared the dynamic pattern of the subglottal pressure slope for the three categories and found that the HA stop showed the most rapid increase in subglottal pressure in the time period immediately before the stop release. $Kagaya^{4)}$ reported fiberscopic and acoustic studies of the Korean stops. He mentioned that the UA type may be characterized by a completely adducted state of the vocal folds, stiffened vocal folds and the abrupt decreasing of the stiffness near the voice onset, while the HA type may be characterized by an extensively abducted state of the vocal folds and a heightened subglottal pressure. On the other hand, none of these positive gestures are observed for the SA type. Hong, et $al^{5)}$ studied electromyographic activity of the thyroarytenoid and posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) muscles during stop production. He reported a marked and early activation of the PCA muscle associated with a steep reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle before voice onset in the production of the HA consonants. For the production of the UA consonants, little or no activation of the PCA muscle and earliest and most marked reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle were characteristic. For the SA consonants, he reported a more moderate activation of the PCA muscle than for the UA consonant, and the least and the latest reactivation of the thyroarytenoid muscle. Hong, et $al^{6)}$ studied the observation of the vibratory movements of vocal fold edges in terms of laryngeal gestures according to the different types of stop consonants. The movements of vocal fold edges were evaluated using high speed digital images. EGG signals and acoustic waveforms were also evaluated and related to the vibratory movements of vocal fold edges during stop production.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.135-143
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• 2011

This study evaluated the respiratory capacity of spastic cerebral palsy children who were grouped by GMFCS (Gross Motor Function Classification System) levels and identified the acoustic characteristics of three different types of Korean stops (stop consonants) which are needed for the temporal coordination of larynx and supra-larynx, in these children. Thirty-two children with dysarthria due to spastic cerebral palsy were divided into two subgroups: 14 children classified at GMFCS levels I~III were placed in Group 1 and 18 classified at GMFCS levels IV~V were placed in Group 11, and 18 children with normal speech were selected and placed in the control group. /a/ pronged phonation (sustained vowel /a/) and nine Korean VCV syllables were used. Examined acoustic characteristics were maximum phonation time (MPT) and closure duration and aspiration duration. The results were as follows: 1) The MPTs of the cerebral palsy (CP) groups, both Group I and Group II, were significantly shorter than those of the normal group. 2) The closure durations of the two CP groups were longer than those of the normal group for all 9 target syllables. 3) The aspiration durations of the two CP groups were longer than those of the normal group. 4) The closure duration of the normal and CP Group I was significantly different among tense, aspirated, and lax. However, the CP Group II was different from normal. 5) The aspiration duration of the normal and CP Group I was significantly different among aspirated, tense, and lax. However, the CP Group II was different from normal. 6) The place of articulation influenced less than the manner of articulation on closure and aspiration duration.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.39-45
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• 2015

Changes in speech production in normal elderly might be subtle and gradual. Therefore, an acoustic analysis is appropriate to identify the effect of aging on speech. For this purpose, this study examined four speech parameters; voice onset time (VOT), VOT range, $f_0$ of following vowel($f_0FV$), and $f_0FV$ difference in two age groups, old (mean age 74.57 yrs.) and young (m: 27.43 yrs.). The results show that compared to the older group the younger demonstrated significantly shorter VOTs in lenis and longer in aspirated stop. VOT ranges were relatively broad and consequently overlapped between the phonation types (e.g., lenis, fortis, aspirated). The $f_0FV$ values in the older group which are an integral parameter with VOT were lower compared with the young group. The $f_0FV$ differences in the old female group were significantly narrower than the young female group, therefore, clear distinction became difficult. In conclusion, contrast in temporal information was obscured, and the domain of glottal information was diminished on stop consonants in Korean elderly. The findings suggest that central/peripheral changes by aging could lead to a deficit in coordination between phonation and articulation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.9-21
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• 2021

This study investigated whether Korean learners improve acoustic cue weights to identify Korean lenis and aspirated stops in the direction of native values through perception training that focused on contrasting the stops in various phonetic contexts. Nineteen native Chinese learners of Korean and two native Korean instructors for the perception training participated in the experiment. A training group and a non-training group were divided according to pretest results, and only the training group participated in the training for 5 days. To estimate the perceptual weights of the stop cues, a pretest and a posttest were conducted with stimuli whose stop cues (F0 and VOT) were systematically manipulated. Binary logistic regression analyses were performed on each learner's test results to calculate perceptual β coefficients, which estimate the perceptual weights of the acoustic cues used in identifying the stop contrast. The training group showed a statistically significant increase of 0.451 on average in the posttest for the coefficient values of the F0, which is the primary cue for the stop contrast, whereas the non-training group showed an insignificant increase of 0.246. The patterns of change in the F0 use after training varied considerably among individual learners.

• MALSORI
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• no.15_18
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• pp.19-34
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• 1989

There is general agreement that voice onset time (VOT) is functionally related with the glottal opening at the moment of the oral release of a stop. However, systematic investigations of tempo 8n4 the place of articulation as affecting the glottal opening and VOT have relatively neglected. Various instrumental techniques were used to verify the claim with BrEng and korean speakers, under controlled experimental conditions, tempo being one of them. It was found that voiceless aspiration (i.e. VOT) is not simply a function of the glottal area at the moment of the oral release of a stop as it is normally defined in the existing literature. Within a given place of articulation and across temper VOT was generally insignificantly related to the glottal area. It is inferred that the glottal adduction onset time for the following vowel is actively control led by the speaker to meet aerodynamic requirements in relation to class (i.e. aspirated and unaspirated) and tempo. Some possible underlying physiological mechanisms for various phonetic aspects of intervocalic stops, associated with the glottal area and VOT, were discussed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.85-95
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• 2000

In this paper, the H1*-H2* measure is introduced and exact procedures for obtaining the H1*-H2* value are fully specified, The H1*-H2* measure (a corrected difference in dB between the first and second harmonics) has been devised to provide an acoustic correlate of the phonation mode of a vowel following a consonant. With this measure, we can investigate the phonation mode of a vowel that is free from the F1 amplitude perturbation effect caused by the preceding consonant, which is especially salient at the voicing onset position of the vowel. For identical research purposes, on the other hand, the H1-H2 measure (the observed difference in dB between the first and second harmonic) has been employed in many previous studies. This paper compares these two measures by illustrating experimental results of exploring post-release phonation modes of vowels following the different manner classes of stop consonants in Korean $\square$i.e., the tense, lenis, and aspirated stops.

• MALSORI
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• no.59
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between intelligibility and phonemic contrasts, and acoustic features in terms of speech development. A total of 212 Putonghua speaking children was participated in the experiment. There were phonemic contrasts significantly related with speech intelligibility: aspirated vs. fricative, retroflex vs. unretroflex, and front vs. back nasal vowel contrast. A regression analysis showed that 88% of the speech intelligibility could be predicted by these phonemic contrasts. Acoustic values were significantly related to the intelligibility of the Putonghua-speaking children's speech: voice onset time of unaspirated stops, and the duration of frication noise in fricatives.