• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.171-184
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• 2013

This study investigated the devoicing rate of Japanese high vowels, focusing on regional and generational differences by acoustically analyzing vowels from two large speech databases. The first speech database used in this study was collected between 1986 and 1988 from 41 areas (prefectures) which included 607 participants (299 high school students and 308 their grandparents). The second was taken from a 2006-2007 collection from seven areas as a follow-up investigation to the first database consisting of 463 participants ranging in age from 8-90 year olds. The results revealed there is a generational as well as regional difference in the devoicing rate in almost all areas. Based on those results, a new distribution map reflecting a current devoicing rate of the younger generation was presented. Furthermore, by comparing the two data sets, this study confirmed age difference in the devoicing rate is not age-grading but a sound change in progress. This study discusses the social factors for changes in the devoicing rate of some areas and then applies the devoicing rate of five areas to an S-curve model to predict the future devoicing rate.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 2003

The devoicing vowel is a phonological process whose contrast in sonority is lost or reduces in a particular phonetic environment. Phonetically, the vocal fold vibration originates from the abduction/adduction of the glottis in relation to supraglottal articulatory movements. The purpose of this study is to investigate Korean vowel devoicing by means of experimental instruments. The interrelated laryngeal adjustments and aerodynamic effects for this voicing can clarify the redundant articulatory gestures relevant to the distinctive feature of sonority. Five test words were selected, being composed of the high vowel /i/, between the fricative and strong aspirated or lenis affricated consonants. The subjects uttered the test words successively at a normal or at a faster speed. The EMG, the sensing tube Gaeltec S7b and the High-Speech Analysis system and MSL II were used in these studies. Acoustically, three different types of speech waveforms and spectrograms were classified, based on the voicing variation. The intraoral air pressure curves showed differences, depending on the voicing variations. The activity patterns of the PCA and the CT for devoicing vowels appeared differently from those showing the partially devoicing vowels and the voicing vowels.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.153-200
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• 1997

In languages such as Japanese, it is very common to observe that short peripheral vowel are completely voiceless when surrounded by voiceless consonants. This phenomenon has been known as Montreal French, Shanghai Chinese, Greek, and Korean. Traditionally this phenomenon has been described as a phonological rule that either categorically deletes the vowel or changes the [+voice] feature of the vowel to [-voice]. This analysis was supported by Sawashima (1971) and Hirose (1971)'s observation that there are two distinct EMG patterns for voiced and devoiced vowel in Japanese. Close examination of the phonetic evidence based on acoustic data, however, shows that these phonological characterizations are not tenable (Jun & Beckman 1993, 1994). In this paper, we examined the vowel devoicing phenomenon in Korean using data from ENG fiberscopic and acoustic recorders of 100 sentences produced by one Korean speaker. The results show that there is variability in the 'degree of devoicing' in both acoustic and EMG signals, and in the patterns of glottal closing and opening across different devoiced tokens. There seems to be no categorical difference between devoiced and voiced tokens, for either EMG activity events or glottal patterns. All of these observations support the notion that vowel devoicing in Korean can not be described as the result of the application of a phonological rule. Rather, devoicing seems to be a highly variable 'phonetic' process, a more or less subtle variation in the specification of such phonetic metrics as degree and timing of glottal opening, or of associated subglottal pressure or intra-oral airflow associated with concurrent tone and stricture specifications. Some of token-pair comparisons are amenable to an explanation in terms of gestural overlap and undershoot. However, the effect of gestural timing on vocal fold state seems to be a highly nonlinear function of the interaction among specifications for the relative timing of glottal adduction and abduction gestures, of the amplitudes of the overlapped gestures, of aerodynamic conditions created by concurrent oral tonal gestures, and so on. In summary, to understand devoicing, it will be necessary to examine its effect on phonetic representation of events in many parts of the vocal tracts, and at many stages of the speech chain between the motor intent and the acoustic signal that reaches the hearer's ear.

• MALSORI
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• no.21_24
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• pp.144-175
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• 1992

This paper aims to discuss determining factors of Korean allophones and to formulate and classify Korean allophonic rules systematically. The relationship between allophones and coarticulation, the most. influential factor of allophonic variation, is thoroughly investigated. Other factors -- speech tempo and style, dialect, and social factors such as age, set, class etc. -- are also briefly discussed. Allophonic rules are classified into two groups -- 3) those relevant to coarticulation and 2) those irrelevant to coarticulation. Rules of the first group are further classified into four subgroups according to the directionality of the coarticulation. Each allophonic nile formulation is explained and discussed in detai1. The allophonic rules formulated and classified in this paper are 1) Devoicing of Voiced Consonants, 2) Devoicing of Vowels, 3) Nasal Approach and Lateral Approach, 4) Uvularization, 5) Palatalization, 6) Voicing of Voiceless Lax Consonants, 7) Frication, 8) Labialization, 9) Nasalization, 10) Release Withholding and Release Masking, 11) Glottalization, 12) Flap Rule, 13) Vowel Weakening, and 14) Allophones of /ㅚ, ㅟ, ㅢ/ (which are realized as diphthongs or as monophthongs depending on phonetic contexts).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference of vowel duration due to the voicing of word-final consonants in English and its relation to the types of word-final consonants (stops vs. fricatives), (partial) devoicing, and stop releasing. Addtionally, this study attempts to interpret the findings from the functional view that the vowels before voiced consonants are produced with a longer duration in order to enhance the salience of the voicing of word-final consonants. This study conducted a recording experiment with English native speakers, and measured the vowel duration, the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants and the release of word-final stops. First, the results showed that the ratio of the duration difference was not influenced by the types of word-final consonants. Second, it was revealed that the higher the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants, the longer vowel duration before word-final voiced consonants, which was compatible with the prediction based on the functional view. Lastly, the ratio of the duration difference was greater when the word-final stops were uttered with the release compared to when uttered without the release, which was not consistent with the functional view. These results suggest that it is not sufficient enough to explain the voicing effect by its function of distinguishing the voicing of word-final consonants.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• spring
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• pp.309-312
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• 2002

무성모음화 현상이 어떠한 분절음적, 운율적 환경에서 주로 실현되는가를 알아보기 위하여 선행자음의 분절음적 환경, 후행자음의 분절음적 환경, 해당 강세구의 음절수, 운율 구조상의 위치 등 모두 네 가지를 변수로 실험을 진행하였다. 모두 10명의 화자(남5, 여5)가 발화한 1140개의 자료에 나타난 행당 모음의 길이를 측정하는 방법으로 분석을 실시하였다. 그 결과 선행자음은 [+기식성]과 [+지속성]을 가진 환경이, 후행 자음은 [-지속정]과 [기식성]을 가진 환경이 무성모음화가 잘 일어나는 환경인 것으로 밝혀졌다. 음절수의 증가는 큰 영향을 주지 않는 것으로 보였고, 대체로 두 번째 강세구의 단어초에 위치하는 경우에 모음의 길이가 짧거나 무성모음화되는 경향이 관찰되었다.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.19-33
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• 2006

This study explores whether Russian, known to have a process of syllable-final devoicing, reveals differences in vowel duration as a function of the underlying voicing of the coda stop. This paper also examines whether non-native speakers of Russian and English learn typical L2 values in vowel duration. The results indicate that vowels in Russian have a slightly longer mean duration before a voiced stop than before a voiceless stop (a mean difference of 9.52 ms), but in most cases the differences did not exhibit statistical significance. In English the mean difference was 60.05 ms, and the differences were in most cases statistically significant. All native Russian speakers of English produced larger absolute differences in vowel duration for English than for Russian, and all native English speakers of Russian produced smaller absolute differences for Russian than for English. More experienced learners seemed to achieve more native-like values of vowel duration than less experienced learners did, suggesting that learning occurs gradually as the learners gain more experience with the L2.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.460-466
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• 2010

It is well-known that Korean EFL learners have difficulties in producing English fricatives which are not in the inventory of Korean and consequently tend to replace English fricatives with stops. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Korean students also have difficulties perceiving English anterior coronal consonants including fricatives. To this end, forty Korean college students participated in an identification test which consisted of 24 nonce words with English anterior coronal consonants in 4 different prosodic locations (CV, VC, VCVV,VVCV). It was shown that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV, providing confusion matrices for each target consonant. It was also found that Korean participants had a great difficulty identifying English[$\theta$] and [$\eth$], which are novel in Korean. Importantly, the confusion patterns found in the perception test tended not to be identical with those found in the previous production studies in that both stops and fricatives were misperceived as fricatives while fricatives were misproduced as stops. Further, perceptual devoicing and intervocalic voicing were attested inVC and intervocalic position, respectively. Based on the findings of this study, pedagogical implications were drawn.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.35-45
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• 2023

Tohoku Japanese is known to have voiced stops without pre-voicing in word-initial position, whereas traditional or conservative Japanese has voiced stops with pre-voicing in the same position. One problem with this devoicing of voiced stops is that it affects the distinction between voiced and voiceless stops because their voice onset time (VOT) values overlap. Previous studies have confirmed that Tohoku speakers use post-stop fundamental frequency (F0) as an acoustic cue along with VOT to avoid overlap. However, the role of post-stop F0 as a perceptual cue in this region has barely been investigated. Therefore, this study explored the role of post-stop F0 in stop voicing perception along with VOT. Several perception tests were conducted using resynthesized stimuli, which were manipulated along a VOT continuum orthogonal to an F0 continuum. The results showed no significant regional difference (Tohoku vs. Chubu) for nonsense words (/ta-da/). However, for meaningful words (/pari/ 'Paris' vs. /bari/ 'Bali,' /piza/ 'pizza' vs. /biza/ 'visa'), a significant word effect was found, and it was confirmed that some listeners utilized the post-stop F0 more consistently and steadily than others. Based on these results, we discuss innovative listeners who may lead the change in the perception of stop voicing.