• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.47-58
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• 1998

This paper tests whether frication duration plays an important role in perceiving fricatives and affricates. In other words, whether the frication duration is an acoustic cue for distinguishing fricatives from affricates. For this purpose two types of experiments are carried out. In the first experiment two sets of stimuli are created by decreasing the frication duration of fricatives by 10ms, and in the second experiment two steps of stimuli are created by increasing the frication duration of affricates by 10 ms. The results of the present study show that frication duration is the primary acoustic cue in perceiving fricative/affricate distinction in Korean. In addition, the amplitude rise time and burst information appear to play secondary roles in perceiving the distinction by a series of perception tests.

• 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.9 no.2
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• pp.31-38
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• 2017

This study aims to examine the acoustic characteristics of Korean sibilant, especially aspiration in Korean fricatives (plain: /s/, fortis: /s'/) and affricates (aspirated: /$ts^h$/, lenis: /ts/, and fortis: /ts'/). Duration values (closure duration, frication duration, aspiration duration), center of gravity (COG) (of the total duration, of the two portions, in 10 ms), H1-H2 values (at the vowel onset) were examined in order to investigate the phonetic feature of aspiration in frication noise. This study further discusses how to define criteria for identifying aspiration in sibilant sounds by adopting 3 visual criteria for assessing aspiration. This visually-designated aspiration onset points are further matched with the COG decline points in 10 ms windows. The result shows that all the non-fortis sounds (/s/, /$ts^h$/, /ts/) contain aspiration, causing similar values of COG and H1-H2.

• MALSORI
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• no.40
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• pp.1-12
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• 2000

This paper investigated how $/\int/$ in English and German is perceived and interpreted in the loanwords in Korean. $/\int/$ in these languages does not show one-to-one correspondence in Korean: $/\int/$ in the coda position in English and German is perceived as [swi] in Korean while $/\int/$ in the onset position is perceived as [syu]. This paper examined phonetic characteristics of $/\int/$ in English and German through its acoustic analysis and attempted to figure out which factor could explain this surface distribution of [swi] and [syu]; phonological (onset vs. coda) or phonetic (coarticulation) factor. Two acoustic features of $/\int/$ in English and German were examined: duration and energy Peak frequency of the frication noise. German $/\int/$ Perceived as [swi] in Korean showed higher energy Peak frequency and longer duration than that perceived as [syu] in Korean. English iii perceived as [swi] also showed longer duration than that Perceived as [syu] in Korean but energy Peak frequency showed different behavior. English $/\int/$ showed coarticulation with the preceding vowel rather than being affected by its position in the syllable in English. This paper concludes that 1)Phonetic characteristics used are duration and energy Peak frequency of its frication noise when $/\int/$ in English and German are adopted in Korean, 2)duration is used prior to energy peak frequency, which can be used as an enhancing feature.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.3-10
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyze the acoustic characteristics of Korean alveolar sibilant sounds of children with cerebral palsy by acoustic analysis. Thirteen children with spastic cerebral palsy aging from 6 to 10 years old, were selected by an articulation test, and compared with a control group of thirty children. The meaningless monosyllable CV, disyllable VCV(/asa/) and frame sentence including target syllables CV were measured. C was from the /s, s'/, and V was from the set /a, i, u, ${\varepsilon}$, o, ɯ, ʌ/. Multi-Speech was used for data recording and analysis. As a result, the frication duration of lenis-glottalized alveolar sibilant of children with cerebral palsy was significantly shorter than that of the control group in CV, VCV and frame sentence. The vowel duration in the following lenis-glottalized alveolar sibilant of children with cerebral palsy was significantly longer than that of the control group in CV, VCV and frame sentence. The children with cerebral palsy showed frequency and intensity of friction intervals which were significantly lower than in the control group in CV, VCV and frame sentence. In the comparison of the lenis-glottalized alveolar sibilant by the children with cerebral palsy group's phonation types, the frication duration showed a significant difference between the phonation types in CV, VCV and between the phonetic contexts. The glottalized-sibilant was longer than the lenis-sibilant in all the phonetic contexts. The subsequent vowel duration showed a significant difference between the phonation types in VCV and between the phonetic contexts(p<.05). The vowel duration in the following glottalized-sibilant was longer than the vowel duration in the following lenis-sibilant in all the phonetic contexts. In the frequency there was a significant difference between the phonation types in CV, and in the intensity there was a significant difference between the phonation type in CV and VCV. The children with spastic cerebral palsy had difficulty in articulating the alveolar sibilant due to poor control ability in laryngeal, respiration and articulatory movements which require fine motor coordination. This study quantitatively analyzes the acoustic parameters of the alveolar sibilant in various phonetic contexts. Therefore, the results are expected to help provide fundamental data for an intervention of articulation treatment for children with cerebral palsy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.101-110
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• 2018

This study aimed to show that Selkirk's concept of resyllabification offers a better analysis than Kahn's ambisyllabification to account for phonetic resyllabification. We conducted two production experiments to investigate the acoustic characteristics of the English /s/ in real words and nonce words. Ten English native speakers and six English native speakers participated in experiment 1 and experiment 2, respectively. Three acoustic cues - frication duration, center of gravity and aspiration duration of word-medial /s/ - were measured. We found that these three cues of the word-medial /s/ were realized significantly differently depending on the stresshood and openness of the preceding syllable. We preferred Selkirk's resyllabification to Kahn's ambisyllabification to explain this result because the word-medial and intervocalic /s/ behaved as the coda (as opposed to the onset) when the preceding syllable was stressed and open. The result thus suggested that two conditions must be met for the resyllabification rule to apply in English: a word-medial consonant is resyllabified only when its preceding syllable is stressed and open.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.145-161
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• 1999

21 normal Korean native speakers participated as subjects to investigate the acoustic and aerodynamic study of Korean fricatives and affricates and to make good use of the results for the patients with articulation problems. Their productions of [sa], [s'a], [ca], [$c^{h}a$], [c'a], [asa], [as'a], [aca], [$ac^{h}a$], and [ac'a] were analyzed with CSL and AP II instruments. The results are as followings: (1) Fricatives showed higher frequency in minimum and maximum frequency and longer duration than affricates. (2) Fricatives showed higher peak flow rate and longer rise time than affricates. (3) When we compared the different phonemes with each other, their differences were usually statistically significant, but when we compared CV and VCV syllables, they did not show significant difference, even VCV's showed higher and longer values than CV syllables. (4) Normaly, lax fricatives and affricates showed lower frequency and higher peak flow rate, shorter frication duration, and longer rise time.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.45-55
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• 2021

This study aims to analyze the acoustic characteristics of Korean affricates produced by dysarthric speakers with cerebral palsy. Korean fricatives and affricates are the consonants that are prone to errors in dysarthric speech, but previous studies have focused only on fricatives. For this study, three affricates /tɕ, tɕ^h, ͈tɕ/ appearing at word initial and intervocalic positions produced by six mild-moderate male speakers of spastic dysarthria are selected from a QOLT database constructed in 2014. The parameters representing the acoustic characteristics of Korean affricates were extracted by using Praat: frication duration, closure duration, center of gravity, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and central moment. The results are as follows: 1) frication duration of the intervocalic affricates produced by dysarthric speakers was significantly longer than that of the non-disordered speakers; 2) the closure duration of dysarthric speakers was significantly longer; 3) in the case of the center of gravity, there was no significant difference between the two groups; 4) the skewness of the dysarthric speakers was significantly larger; and 5) the central moment of dysarthric speakers was significantly larger. This study investigated the characteristics of the affricates produced by dysarthric speakers and differences with non-disordered speakers.

• 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 /$\int$/.

• 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.