• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

This study investigates perceptual confusions of English fricatives among 121 Korean elementary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with shorter periods of learning English. The objective is to examine how they perceive English fricative consonants and to provide educational guidelines. Two sets of English fricative identification tasks-voiceless fricatives and voiced fricatives-were administered to participants in a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) setting. Their phonemic awareness of the fricatives was visualized in perceptual confusion maps via multidimensional scaling analysis. The findings are explored in terms of the impacts of Korean EFL learners' L1 linguistic aspects and a comparison with L1 learners. Learners' phonemic awareness patterns are then compared with their relative importance in speech intelligibility based on a functional load hierarchy. The results indicated that Korean elementary EFL learners recognized English fricatives in a manner largely akin to L1 learners, suggesting their ongoing acquisition progress. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the young EFL learners possess sufficient phonemic awareness for most high functional load segments but encounter some difficulties with one high and one low functional pair. The findings of this study offer suggestions for diagnosing language learners' phonemic awareness abilities, thereby aiding in the development of practical guidelines for language instructional design and helping educators make informed decisions regarding teaching priority in L2 classes.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.223-235
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• 2002

Unlike Seoul dialect, in the Busan dialect, /ㅅ/ and /ㅆ/ are phonemically non-distinctive and realization of tensing is non-productive, on the other hand, that of voicing is productive. In order to discover causes of such characteristics in Busan dialect, this paper firstly compared acoustic characteristics of Seoul dialect with those of Busan dialect on fricative /ㅅ/ and /ㅆ/. The result showed that Busan dialect has much shorter length of friction and aspiration intervals of word initial and word-medial position than Seoul dialect. I expect that these results are important keys to discover causes of the following characteristics of Busan-dialect - non-distinction, non-productivity of tensing, and productivity of voicing - on Fricative /ㅅ/ and /ㅆ/.

• 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.

• MALSORI
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• no.15_18
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• pp.71-80
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• 1989

It is an honour to be speaking on phonetics at the invitation of the Phonetic Society of Korea. Through the Korean Hangout script, invented in the fifteenth century at the instigation of the great King Sejong, and the work Hunminjeongeum which describes it, this country has an important place in the world history of phonetics. Phonetics is the description and analysis of pronunciation. Spoken language can be investigated at three points: in the speaker (articulatory phonetics), in the hearer (auditory phonetics), and in the physical speech signal (acoustic phonetics)... Beginners in English who are Korean mother tongue have to learn to make the sound 'f' as in "coffee", which is a voiceless labio-dental fricative, lip on upper teeth. They also have to learn to make [\theta]sound in "think", a voiceless dental fricative.

• MALSORI
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• no.48
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• pp.1-17
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• 2003

Among the types of dysarthria, spastic and flaccid types are the most prominent manifestations. The objectives of the present research are (1) to discover the phonetic contrasts that differentiate spastic dysarthria from flaccid dysarthria, (2) to analyze the degrees of predictability of each phonetic contrast for intelligibility in spastic and flaccid dysarthrias and to compare them. The 'phonemic contrast word intelligibility pairs' for dysarthric speakers were tested and proved to be useful for clinical assessment of and research on dysarthria. In the group of spastic type, it showed that initial fricative vs. affricate and front vs. back vowel contrasts are transmitted relatively less effectively than flaccid type. In the group of flaccid type, initial glottal vs null contrast is transmitted less effectively than spastic type. The overall intelligibility of spastic dysarthria was predicted by multiple regression analysis with 88% accuracy by three phonetic contrasts(initial fricative vs. affricate; front vs. back vowels; initial consonant correlates). And the intelligibility of flaccid dysarthria was predicted by two phonetic contrasts(initial nasal vs. stop, front vs. back vowels) with 60% accuracy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.51-57
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• 2017

The current study compared the acoustic features of the two phonation types for Korean fricatives (plain: /s/, fortis : /s'/) and the three types for affricates (aspirated : /$ts^h$/, lenis : /ts/, and fortis : /ts'/) in order to determine the phonetic status of the plain fricative /s/. Considering the different manners of articulation between fricatives and affricates, we examined four acoustic parameters (rise time, intensity, fundamental frequency, and Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) values) of the 20 Korean native speakers' productions. The results showed that unlike Korean affricates, F0 cannot distinguish two fricatives, and voice quality (CPP values) only distinguishes phonation types of Korean fricatives and affricates by grouping non-fortis sibilants together. Therefore, based on the similarity found in /$ts^h$/ and /ts/ and the idiosyncratic pattern found in /s/, this research concludes that non-fortis fricative /s/ cannot be categorized as belonging to either phonation type.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.1299-1304
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• 2000

In a speed coding system using excitation source of voiced and unvoiced, it would be involved a distortion of speech quality in case coexist with a voiced and an unvoiced consonants in a frame. So, I propose TSIUVC(Transition Segment Including UnVoiced Consonant) searching, extraction ad approximation-synthesis method in order to uncoexistent with a voiced and unvoiced consonants in a frame. This method based on a zerocrossing rate and pitch detector using FIR-STREAK Digital Filter. As a result, the extraction rates of TSIUVC are 84.8% (plosive), 94.9%(fricative), 92.3%(affricative) in female voice, and 88%(plosive), 94.9%(fricative), 92.3%(affricative) in male voice respectively, Also, I obain a high quality approximation-synthesis waveforms within TSIUVC by using frequency information of 0.547kHz below and 2.813kHz above. This method has the capability of being applied to speech coding of low bit rate, speech analysis and speech synthesis.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.06c
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• pp.371-374
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• 1998

본 연구의 목적은 한국어 마찰음과 파찰음을 변별적으로 지각하게 해 주는 결정적 단서를 찾아보려는 것이다. 마찰음의 마찰 소음 구간 길이를 감소시키고, 파찰음의 마찰 소음 구간 길이를 증가시키는 두 가지 실험을 통해 소음 구간의 길이 변화가 지각에 미치는 영향을 살펴 보았다. 실험 결과, 소음 구간 길이의 변화가 주된 지각적 단서임을 확인하였다.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.43-50
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• 2017

These days voice models of speech recognition software are sophisticated enough to process the natural speech of people without any previous training. However, not much research has reported on the use of speech recognition tools in the field of pronunciation education. This paper examined Google speech recognition of a short English paragraph produced by Korean college students in clear and casual speech styles in order to diagnose and resolve students' pronunciation problems. Thirty three Korean college students participated in the recording of the English paragraph. The Google soundwriter was employed to collect data on the word recognition rates of the paragraph. Results showed that the total word recognition rate was 73% with a standard deviation of 11.5%. The word recognition rate of clear speech was around 77.3% while that of casual speech amounted to 68.7%. The reasons for the low recognition rate of casual speech were attributed to both individual pronunciation errors and the software itself as shown in its fricative recognition. Various distributions of unrecognized words were observed depending on each participant and proficiency groups. From the results, the author concludes that the speech recognition software is useful to diagnose each individual or group's pronunciation problems. Further studies on progressive improvements of learners' erroneous pronunciations would be desirable.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.57-66
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• 2006

In this paper, I propose a new method of Multi-Pulse Speech Coding(FBD-MPC: Frequency Band Division MPC) by using TSIUVC(Transition Segment Including UnVoiced Consonant) searching, extraction and approximation-synthesis method in a frequency domain. As, a result. the extraction rates of TSIUVC are 84.8%(plosive), 94.9%(fricative) and 92.3%(affricative) in female voice, 88%(plosive), 94.9%(fricative) and 92.3%(affricative) in male voice respectively. Also, I obtain a high quality approximation-synthesis waveforms within TSIUVC by using frequency information of 0.547kHz below and 2.813kHz above. I evaluate MPC by using switching information of voiced/unvoiced and FBD-MPC by using switching information of voiced/Silence/TSIUVC. As, a result, I knew that synthesis speech of FBD-MPC was better in speech quality than synthesis speech of the MPC.