• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.67-76
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• 2018

This study was performed to investigate acoustic characteristics of sustained vowels produced by Seoul Korean speakers. For this study, three hundred nine healthy adults were chosen as participants from Korean Standard Speech Database. These subjects were divided into five chronological age groups (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60-70s) and two gender groups (male and female). Fundamental frequency (f0), jitter, shimmer, and NHR (noise-to-harmonics ratio) was measured with 8 Korean vowels (/ɑ/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /e/, /o/, /u/, /ɯ/, /i/) by using Praat. The results showed that the vowel type significantly affected all acoustic parameters. Gender affected f0, jitter, and NHR significantly. The mean female speakers' f0 was greater than the males', and the mean jitter and NHR of male speakers was greater than the females'. Moreover, age affected shimmer and NHR significantly; in particular, the shimmer and NHR of elderly speakers was greater than the young speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2022

The current study examined English-speaking adult learners' production and perception of L2 Korean stops (/t/ or /t'/ or /t^h/) to investigate whether the two modalities are linked in utilizing voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) for the L2 sound distinction and how the learners' L2 proficiency mediates the relationship. Twenty-two English-speaking learners of Korean living in Seoul participated in the word-reading task of producing stop-initial words and the identification task of labelling CV stimuli synthesized to vary VOT and F0. Using logistic mixed-effects regression models, we quantified group- and individual-level weights of the VOT and F0 cues in differentiating the tense-lax, lax-aspirated, and tense-aspirated stops in Korean. The results showed that the learners as a group relied on VOT more than F0 both in production and perception (except the tense-lax pair), reflecting the dominant role of VOT in their L1 stop distinction. Individual-level analyses further revealed that the learners' L2 proficiency was related to their use of F0 in L2 production and their use of VOT in L2 perception. With this effect of L2 proficiency controlled in the partial correlation tests, we found a significant correlation between production and perception in using VOT and F0 for the lax-aspirated stop contrast. However, the same correlation was absent for the other stop pairs. We discuss a contrast-specific role of acoustic cues to address the non-uniform patterns of the production-perception link in the L2 sound learning context.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.56-60
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• 2003

The purpose of this paper is to research voice imitation. Voice imitation changes various phonetic feature. Also, in our experimental results, voice imitation has preferential prosody difference. For imitating voice, imitators change their fundamental frequency bandwidths for the most part. Imitative speakers change their high fundamental frequencies effectively while they maintain their low fundamental frequencies. Also, excellent group is distinctly superior to common group for imitating prosodic patterns. That is, the f0 bandwidth's change and the prosodic patterns are significant in imitating voice. But the low f0 is maintain by all speakers.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.771-777
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• 2008

In this paper, a frequency doubler using modified time-delay technique is proposed. A voltage controlled delay line (VCDL) in the proposed frequency doubler compensates the group delay time mismatching between input and delayed signal. With the group delay time matching and waveform shaping using the adjustable Schmitt triggers, the unwanted fundamental component($f_0$) and the higher order harmonics such as third and fourth are diminished excellently. In result, only the doubled frequency component($2f_0$) appears dominantly at the output port. The frequency doubler is designed at 1.15 GHz of $f_0$ and fabricated with TSMC $0.18\;{\mu}m$ CMOS process. The measured output power at $2f_0$ is 2.67 dBm when the input power is 0 dBm. The obtained suppression ratio of $f_0,\;3f_0$, and $4f_0$ to $2f_0$ are 43.65, 38.65 and 35.59 dB, respectively.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.31-37
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• 2021

The fundamental frequency, or f0, is an important acoustic measure in the prosody of human speech. The current study examined the f0 distribution of a corpus of spontaneous speech in order to provide normative data for Korean speakers. The corpus consists of 40 speakers talking freely about their daily activities and their personal views. Praat scripts were created to collect f0 values, and a majority of obvious errors were corrected manually by watching and listening to the f0 contour on a narrow-band spectrogram. Statistical analyses of the f0 distribution were conducted using R. The results showed that the f0 values of all the Korean speakers were right-skewed, with a pointy distribution. The speakers produced spontaneous speech within a frequency range of 274 Hz (from 65 Hz to 339 Hz), excluding statistical outliers. The mode of the total f0 data was 102 Hz. The female f0 range, with a bimodal distribution, appeared wider than that of the male group. Regression analyses based on age and f0 values yielded negligible R-squared values. As the mode of an individual speaker could be predicted from the median, either the median or mode could serve as a good reference for the individual f0 range. Finally, an analysis of the continuous f0 points of intonational phrases revealed that the initial and final segments of the phrases yielded several f0 measurement errors. From these results, we conclude that an examination of a spontaneous speech corpus can provide linguists with useful measures to generalize acoustic properties of f0 variability in a language by an individual or groups. Further studies would be desirable of the use of statistical measures to secure reliable f0 values of individual speakers.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.423-431
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• 2002

An experimental study is conducted to investigate the effect of two-frequency forcing on turbulent flow behind a backward-facing step at the Reynolds number of 27000 based on the step height. The forcing is provided from a thin slit located at the edge of the backward-facing step to increase mixing behind the backward-facing step and consequently to reduce the reattachment length. With single frequency forcing, the minimum reattachment length is obtained at the non-dimensional forcing frequency (F) of St$\_$h/ = 0.29. With two-frequency forcing, a subharmonic frequency (F/2) or biharmonic frequency (2F) is combined with the fundamental frequency (F), i.e. (F, F/2) or (F, 2F) forcing is applied. In the case of (F, F/2) forcing, the reattachment length is not much sensitive to the phase difference between F and F/2. However, the reattachment length significantly depends on the phase difference between F and 2F in the case of (F, 2F) forcing. At a certain range of the phase difference, the reattachment length becomes smaller than that of the single frequency forcing.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.458-465
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• 2010

Hundreds of Steller sea lions, Eumetopias jubatus, migrate from Sakhalin and the northern Kuril Islands to Hokkaido every winter. During this migration, they may use their roaring sounds to navigate and to maintain their groups. We recorded the roars of wild Steller sea lions that had landed on reefs on the west coast of Hokkaido, and those of captive sea lions, while making video recordings. A total of 300 roars of wild sea lions and 870 roars of captive sea lions were sampled. The fundamental frequency ($F_0$), formant frequency ($F_1$), pulse repetition rate (PRR), and duration of syllables (T) were analyzed using a sonagraph. $F_0$, $F_1$, and PRR of the roars emitted by captive sea lions increased in the order male, female, and juvenile. By contrast, the $F_1$ of wild males was lower than that of females, while the $F_0$ and PRR of wild males and females did not differ statistically. Moreover, the $F_0$ and $F_1$ frequencies for captive sea lions were higher than those of wild sea lions, while PRR in captive sea lions was lower than in wild sea lions. Since there was a linear relationship between body length and the $F_0$ and $F_1$ frequencies in captive sea lions, the body length distribution of wild sea lions could be estimated from the $F_0$ and $F_1$ frequency distribution using a regression equation. These results roughly agree with the body length distribution derived from photographic geometry. As the volume of the oral cavity and the length of the vocal cords are generally proportional to body length, sampled roars can provide useful information about a population, such as the body length distribution and sex ratio.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.231-237
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between the preferred sensation type and speech sounds, especially on $F_0$ and the speech rates. Data for the sensation types and speech sounds were collected from 36 undergraduate and graduate students (17 male, 19 female). Subjects were asked to read a given text (400 syllables), describe a drawing, and give answers to some questions. We measured speakers' $F_0$ and speech rates. The results show that type V (Visual) has the correlation with the speech rates when type D (Digital) was ruled out, and type A (Auditory) has the correlation with the speech rates when type D was included. Furthermore, the analysis of the mean values of V, A, K (Visual, Auditory, Kinethetic) indicates that type V is characterized with faster speech rates and higher $F_0$ in all parts except for interview and the same is true for that of V, A, K, D (Visual, Auditory, Kinethetic, Digital) in all parts. In conclusion, this study proved that the preferred sensation type has the correlation with $F_0$ and speech rates. Based on the results of this study, $F_0$ and speech rates can be used to analyze the sensation types for individualized education as well as consultation. In addition, this study has great significance in that it lays a foundation for the study on the correlation between a preferred sensation type and speech sounds.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.43-49
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• 2012

This paper describes the categorical effects of pitch accent contrasts in a mimicry task. It focuses, specifically, on examining how fundamental frequency (f0) variation reflects phonological contrasts from speakers of two distinct varieties of Korean (i.e., North Kyungsang and South Cholla). The results showed that, in a mimicry task using synthetic speech continua, there was a categorical effect in f0 peak timing for North Kyungsang speakers, but the timing of f0 peaks and valleys in the responses of South Cholla speakers was more variable, presenting a gradient or non-categorical effect. Evidence of categorical effects was represented as the shift of f0 peak times along an acoustic continuum for North Kyungsang speakers. The range for the shift of f0 valley times was much narrower, compared to that of f0 peak times. The degree of a shift near the middle of the continuum showed variability across individual mimicry responses. However, the categorical structure in mimicry responses regarding the clustering of f0 peak points was more significant for North Kyungsang speakers than for South Cholla speakers. Additionally, the finding of the current study implies that the location of f0 peak times depends on individuals' imitative (or cognitive) abilities.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.203-212
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• 2007

This study was to compare some acoustic characteristics of vowels produced by children with cochlear implant (CI) and the children with normal hearing. 20 subjects under ten years old were further classified into two groups (one group of CI children under four years old and the other group of CI children over four years old). For the normal hearing group, 20 subjects are participated in the experiment. Some acoustic parameters including fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequencies (F1, F2) were measured in the two groups according to the age of cochlear implant operation. For the CI group, three comer vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/) were recorded five times in isolation and analyzed with Multi-Speech (Kay Elemetrics, model 3700), and two independent t-tests on their formant data were conducted using SPSS 11.5. The result showed that the implanted group over four years had a significant difference in F0 and F1 comparing with the implanted group under four years of age as well as the normal hearing group. Those values of the children with the implanted group under four years old were closer to those of the children with the normal hearing. As to the F2, there was no significant difference among implanted groups. However, it was shown that the vowel space for the implanted groups regardless the operation age indicated much smaller than that for the normal hearing children. This acoustic results suggest that CI surgery would be much more effective if it is done under the age of four years old.