• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.158-165
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• 2019

Through the use of speech software technology, this paper examines the effects of voice interactions within the inner circle of English. The fundamental frequency (F0) was obtained by analyzing native speakers (aged 30-55) speech effects based on nationality, age, and gender. The findings within this study reveal that the Caucasian British female (age 33) and the Caucasian American male (age 55) produced the most interactive speech. The contributing factor is the students' experience with various language styles throughout their language acquisition studies. The results of this study are compatible with $Traunm{\ddot{u}}eller$ & Eriksson (1995) and previous studies which agree that continuous speech above average is paramount towards student engagement and interactions.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.37-42
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to first discriminate and assess those infants who appear healthy in appearance but who could face possible risk factors in the future and, secondly, to identify those infants who may have difficulties in their developmental stages. The subjects of this study consisted of 35 full-term infants (39-40 weeks) and 33 pre-term infants (34-35 weeks). The infants' voices were recorded for three minutes, for which EDIROL by Roland and a stand-type microphone made by SONY were used. This was done to discern the value of the Breath unit (B-unit) and the fundamental frequencies ($F_0$). It was found that there were significant differences in terms of F0 since the pre-term infants had higher F0 than the full-term infants, showing a result of 436.4 Hz for the full-term infants and 460 Hz for the pre-term infants (p<.05) There was an average rate of 4.01 for the full-term infants and 4.02 (SD=1.69) for the pre-term infants in shimmer. For NHR, it was observed .44 for the full-term infants and .50 for the pre-term infants, thus revealing no significant differences in these observations. This study shows that the crying of newborn babies is related to their physical conditions and it is a sensatory response to these conditions. Furthermore, this study could be helpful for the early detection and measurement of newborn babies who look clinically healthy but could be at risk through acoustic and physiological analyses.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.63-70
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• 2019

This study investigated individual variability of L2 learners' categorical judgments of L2 stops by exploring English learners' perceptual processing of two acoustic cues (voice onset time [VOT] and f0) and working memory capacity as sources of variation. As prior research has reported that English speakers' greater use of the redundant cue f0 was responsible for gradient processing of native stops, we examined whether the same processing characteristics would be observed in L2 learners' perception of Korean stops (/t/-/t^h/). 22 English learners of L2 Korean with a range of L2 proficiency participated in a visual analogue scaling task and demonstrated variable manners of judging the L2 Korean stops: Some were more gradient than others in performing the task. Correlation analysis revealed that L2 learners' categorical responses were modestly related to individuals' utilizations of a primary cue for the stop contrast (VOT for L1 English stops and f0 for L2 Korean stops), and were also related to better working memory capacity. Together, the current experimental evidence demonstrates adult L2 learners' top-down processing of stop consonants where linguistic and cognitive resources are devoted to a process of determining abstract phonemic identity.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.21-29
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• 2021

The present study investigated how one's cognitive resources are related to speech perception by examining Korean speakers' executive function (EF) capacity and its association with voice onset time (VOT) and f0 sensitivity in identifying Korean stop laryngeal categories (/t'/ vs. /t/ vs. /t^h/). Previously, Kong et al. (under revision) reported that Korean listeners (N = 154) in Seoul and Changwon (Gyeongsang) showed differential group patterns in dialect-specific cue weightings across educational institutions (college, high school, and elementary school). We follow up this study by further relating their EF control (working memory, mental flexibility, and inhibition) to their speech perception patterns to examine whether better cognitive ability would control attention to multiple acoustic dimensions. Partial correlation analyses revealed that better EFs in Korean listeners were associated with greater sensitivity to available acoustic details and with greater suppression of irrelevant acoustic information across subgroups, although only a small set of EF components turned out to be relevant. Unlike Seoul participants, Gyeongsang listeners' f0 use was not correlated with any EF task scores, reflecting dialect-specific cue primacy using f0 as a secondary cue. The findings confirm the link between speech perception and general cognitive ability, providing experimental evidence from Korean listeners.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2019

Korean (L1)-English (L2) bilingual adults' and children's production of Korean and English stops was examined to determine the age effects and L2 experience on the development of L1 and L2 stop contrasts. Four groups of Seoul Korean speakers (experienced and inexperienced adult and child groups) and two groups of age-matched native English speakers participated. The overall results of voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) of phrase-initial stops in Korean and word-intial stops in English showed a delay in the acquisition of L1 due to the dominant exposure to L2. Significantly longer VOT and lower F0 for aspirated stops as well as high temporal variability across repetitions of lenis stops were interpreted to indicate a strong effect of English on Korean stop contrasts for bilingual children. That is, the heavy use of VOT for Korean stop contrasts shows bilingual children's attention to the acoustic cue that are primarily employed in the dominant L2. Furthermore, inexperienced children, but not adults, were shown to create new L2 categories that are distinctive from the L1 within 6 months of L2 experience, suggesting greater independence between the two phonological systems. The implications of bilinguals' age at the time of testing to the degree and direction of L1-L2 interaction are further discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.9-18
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the mean fundamental frequency (F0) changes depending on language, task, or language proficiency for Korean-English bilinguals. A total of forty-eight Korean-English speakers (28 balanced bilinguals and 20 Korean dominant bilinguals) participated in the study. Participants were asked to read aloud two types of tasks in English and Korean. For statistical analyses, the language ${\times}$ task two-way repeated ANOVAs were conducted within the balanced bilingual group first, and then group ${\times}$ language two-way mixed ANOVAs. The results showed that the females in both bilingual groups changed their mean F0 depending on the language they used and the tasks (p<.05), whereas no significant results were found in the males in either group under any conditions. The mean fundamental frequency in the Korean reading task was significantly higher than that in the English reading task for females in both balanced and Korean dominant bilingual groups. Thus, changes in mean F0 depending on language and context may reflect gender-specific characteristics, and females seem to be more sensitive to the socio-cultural standards that are imposed on them.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

A wh-phrase positioned in an embedded clause can be interpreted as having a matrix scope if the sentence is produced with proper prosodic structures such as the wh-intonation. In a previous experiment, a sentence with a wh-phrase in an embedded clause was given to 40 speakers of Gyeongsang Korean. A script containing the sentence was provided to induce a matrix scope interpretation for the wh-phrase. These 40 utterances were prepared as stimuli for a perception test to verify whether the wh-phrases in the stimuli were perceived as having matrix scopes. Each utterance was played thrice to 24 subjects. The results showed that more than half of the 72 responses indicated a preference for an embedded scope rather than a matrix scope in 20 of the utterances. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that the matrix scope responses were best predicted by the magnitude of the pitch prominence in a prosodic word consisting of an embedded verb and a complementizer. The pitch prominence was calculated by subtracting the fundamental frequency (F0) at the right edge of the prosodic word from the peak F0 in the same prosodic word. The smaller the magnitude, the more matrix responses there were. These results suggest that the categorical perception of wh-scopes is based on the magnitude of pitch prominence.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.67-75
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• 2022

This study compared voice range profiles (VRPs) of modal and falsetto register in 53 dysphonic and 53 non-dysphonic adult women with gliding vowel /a/'. The results shows that maximum fundamental frequency (F0_MAX), maximum intensity (I_MAX), F0 range (F0_RANGE), and intensity range (I_RANGE) are lower in the dysphonic group than in the non-dysphonic group. F0_MAX and F0_RANGE are significantly higher in falsetto register than modal register in both groups. I_MAX and I_RANGE are significantly higher in falsetto register in the non-dysphonic group, but those are not different between two registers in the dysphonic group. There was no statistically significant difference in minimum F0 (F0_MIN) and minimum intensity (I_MIN) between the two groups. Modal-falsetto register transition occurred at 378.86 Hz (F4#) in the dysphonic group and 557.79 Hz (C5#) in the non-dysphonic group, which was significantly lower in the dysphonic group. It can be seen that both modal and falsetto registers in dysphonic adult women are reduced compared to non-dysphoinc adult women, indicating that the vocal folds of dysphonic adult women are not easy to vibrate in high pitches. The results of this study would be the basic data for understanding the acoustic features of voice disorders.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.55-60
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the acoustic characteristics of crying infants according to the communication intents such as hunger and pain in terms of acoustic differences in the fundamental frequency ($F_0$), jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonic ratio(NHR), habitual pitch, and intensity. The subjects were 20 healthy, normal infants, less than seven days old, from the city of Seoul and were born after 38 to 42 weeks(full term) of pregnancy. The sound of crying was recorded for three minutes. The crying due to pain was induced by means of the inborn metabolism error test, whereas the crying due to hunger was verified by means of the rooting reflex by waiting for the designated eating time. The results were as follows: (1) the fundamental frequency, noise-to-harmonic ratio(NHR), and intensity of the infants' crying due to pain was higher than that by hunger, showing a significant difference between the mean values. (2) the infants' crying due to hunger and that by pain did not have a significant difference in the mean jitter and shimmer values but both of them were largely outside of the normal threshold values(jitter by 1.04% and shimmer by 3.81%). This study was significant in the sense that it showed the acoustic characteristics of infants' crying from hunger and pain were very different from each other according to the communication intents in terms of the six acoustic parameters.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.141-144
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• 2004

Background and Objectives : To compare acoustic, aerodynamic analysis of voice and intelligibility score in patients with near-total laryngectomy and implantation of Provox prothesis. Material and Methods : In order to evaluate the voice characteristics, acoustic, aerodynamic parameter and speech intelligibility were measured in 5 patients after near-total laryngectomy, 5 patients after implantation of Provox prosthesis with total bility were measured in 5 patients after near-total laryngectomy, 5 patients after implantation of Provox prosthesis with total laryngectomy and 10 adults normal speaker. Acoustic analysis was carried out using CSL and aerodynamic analysis was carried out using Aerophon II. Speech sample was recorded and 10 listener was scored for speech intelligibility using a percentage of words correctly identified. Results. Fundamental frequency($F_0$), intensity, jitter, shimmer, maximal phonation time(MPT), subglottic air pressure were used for parameters for voice analysis. There were no significant difference between two group except on fundamental frequency and shimmer. The fundamental frequency was higher in patients with near-total laryngectomy and shimmer was higher in patients after implantation of Provox prosthesis with total laryngectomy. In addition, speech intelligibility was no significant difference between two groups. Conclusion : This results confirm that near-total laryngectomy and implantation of Provox prosthesis provides good voice rehabilitation.