• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.69-76
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• 2018

The elderly are at increased risk of developing dysphagia due to aging and illnesses. The aim of the current study was to analyze, via an acoustic study, the change in the voice quality of normal elderly people after a 3oz water-swallow test. Subjects included a group of 60 normal elderly people (age: $mean{\pm}SD=76.9{\pm}6.66$) and 60 healthy young adults (age: $mean{\pm}SD=25.1{\pm}2.36$). Every participant produced a five-second /a/ phonation pre- and post-swallowing, and the fractioned two-second sections were analyzed using the MDVP (multi dimensional voice program) analysis. The elderly group demonstrated a post-swallowing increase in the following related acoustic parameters: fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency variation, amplitude-variation, and noise in both two-second sections. However, the younger group showed an increase only in frequency related acoustic parameters (i.e., STD ) in the first two-second section. The significant changes in values in the post-swallowing parameters might indicate temporary irregularities in pitch and amplitude along with higher amounts of noise in the voice. The results could be attributed to water residues in the vocal fold and vocal tract, as well as a deterioration of the motor and sensory functions caused by anatomical and physiological changes that result from aging.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.19-28
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to increase the current understanding of the acoustic characteristics of voices with advancing age. The relationship between age-related changes in body physiology and certain acoustic characteristics of voice was studied in a sample of 80 men representing four chronological age groupings (20-29, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79) who were all of good physical condition. Each subject was asked to phonate the vowel /a/, /i/, and /u/ for as long as possible at comfortable frequency and intensity level and read the sentence. A promising voice analysis program (Multi-Dimensional Voice $Program^{TM}$) was used to measure the fundamental frequency ($f_0$), jitter, shimmer, $f_0$ variation, peak-amplitude variation, smoothed pitch perturbation quotient, smoothed amplitude perturbation quotient, soft phonation index, $f_0$-tremor intensity index, amplitude tremor intensity index, and noise-to-harmonics ratio from the samples.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.310-314
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• 2002

The exact pitch (fundamental frequency) extraction is important in speech signal processing like speech recognition, speech analysis and synthesis. However the exact pitch extraction from speech signal is very difficult due to the effect of formant and transitional amplitude. So in this paper, the pitch is detected after the elimination of formant ingredients by flattening the spectrum in frequency region. The effect of the transition and change of phoneme is low in frequency region. In this paper we proposed the new flattening method of log spectrum and the performance was compared with LPC method and Cepstrum method. The results show the proposed method is better than conventional method.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.3558-3562
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• 2010

The exact fundamental frequency (pitch) extraction is important in speech signal processing. However the exact pitch extraction from speech signal is very difficult due to the effect of formant and transitional amplitude. So in this paper, the pitch is detected after flattening the spectrum in frequency region by proposed algorithm for minimized harmonics variance value. Experimental result showed the proposed method appeared an outstanding performance in compared with LPC, Cepstrum. Also, the results show the proposed method is better than conventional method.

• 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.1 no.2
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• pp.31-36
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• 2009

This study attempted to examine the effects of a portable voice feedback device on the hyperfunctional voice behaviors of children with vocal nodules when they wore the device in their daily lives. The device could set fundamental frequency and intensity at optimal levels for the subjects, It produces an audible alarm for inappropriate hyperfunctional voices beyond the preset levels, In addition, the frequency of hyperfunctional voice behaviors was recorded by the device, therefore the users were able to chart their number of hyperfunctional voice behaviors per day, According to results acquired after having subjects wear the device for 12 weeks, the subjects' frequency of hyperfunctional voice behaviors decreased significantly (p < .01). Especially from the first to fourth week, the frequency of their hyperfunctional voice behaviors declined significantly.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1992.06a
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• pp.43-48
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• 1992

In the area of speech vocoder systems, the MBE vocoder allows the high quality and low bit rate. In the MBE parameters detection, the dicision methods of V/UV region proposed until now are dependent highly to the other parameters, fundamental frequency and formant information. In this paper, thus, we propose a new V/UV detection method that uses a zero-crossing rate of flatten harmonices spectrum. This method can reduce the influences of the other parameters for the V/UV regions detection.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.59-68
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• 2002

This paper analyzes the prosodic features distinctively associated with Korean topic constructions (marked by nun or its variant un) and subject constructions (marked by ka or its variant i) as a way of explicating the role that prosody plays in differentially constituting their discourse messages. Using both spoken data elicited in controlled settings and spontaneous conversational data, an attempt is made to identify differentiating prosodic features and intonation contours associated with distinct meanings and functions of nun- and ka-constructions evoked in a variety of discourse contexts.

• 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.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.3E
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• pp.30-36
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• 1999

In this paper, we develop a hybrid speaker recognition system [1] enhanced by pre-recognizer and post-recognizer. The pre-recognizer consists of general speech recognition systems and the post-recognizer is a pitch detection system using adapted continuous wavelet transform (ACWT) to improve the performance of the hybrid speaker recognition system. Two schemes to design ACWT is considered. One is the scheme to search basis library covering the whole band of speech fundamental frequency (speech pitch). The other is the scheme to determine which one is the best basis. Information cost functional is used for the criterion for the latter. ACWT is robust enough to classify the pitch of speech very well, even though the speech signal is badly damaged by environmental noises.