• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.23-29
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• 2016

The present study tested if individual speakers showing great sound change in segments (i.e., vowels and fricatives) also had innovative changing patterns in suprasegmental properties (i.e., lexical pitch accents) in Kyungsang Korean. The acoustic analysis at a group level first confirmed the presence of group level differences in distinguishing /ɨ-ʌ/ and /s-s'/ both of which had different phonemic distinction from Seoul Korean. Younger speakers had more innovative segmental change than older speakers, and even within the younger generation, female speakers produced more innovative phonetic variants than male speakers. Regarding the individual observation within the younger group, the younger speakers with large acoustic distinction in vowels and fricatives also showed acoustically less distinct accent patterns, indicating the innovative sound change pattern consistent across segment and suprasegmental properties. The group and individual observations suggested that linguistic innovators introduced new phonetic variants with consistent degree of changing pattern between segment and suprasegmental properties.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.19-29
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• 2018

The present study investigated whether there are differences in articulation rate by gender, age, and individual speakers in a spontaneous speech corpus produced by 40 Seoul Korean speakers. This study measured their articulation rates using a second-per-syllable metric and a syllable-per-second metric. The findings are as follows. First, in spontaneous Seoul Korean speech, there was a gender difference in articulation rates only in age group 10-19, among whom men tended to speak faster than women. Second, individual speakers showed variability in their rates of articulation. The tendency for some speakers to speak faster than others was variable. Finally, there were metric differences in articulation rate. That is, regarding the coefficients of variation, the values of the second-per-syllable metric were much higher than those for the syllable-per-second metric. The articulation rate for the syllable-per-second metric tended to be more distinct among individual speakers. The present results imply that data gathered in a corpus of Seoul Korean spontaneous speech may reflect speaker-specific differences in articulatory movements.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.177-189
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• 2000

This paper investigates how individual speakers' speech can be distinguished using acoustic parameters such as amplitude, pitch, and formant frequencies. Word samples from fifteen male speakers in their 20's in three different regions were recorded in two different modes (i.e., casual and clear speech) in quiet settings, and were analyzed with a Praat macro scrip. In order to determine individual speakers' acoustical values, the total duration of voicing segments was measured in five different timepoints. Results showed that a high correlation coefficient between $F_1\;and\;F_2$ in formant frequency was found among the speakers although there was little correlation coefficient between amplitude and pitch. Statistical grouping shows that individual speakers' voices were not reflected in regional dialects for both casual and clear speech. In addition, the difference of maximum and minimum in amplitude was about 10 dB which indicates a perceptually audible degree. These acoustic data can give some meaningful guidelines for implementing algorithms of speaker identification and speaker verification.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.125-131
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• 2015

The current study explores whether speaker variability in the fronted articulations of Seoul Korean affricates can be explained by cognitive differences measured by individual autistic traits. The goal was to explore Yu's (2010; 2013) proposal that individual differences in cognitive style can be an important factor in speakers' use of sound variants. The spectral peak frequencies (SPF) of affricates relative to those of fricatives, reported in Kong et al. (2014), were used to acoustically represent the relative degree of anterior place of constriction. When these individual SPFs were related to the scores of Autistic-Spectrum Quotients (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), a correlation was found for the male speakers, but not for the female speakers, such that speakers of more anterior affricate productions scored low in AQs. Discussion is made with respect to how these findings are in line with Yu's proposal.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2017

The current study examined speech rate and its variance in spontaneous Seoul Korean speech. The current study focused on factors affecting the variance of speech rate such as utterance length, individual speakers, and gender. The results revealed that, first, utterance length has a significant influence on speech rate. Longer utterances were spoken at a faster rate. Second, regarding the effect of utterance length, individual speakers differed significantly in their speaking rate. The variation between speakers and within speakers tended to increase as utterance length increases. Third, there were speakers' gender differences, indicating that males produced considerably faster speaking rate than females. Additionally, the current study implied that non-linguistic factors in spontaneous speech can affect the variance of speakers' speaking rate.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.9-16
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• 2020

The present study examines the degree of suffix reduction that occurs when the Korean suffix [-nɨn] was attached to the root in spontaneous Seoul Korean speech. Specifically, it focuses on the degrees of reduction produced by individual speakers. The degree of reduction was assessed as the duration of the suffix [-nɨn] to clarify the continuum between the full and reduced forms. The results revealed that, first, the reduced forms of the suffix [-nɨn] were significantly distinguished from the full forms in the suffixation processes. Second, regarding parts of speech, the differences among individual speakers on the degrees of reduction were clearer when the suffix [-nɨn] was attached to verbs, rather than nouns and pronouns. Finally, the length of a root played a critical role in determining the degree of reduction of the suffix [-nɨn]. The degrees of reduction for individual speakers significantly differed when the suffix [-nɨn] was attached to two-syllable roots than three- and four-syllable roots. In conclusion, individual differences in the degrees of reduction were likely to occur when the roots are verbs and when two-syllable roots.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2018

Categorical production in language processing helps speakers to produce phonemic contrasts. This categorization and production is utilized for the production-based and imitation-based approach in the present study. Contrastive signals in speakers' speech reflect the shapes of boundaries with categorical characteristics. Signals that provide information about lexical pitch accent contrasts can introduce categorical distinctions for productive and cognitive selection. This experiment was conducted with nine North Kyungsang speakers for a production task and nine North Kyungsang speakers for an imitation task. The first finding of the present study is the rigidity of categorical production, which controls the boundaries of lexical pitch accent contrasts. The categorization of North Kyungsang speakers' production allows them to classify minimal pitch accent contrasts. The categorical production in imitation appeared in two clusters, representing two meaningful contrasts. The second finding of the present study is that there are individual differences in speakers' production and imitation responses. The distinctive performances of individual speakers showed a variety of curves. For the HL-LH patterns, the categorical production tended to be highly distinctive as compared to the other pitch accent patterns (HH-HL and HH-LH), showing that there are more continuous curves than categorical curves. Finally, the present study shows that, for North Kyungsang speakers, imitative production is the core type of categorical production for determining the existence of the lexical pitch accent system. However, several questions remain for defining that categorical production, which leads to ideas for future research.

• 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.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.97-112
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• 2000

This study examines how both English native speakers and Korean speakers realize the intonational tunes of English sentences when a sentence has two different meanings, through comparison of the utterances of the two groups of speakers. The results indicate that the English native speakers realize the difference in the meanings of given sentences in terms of differences in the boundary tones, as predicted in Pierrehumbert(1980) and Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg(l990), according to whom intonation is composed of a series of pitch accents, phrase tones, and boundary tones, and the meaning of a given sentence is delivered by the composition of the individual meanings of each component. The Korean speakers, however, fail to realize the difference in meaning with its boundary tones. Rather, they realize it by the number or positions of pitch accents and paralinguistic cues such as emotions and gestures. The Korean speakers, unlike the Americans, emphasize subject in sentences.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.53-65
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• 2014

The current research examines whether pitch contour shapes in North Kyungsang pitch accent contrasts provide a phonetic dimension for phonological discreteness in a mimicry task. Two pitch accent continua resynthesized were created for HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. To confirm a phonetic dimension for accounting for pitch accent categories in North Kyungsang Korean, the mimicries of speakers of two dialects (i.e., North Kyungsang & South Cholla) were compared. One of the findings showed that, for North Kyungsang speakers, the range of mean f0 peak times was a phonetic dimension undergoing a continuous shift within a stimulus continuum for both HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. On the other hand, for South Cholla speakers, there were no apparent shifts around categorical boundaries for either HH vs. HL or HH vs. LH. Regarding individual mimicries on f0 peak timing, there are many variations. For HH vs. LH, three North Kyungsang speakers showed a discrete pattern reflecting a shift in phonological categories, but for HH vs. HL, there was no such distinction showing a categorical shift, though there were statistically significant differences for two speakers. Interestingly, one of the North Kyungsang speakers showed a continuous phonetic dimension for both HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. Lastly, the f0 valley timing did not exhibit a discrete or gradient phonetic dimension for speakers of either dialect. On the basis of these results, what is interesting is that the tonal target such as high tone in North Kyungsang pitch accent categories within the autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory may be realized within individual cognitive systems for representing the interaction of perception and production.