• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.229-241
• /
• 2001

Using eighteen texts from various genera of present-day Japanese, I collected phonologically reduced forms frequently observed in conversational Japanese, and classified them in search of a unified. explanation of phonological phenomena. I found 7,516 cases of reduced forms which I divided into 43 categories according to the types of phonological changes they have undergone. The general tendencies are that deletion and fusion of a phoneme or an entire syllable takes place frequently, resulting in the decrease in the number of syllables. From a morphosyntactic point of view, phonological reduction often occurs at the NP and VP morpheme boundaries. The following findings are drawn from phonetical observations of reduction. (1) Vowels are more easily deleted than consonants. (2) Bilabials ([m], [b], and [w]) are the most likely candidates for deletion. (3) In a concatenation of vowels, closed vowels are absorbed into open vowels, or two adjacent vowels come to create another vowel, in which case reconstruction of the original sequence is not always predictable. (4) Alveolars are palatalized under the influence of front vowels. (5) Regressive assimilation takes place in a syllable starting with [r], changing the entire syllable into a phonological choked sound or a syllabic nasal, depending on the voicing of the following phoneme.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.60
• /
• pp.67-84
• /
• 2006

The purpose of this study is to find some acoustic parameters on frequency domain to distinguish the Korean nasals, $/m,\;n,\;{\eta}/$ from each other. The new parameters are devised on the basis of LTAS (Long Term Average Spectrum). The maximum peak amplitude and the relevant formant frequency are measured in low and high frequency range, respectively. The frequency of spectral valley and its energy level are also obtained in the specific frequency range of the spectrum. Spectral slope, total energy value in specific frequency range, statistical distribution of spectral energy like centroid, skewness, and kurtosis are suggested as new parameters as well. The parameters that show statistically significant differences across nasals are summerized as follows. 1) in syllable initial positions: the total energy value from 1,500 to 2,200 Hz(zeroENG); 2) in syllable final positions: the peak amplitude of the first formant(peak1_a), the formant frequency with maximum peak amplitude from 4,000 to 8,000 Hz(peak2_f), the maximum peak amplitude of the formant frequency from 4,000 to 8,000 Hz(peak2_a), and the total energy value from 1,500 to 2,200 Hz(zeroENG).

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.291-305
• /
• 2020

Purpose : The duration of speech segments reflects children's speech motor development. The purpose of this study was to determine whether segmental sound and word duration varies by age among preschool children. Methods : A total of 60 children aged 4~5 years participated in this study. Participants took the picture-naming test to produce single-word speech data. The duration of the consonant at the initial position of the word and the final position of the word, the voice onset time of plosive, the duration of the vowel following the initial consonant, and the duration of the word were measured. Results : As age increased, the duration of the initial consonant, the duration of the word, and the voice onset time decreased significantly. The main effects of age, manner of articulation, and place of articulation on the duration of the initial consonant were significant. The duration of consonants in the nasal sound and plosives and the duration of bilabial and alveolar sound differed significantly between groups. The main effects of age and vocal type on voice onset time were significant. The main effect of age on the duration of the consonant in the final position of word and on the duration of the vowel were not statistically significant. Conclusion : The results of this study showed that the duration of segmental sound and the word were associated with speech development between 4 and 5 years old. Accordingly, duration of the segmental sound and the word may serve as an acoustic cue as they reflect speech development and speech motor control maturity.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.19-27
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this study was to obtain normative nasalance scores for adult subjects speaking the Korean language and to determine whether significantly different scores exist for female and male speakers. Mean nasalance scores were obtained for normal speaking Korean adults while they are reading vowels, consonants, no nasal sentence, mild nasal sentence, and high nasal sentence. Thirty adults who had lived in Seoul area with normal articulation, resonance, and voice were included. Among the subjects 15 were male aged 24-38 years and 15 were female aged 19-33. Nasometer data were collected and analyzed using the Kay Nasometer 6400. Nasalance scores were evaluated to investigate the effect of gender by using statistical tests. Nasalance data showed that nasalance values varied accroding to speech stimuli, and there was no significant difference in nasalance scores between male and female speakers in most of the language samples.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.95-111
• /
• 1997

The human speech organ consists of respiration system (lung, larynx), phonation system (vocal cord), articulation system (esophagus, pharynx, uvula, teeth, gingiva, palate, tongue, lip) and resonating system(oral cavity, nasal cavity, paranasal sinus). Because teeth are components of the articulation system, it has been reported that the persons with abnormally positioned teeth generally have abnormal occlusion and pronunciation. In this study, using /ㅅ(s)/, the most commonly mispronunced consonant in children with malocclusion, and the seven single vowels, /사(sa), 서($s\delta$), 소(so), 수(su), 스($s\omega$), 시(si), 세(se)/ and / ㅏ(a), ㅓ($\delta$), ㅗ(o), ㅜ(u), ㅡ($\omega$), 1(i), ㅔ(e)/ were recorded and analyzed using speech analysis program on computer by measuring formants and compared them for investigating the differences in pronunciation in children with Angle's class I occlusions and those with Angle's class II div.1 malocclusion. The result were as follows: 1. In the Angle's Class II div.1 group, there were no significant differences in F1 of all recorded sounds as compared with Angle's Class I group(p>0.05). 2. In the consonants, there were significant differences in F2 of /스($s\omega$)/ and F2/F1 ratio of /사(sa), 서($s\delta$), 시(si)/ between the two group(p<0.05). 3. In the vowels, there were significant differences F2/F1 ratio of /ㅓ($\delta$)/(p<0.05) and no significant differences in F2/F1 ratio between two group(p>0.05). 4. In the consonants, there were significant differences in F2 and F2/F1 ratio when succeeding vowels were high or low, and F2/F1 ratio when front in accordance with tongue position (p<0.05). 5. In the vowels, there were no significant differences in formant in accordance with tongue position(p>0.05)

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.33-48
• /
• 2005

Differential diagnosis of articulation and resonance problems in the cleft lip and palate speech is required for evaluating various factors contribute to speech problems such as VPI, dental occlusion, palatal fistulae, learning. However, validity of speech stimuli is current issue to evaluate accurately each problem in cleft speech. This study was conducted to investigate speech stimuli using in the clinical setting and review the literatures and articles published 1990 to 2005 for helping develop standardized speech samples. The results were recommendation to evaluate properly velopharyngeal function when conducting a diagnostic evaluation as follows : 1) In identification hypernasality, the speech stimuli should be included low pressure consonants to eliminate effects of nasal emission, compensatory articulation. 2) Speech stimuli should be consist of visual, front sounds to eliminate compensatory articulation and to stimulate easily. 3) Regarding early diagnosis and treatment, speech stimuli need to develop for infants and preschooler. 4) Stimulus length on nasalance scores should be at least 6 syllables. 5) In phonetic context on nasalance scores, /i/ vowel should be take into consideration excluding paragraph. 6) Connected speech stimuli should be developed for evaluating intelligibility and VP function.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
• /
• v.31 no.4
• /
• pp.721-728
• /
• 2004

Velopharyngeal closure is a sphincter mechanism between the activities of the soft palate, lateral pharyngeal wall and the posterior pharyngeal wall, which divides the oral and nasal cavity. It participates in physiological activities such as swallowing, breathing and speech. It is called a velopharyngeal dysfunction when this mechanism malfunctions. The causes of this dysfunction are defects in (1) length, function, posture of the soft palate, (2) depth and width of the nasopharynx and (3) activity of the posterior and lateral pharyngeal wall. The purposes of this study are to analyze the nasopharynx of cleft palate patients using cephalometry and to evaluate the degree of hypernasality using nasometry to find its relationship with velopharyngeal dysfunction. The following results were obtained : 1. In cephalometry, there were significant differences in soft palate length, soft palate thickness, nasopharyngeal depth, nasopharyngeal area, and adequate ratio between two groups. 2. In nasometry, there were significant differences between two groups in vowel /o/ and sentences including oral consonants. 3. In cleft palate patients, though no general correlation was found between Anatomic VPI and nasalance scores, vowel /i/ and sentences including oral consonants were slightly correlated. In conclusion, cephalometry and nasometer results were significantly different between the two groups. Though in the cleft palate group, Anatomic VPI and nasalance scores, which are indices for velopharyngeal closure, excluding the vowel /i/ and sentences including oral consonants show generally no significance.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 1996.10a
• /
• pp.246-246
• /
• 1996

Purpose: Some of the properties of the prosodic phrasing and some acoustic and phonological effects of contrastive focus on the tonal pattern of Seoul Korean is explored based on a brief experiment of analyzing the fundamental frequency(=FO) contour of the speech of the author. Data Base and Analysis Procedures: The examples were chosen to contain mostly nasal and liquid consonants, since it is difficult to track down the formants in stops and fricatives during their corresponding consonantal intervals and stops may yield an effect of unwanted increase in the FO value due to their burst into the following vowel. All examples were recorded three times and the spectrum of the most stable repetition was generated, from which the FO contour of each sentence was obtained, the peaks with a value higher than 250Hz being interpreted as a high tone (=H). The result is then discussed within the prosodic hierarchy framework of Selkirk (1986) and compared with the tonal pattern of the Northern Kyungsang dialect of Korean reported in Kenstowicz & Sohn (1996). Prosodic Phrasing: In N.K. Korean, H never appears both on the object and on the verb in a neutral sentence, which indicates the object and the verb form a single Phonological Phrase ($={\phi}$), given that there is only one pitch peak for each $={\phi}$. However, Seoul Korean shows that both the object and the verb have H of their own, indicating that they are not contained in one $={\phi}$. This violates the Optimality constraint of Wrap-XP (=Enclose a lexical head and its arguments in one $={\phi}$), while N.K. Korean obeys the constraint by grouping a VP in a single $={\phi}$. This asymmetry can be resolved through a constraint that favors the separate grouping of each lexical category and is ranked higher than Wrap-XP in Seoul Korean but vice versa in N.K. Korean; $Align-x^{lex}$ (=Align the left edge of a lexical category with that of a $={\phi}$). (1) nuna-ka manll-ll mEk-nIn-ta ('sister-NOM garlic-ACC eat-PRES-DECL') a. (LLH) (LLH) (HLL) ----Seoul Korean b. (LLH) (LLL LHL) ----N.K. Korean Focus and Phrasing: Two major effects of contrastive focus on phonological phrasing are found in Seoul Korean: (a) the peak of an Intonatioanl Phrase (=IP) falls on the focused element; and (b) focus has the effect of deleting all the following prosodic structures. A focused element always attracts the peak of IP, showing an increase of approximately 30Hz compared with the peak of a non-focused IP. When a subject is focused, no H appears either on the object or on the verb and a focused object is never followed by a verb with H. The post-focus deletion of prosodic boundaries is forced through the interaction of StressFocus (=If F is a focus and DF is its semantic domain, the highest prominence in DF will be within F) and Rightmost-IP (=The peak of an IP projects from the rightmost $={\phi}$). First Stress-F requires the peak of IP to fall on the focused element. Then to avoid violating Rightmost-IP, all the boundaries after the focused element should delete, minimizing the number of $={\phi}$'s intervening from the right edge of IP. (2) (omitted) Conclusion: In general, there seems to be no direct alignment constraints between the syntactically focused element and the edge of $={\phi}$ determined in phonology; all the alignment effects come from a single requirement that the peak of IP projects from the rightmost $={\phi}$ as proposed in Truckenbrodt (1995).