• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.11-16
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• 2016

This study explores the phoneme distribution and syllable structure of entry words in the CMU English Pronouncing Dictionary to provide phoneticians and linguists with fundamental phonetic data on English word components. Entry words in the dictionary file were syllabified using an R script and examined to obtain the following results: First, English words preferred consonants to vowels in their word components. In addition, monophthongs occurred much more frequently than diphthongs. When all consonants were categorized by manner and place, the distribution indicated the frequency order of stops, fricatives, and nasals according to manner and that of alveolars, bilabials and velars according to place. These results were comparable to the results obtained from the Buckeye Corpus (Yang, 2012). Second, from the analysis of syllable structure, two-syllable words were most favored, followed by three- and one-syllable words. Of the words in the dictionary, 92.7% consisted of one, two or three syllables. This result may be related to human memory or decoding time. Third, the English words tended to exhibit discord between onset and coda consonants and between adjacent vowels. Dissimilarity between the last onset and the first coda was found in 93.3% of the syllables, while 91.6% of the adjacent vowels were different. From the results above, the author concludes that an analysis of the phonetic symbols in a dictionary may lead to a deeper understanding of English word structures and components.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.353-358
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• 2012

This paper describes acoustic phonetic parameters for detecting nasal place in a knowledge-based speech recognition system. Initial acoustic phonetic parameters are selected by studying nasal production mechanisms which are radiation of the sound through the nasal cavity. Nasals are produced with differing articulatory configuration which can be classified by measuring acoustic phonetic parameters such as band energy ratio, band energy differences, formants and formant differences. These acoustic phonetic parameters were tested in a classification experiment among labial nasal, alveolar nasal and velar nasal. An overall classification rate of 57.5% is obtained using the proposed acoustic phonetic parameters on the TIMIT database.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.93-109
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• 2007

It is reported that the orthognathic patients suffer from not only aesthetic problems but also resonance disorder and articulation disorder because of the abnormality of the oral cavity. This study was designed to investigate the resonance of nasality and the intelligibility of speech for acoustic characteristics of patients' speech before and after orthognatic surgery. 8 orthognathic patients participated in the study. The nasality of words containing Korean consonants, Korean consonants and frequency and intensity of the fricative /s/ were measured using Nasometer and CSL (Computerized Speech Lab). Results were as follows: First, the nasality of post orthognathic surgery patients decreased in spontaneous speech. There was a significant difference in the nasality for all words between pre and post orthognatic surgery patients. Second, the nasality of each Korean consonant phoneme of post orthognathic surgery patients decreased. There was also a significant difference of the nasality for each Korean consonant phoneme between pre and post orthognatic surgery patients. Third, the decreased nasality for Korean consonant phonemes showed in plosives, affricates, fricatives, liquids, and nasals after surgery. But the significant difference showed only in plosives and fricatives. Finally, frequency and intensity for the fricative /s/ of post orthognathic patients increased.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.3-11
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• 2015

This study compared English and Korean speakers with regard to the nasalization of the English stops /b, d, g, p, t, k/before a nasal within and across a word boundary. Nine English and thirty Korean speakers participated in the experiment. We used 37 speech items with different grammatical structures. Overall the English informants rarely nasalized the stops while the Korean informants generally greatly nasalized them though widely varying from no nasalization to almost complete nasalization. In general, voiced stops were more likely to be nasalized than voiceless stops. Also, the alveolar stops /d, t/tended to be nasalized the most, the bilabial stops /b, p/ the second most, and the velar stops /g, k/ the least. Besides, the closer the grammatical relationship between neighboring words, the more likely the stop nasalization occurred. In contrast, the Korean syllabification - the addition of the vowel /i/ to the final stops - worked against the stop nasalization. On the other hand, different stress (accent) or rhythm effects of the two languages are assumed to contribute to the significantly different nasalization between English and Korean speakers. The spectrum of stop nasalization obtained from this study can be used as an index to measure how close a certain Korean speaker's stop nasalization is to English speakers'.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.19-25
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• 2020

This study examined thirty-one Korean students' pronunciation of an English passage using a speech recognition application, Speechnotes, and two Canadian raters' evaluations of their speech according to the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) band criteria to assess the possibility of using the application as a teaching aid for pronunciation education. The results showed that the grand average percentage of correctly recognized words was 77.7%. From the moderate recognition rate, the pronunciation level of the participants was construed as intermediate and higher. The recognition rate varied depending on the composition of the content words and the function words in each given sentence. Frequency counts of unrecognized words by group level and word type revealed the typical pronunciation problems of the participants, including fricatives and nasals. The IELTS bands chosen by the two native raters for the rainbow passage had a moderately high correlation with each other. A moderate correlation was reported between the number of correctly recognized content words and the raters' bands, while an almost a negligible correlation was found between the function words and the raters' bands. From these results, the author concludes that the speech recognition application could constitute a partial aid for diagnosing each individual's or the group's pronunciation problems, but further studies are still needed to match human raters.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.5-9
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• 2004

Some patients who have undergone adenotonsillectomy (AT) or tonsillectomy(T) complain of voice change. Research was designed to determine the relationship between subjective voice change and change of parameters in boice analysis and to find the degree of voice change according to age and excised tissue volume. In 34 patients who underwent AT and 17 patients who underwent T, we measured the masalance, the fundamental frequency of /a/phonation and the formants and bandwidths of /a/, /i/, /u/ phonations. These parameters were measured preoperatively and also 7 days after the operation. Excised tissue volume was measured on operation. Postoperative changes were statistically analyzed. Any subjective voice change was asked to be reported at the visit 7 days after the operation. There was analysis for the difference of above parameters between some who answered "voice change" (A group) and the others who answered "no voice change" (B group). 24 patients(71%) who underwent AT and 4 voice change. Nasals nasalance change is an important factor in subjective voice change after AT.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.227-232
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• 2014

The aim of this study was to investigate phoneme recognition in postlingually deafened adults with cochlear implantation. 21-cochlear implantee were participated. They was used cochlear implants more than 1 year. In order to measure consonant performance abilities, subjects were asked for 18 items of Korean consonants in a "aCa" condition with audition alone. The scores ranged from 11 to 86 ($60{\pm}17$)%. The consonant performance abilities correlated with implanted hearing threshold level, significantly (p<.046). This results suggest that consonant performance abilities of postlingual deafened adults cochlear implantee be important for implanted hearing. They had higher correct rates for fricatives and affricatives with distinctive frequency bands than for plosives, liquids & nasals with the same or adjacent frequency bands. All subjects had confusion patterns among the consonants of the same manner of articulation. The reason of consonant confusions was caused that they couldn't recognize different intensities and durations of consonants with the same or adjacent frequency bands.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.39
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• pp.381-406
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• 2015

Russian nasal consonants / m /, / n / have a feature value not only [+consonant] in common with obstruents, but also [+sonorant] in common with vowels. Nasal / m /(bi-labial) and / n /(dental) have the same place of articulation but different manner of articulation. The feature value of / m / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, -cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, +voic], and that of / n / is [+cons, +son, +nas, +ant, +cor, -high, -low, -back, -cont, -del, rel, -strid, + voic]. There is a difference in feature [cor] value of / m / and / n /. In this study it is confirmed that it is a fact that the Russian nasal consonants behave differently from the other consonants in each phonological phenomenon due to their phonological characteristics. The preceding voiced obstruent is changed to an unvoiced one in a process where the last voiceless obstruent in the consonant cluster ' voiced obstruent + nasal /m/ + voiceless obstruent' skips the nasal consonant and spreads its feature value to the preceding voiced obstruent transparently because of the feature [+sonorant] of the nasal consonant. The coronal nasal /n/ participates in a palatalization with the following palatal actively and palatalize preceding plain consonants passively because of markedness hierarchy such as 'Velar > Labial > Coronal'. But the labial nasal /m/ is palatalized with the following velar palatal actively and participates in a palatalization with the following coronal palatal passively. This result helps us confirm the phonological difference of /m/ and /n/ in a palatalization. When the a final consonant is nasal, the unvoicing phenomenon of a final consonant doesn't occur. In such a case as cluster 'obstruent + nasal' the feature value [voiced] of the preceding obstruent doesn't change, but the following nasal can assimilate into the preceding obstruent. When continuing the same nasals / -nn- / in a consonant cluster, the feature value [+cont] of a weak position leads the preceding nasal / n / to be changed into [-cont] / l /. Through the analysis of the frequency of occurrences of consonants in syllabic onsets and codas that should observe the 'Sonority Sequence Principle', the sonority hierarchy of nasal consonants has been confirmed. In a diachronic perspective following nasal / m /, / n / there is a loss of the preceding labial stop and dental stop. But in clusters with the velar stop+nasal, the two-component cluster has been kept phonetically intact.