• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.33-41
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• 2013

This is a follow-up study on Han and Kang (2013) which argued that the Euclidean distances between /o/ and /u/ in Seoul Korean decreased in the first syllable position as speakers were among younger female speakers but not for male speakers, whereas in the second syllable position both gender groups showed a cross-generational decreasing effect of the Euclidean distance between /o/ and /u/. This study normalized the same data in Han and Kang (2013) which measured 12 speakers (six males and six females) for each Age group and investigated the spectral changes vowels /o/ and /u/ between age and gender, using the log-mean normalized statistical results. This study also examined overlap fraction values generated in SOAM 2D ($F1{\times}F2$) (cf. Wassink, 2006), which may also indicate the proximity of two vowels in question. The results showed that /o/ and /u/ vowels were making closer with /o/ raising for female speakers in $V_1$ and $V_2$ positions but only in the $V_2$ position for male speakers. That is, females led the upward movement of peripheral /o/ vowel, just like the raising of 'e' and 'o' in New York City (Labov, 1991). The results also showed that younger speakers used a rather narrow vowel space for the vowels. This also contributed to the proximity of the vowels /o/ and /u/, resulting in rather large overlap fraction values for younger speakers between these two vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.201-207
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• 2013

This study is a follow-up study of Han and Kang (2013) and Kang and Han (2013) which examined cross-generational changes in the Korean vowels /o/ and /u/ using acoustic analyses of the vowel formants of these two vowels, their Euclidean distances and the overlap fraction values generated in SOAM 2D (Wassink, 2006). Their results showed an on-going approximation of /o/ and /u/, more evident in female speakers and non-initial vowels. However, these studies employed non-words in a frame sentence. To see the extent to which these two vowels are merged in real words in spontaneous speech, we conducted an acoustic analysis of the formants of /o/ and /u/ produced by two age groups of female speakers while reading a letter sample. The results demonstrate that 1) the younger speakers employed mostly F2 but not F1 differences in the production of /o/ and /u/; 2) the Euclidean distance of these two vowels was shorter in non-initial than initial position, but there was no difference in Euclidean distance between the two age groups (20's vs. 40-50's); 3) overall, /o/ and /u/ were more overlapped in non-initial than initial position, but in non-initial position, younger speakers showed more congested distribution of the vowels than in older speakers.

• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.62-79
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• 1994

The quanttative and structural analysis of the binary standard mixtures of albite and quartz, and microcline and albite were carried out using the Rietveld refinement method in order to investigate the accuracy and precision of the method. The quantitative analysis using the Rietveld method results in a standard deviation of 4 wt % for the albite-quartz standard mixtures and 1 wt % for the microcline-albite standard mixtures, suggesting that its accuracy is far better than that of the conventional XRD method in which only a few selected peaks are utilized. Furthermore, the unit-cell parameters of component minerals in mixtures were also estimated accurately during the analysis. It was observed that the refined weight fractions deviate systematically from their measured values when the method is applied to the mixtures that contain minerals with different degrees of preferred orientation, such as albite-quartz mixtures. The preferred orientation parameters and R-values suggest that the systematic deviation is caused as a result of the preferred orientation effect of feldspar crystallites. It is evident that the preferred orientation corrections are of help for the accurate determination of unit-cell parameters, although they may not improve the result of quantitative analysis significantly. The refined weight fraction of the mineral with higher degree of preferred orientation in mixture is greater than the measured one. This is apparently caused by the effect of geometry of feldspar crystallites in the surface of the mounted sample. The Rietveld refinement method minimizes the problems inherent in the traditional XRD methods, such as the line overlap, primary extinction, and preferred orientation effect, by fitting every data point in a whole pattern explicitly. Furthermore, accurate unit-cell parameters as well as scale factors that can be obtained from the Rietveld refinement are used for the quqantification. The present stdudy demonstrates that the Rietveld method yields far more accurate analytical result than the conventional XRD quantitative analysis method does.