• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.1E
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• pp.28-33
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• 2005

This study was designed to suggest an assessment tool for analyzing the characteristics of Korean phonetic contrast intelligibility among dysarthric individuals. The intelligibility deficit factors of phonetic contrast in Korean dysarthric patients were analyzed through stepwise regression analysis. The 19 acoustic-phonetic contrasts proposed by Kent et al. (1999) have been claimed to be useful for clinical assessment and research on dysarthria. However, the test cannot be directly applied to Korean patients due to linguistic differences between English and Korean. Thus, it is necessary to devise a Korean word intelligibility test that reflects the distinct characteristics of the Korean language. To identify the speech error characteristics of a Korean dysarthric group, a Korean word list was audio-recorded by 3 spastic, 4 flaccid, and 5 mixed type of dysarthric patients. The word list consisted of monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) real word pairs. Stimulus words included 41 phonemic contrast pairs and six triplets. The results showed that the percentage of errors in final position contrast was higher than in any other position. Unlike the results of previous studies, the initial-position contrasts were crucial in predicting the overall intelligibility among Korean patients.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.25-39
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• 2007

The present study investigated some perceptual phonetic attributes of two Korean stop types, aspirated and lax, in medial position of an accentual phrase. The intonational pattern across syllables (Jun, 1993) is argued to depend on the type of stop (aspirated vs. lax) only in the initial position of an accentual phrase. In Kang & Dilley (2007), we showed that significant differences between aspirated and lax stops in medial position of an accentual phrase exist in closure duration, voice-onset time, and fundamental frequency (F0) values for post-stop vowels. In the present perception experiment, we investigated whether these phonetic attributes contribute to the perception of these two types of stops: The closure durations and/or F0's of post-stop vowels on accentual-phrase medial words were altered and twenty native Korean speakers then judged these words as beginning with an aspirated or lax stop. Both closure duration and F0 significantly affected judgments of stop identity. These results indicate that a wider range of acoustic cues that distinguish aspirated and lax Korean stops in production also plays a role in perception. To account for these results we suggest some phonetic and phonological models of consonant-tone interactions for Korean.

• MALSORI
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• no.53
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• pp.1-16
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• 2005

This experimental study aims to test the hypothesis that the occurrence of English sentence-final stop release is, at least, partly predictable by examining its phonetic context. 10 native(5 male and 5 female) speakers of American English recorded, in a sound-proof booth, sentences excerpted from novels and the natural documents on the World Wide Web. Based on the waveforms and spectrograms of the recorded sentences, judgements of the release of a sentence-final stop were made. If the aperiodic energy of a given final stop lasted more than .015 second, it was considered to be "released." The result reveals that English sentence-final stops tend to be released when they are 1) velar consonants, 2) preceeded by tense vowels, and 3) coda consonants of content words. The phonetic environment in which final stops are often released can be characterized by the articulatory comfortableness and the need for release burst noise, without which the final stops may not be correctly perceived. By examining the release of English final stops, it is concluded that the phonological events, which had been considered to occur rather "randomly," in fact, reflect the universal tendency of human speech: to minimize the speakers' and hearers' effort.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.37-40
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• 2006

In this paper, we propose a VQ codebook design of speech recognition feature parameters in order to improve the performance of a distributed speech recognition system. For the context-dependent HMMs, a VQ codebook should be correlated with phonetic distributions in the training data for HMMs. Thus, we focus on a selection method of training data based on phonetic distribution instead of using all the training data for an efficient VQ codebook design. From the speech recognition experiments using the Aurora 4 database, the distributed speech recognition system employing a VQ codebook designed by the proposed method reduced the word error rate (WER) by 10% when compared with that using a VQ codebook trained with the whole training data.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.77-89
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• 2017

This study investigates the phonetic meaning of clarity and turbidity(淸濁) that has been used in psychoacoustics, musicology, and linguistics in both the East and the West. With a view to clarifying the phonetic meaning of clarity and turbidity, this study conducts three perception tests. First, 34 subjects were asked to take one of Clear and Turbid by forced choice for 5 pure and complex tones, respectively, ranging from A2 to A6 differing by octave. Second, they were asked to select between the two choices for 25 pure and complex tones, respectively, ranging from A2 to A4 differing by semitone. Third, they were asked to opt for one of the two choices for 8 different vowels of different formant and fundamental frequencies. Results showed that there is a certain range of tone which is perceived as clear, that clarity level increases as fundamental frequency increases, and that pure tones have a higher level of clarity than complex ones, fundamental frequency being equal. Results also showed that vocal tract resonance enhances clarity level on the whole, and that lower vowels have a higher level of clarity than higher ones. This study is significant in that it demonstrates that clarity level is proportional to fundamental frequency and the first formant frequency, all else being equal.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.35-43
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• 2019

This study examines the voice onset times (VOTs) of Korean stops produced by Korean learners of English with high language proficiency and long L2 exposure (i.e., Korean-English bilinguals) to assess whether the VOTs of their lax and aspirated stops are merging and, if so, which types of stops are being changed. Thirteen Korean speakers (six female and seven male) who had studied in the USA for more than three to ten years participated. The results show that the speakers in this study with long L2 exposure are participating in the VOT merger, in which VOTs for aspirated stops are reduced while those for lax stops are increased. In other words, change in VOT affects not only aspirated stops but also lax stops. The results indicate that L1 phonetic drift may not be primarily affected by the amount of L2 exposure, and language contact may not be the primary factor triggering a sound change in the Korean stop system. Further study is necessary focusing on the phonetic shift of the "lax" category because it may play a pivotal role in a tonogenetic-like sound change in present-day Korean.

• MALSORI
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• no.29_30
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• pp.61-94
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• 1995

The aim of this paper is to describe the linguistic differences of two Koreas with a special emphasis on the phonetic aspect of Seoul and Pyongyang speech. The sources of the North Korean speech material used in the study are 1) the Pyongyang radio and TV broadcasts, 2) interviews of north Korean defectors and 3) speech material of north Korean scholars collected by the writer in london, Warsaw, France and China between 1989 and 1994. The most noticeable phonetic differences of Seoul and Pyongyang speech are abstracted as follows: 1) The vowels /이/, /에/ and /애/ are higher and fronter in Pyongyang speech than in Seoul speech. 2) The vowels /우/ and /으/ of Pyongyang speech are somewhat fronter than the corresponding vowels of Seoul speech. 3) The Pyongyang vowels /으/ and if are produced with rounded lips compared to the corresponding Seoul vowels. 4) The Pyongyang vowel /h) is much lower in tongue position and at the same time somewhat fronter than the corresponding Seoul vowel. 5) The consonants /r ,i ,n / are pronounced in Pyongyang as alveolar affricates or something close to them whereas they are pronounced in Seoul as post-alveolar affricates. 6) Unlike in Seoul speech there is a very strong tendency in Pyongyang speech to reduce aspiration feature in consonant seouences such as /ㅂ+ㅎ/, /ㄷ+ㅎ/, /ㄱ+ㅎ/. 7) /ㄴ/ and /ㄹ/(flap) freely occur word-initially in Pyongyang speech whereas they are restricted in Seoul speech. 8) Unlike in Seoul speech the phonemic contrast of long and short vowels are generally not functional in Pyongyang speech. Thus the vowels pronounced long in Seoul speech are usually pronounced short in Pyongyang speech.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.23-27
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• 2002

The purpose of the study is to examine differences in subglottic air pressure as a function of phonetic context. The phonetic contexts consisted of $/i:{p^h}i:{p^h}i:/,/{p^h}i:{p^h}i:/, and /{p^h}{p^h}/$. The aerodynamic and phonatory parameters are investigated in 20 female normal adults. All measurements are taken and analysed using Aerophone II voice function analyzer. The aerodynamic parameters are Peak Air Pressure(PAP) and Mean Air Pressure(MAP), and the phonatory parameters are Phonatory Flow Rate(PFR) Maximum SPL(MSPL), Phonatory SPL(PSPL), Phonatory Power (PP), Phonatory Efficiency(PE), and Phonatory $Resistance^*$ 10-5(PR). A one-way ANOVA revealed the following results. First, the aerodynamic parameters are not significantly different. Second, Peak Air Pressure(PAP) and Mean Air Pressure(MAP), as well as the phonatory parameters such as Phonatory Flow Rate(PFR) Maximum SPL(MSPL), Phonatory SPL(PSPL), and Phonatory Efficiency(PE) were significantly different. Therefore, it is advised that clinicians use only aerodynamic parameters but phonatory parameters when using Aerophone II.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.97-101
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• 1999

The nasalance score measured by Nasometer is a supplementary data for the perceptually rated nasality by a trained speech pathologist. Because the nasalance score varies with speech material, a valid and reliable material should be developed for evaluating it. The objectives of the present study were (1) to examine whether phonetic contexts affect the nasalace score and (2) to examine the reliability of both meaningless one-syllable words and meaningful sentences. This study analyzed nasalance score in 20 different phonetic contexts from 24 normal adults. The results showed (1) nasalance score increased as the percentage of nasal consonants and vowel /i/ increased, (2) the manner and the place of articulation in oral consonants did not influence the nasalance score, and (3) in nasalance score, correlation between sentences was found to be high, but correlation between syllables was not. These results may indicate that, when preparing the speech material for measuring the nasalance score, it is important to consider not only the percentage of nasal consonants but also that of vowel /i/ in the speech material. In addition, the sentence is more reliable material than meaningless one-syllable words.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.117-122
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• 2009

A variety of cross-linguistic studies has documented that the acoustic properties of speech addressed to young children include exaggeration of pitch contours and acoustically salient features of phonetic units. It has been suggested that phonetic modifications of child-directed speech facilitate young children's learning of speech sounds by providing detailed phonetic information about the target word. While there are several studies reporting vowel modifications in speech to infants (i.e., hyper-articulated vowels), there has been little research about consonant modifications in speech to young children (except for VOT). The present study examines acoustic properties of Korean stops in Korean mothers' speech to their children (seven children aged 27 to 38 months). Korean tense, lax, and aspirated stops are all voiceless in word-initial position, and are perceptually differentiated by several acoustic parameters including VOT, $f_0$ of the following vowel, and the amplitude difference of the first and second harmonics at the voice onset of the following vowel. This study compares values of these parameters in Korean child-directed speech to those in adult-directed speech from same speakers. Conclusions focus on the acoustic properties of Korean stops in child-directed speech and how they are modified to help Korean young children learn the three-way phonetic contrast.