• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.45-53
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• 2015

The current study investigated CVCC syllables in spontaneous American English speech to find out whether such syllables are produced as phonological units with a string of segments, showing a hierarchical structure. Transcribed data from the Buckeye Speech Corpus was used for the analysis in this study. The result of the current study showed that the constituents within a CVCC syllable as a phonological unit may have phonetic variations (namely, the final coda may undergo deletion). First, voiceless alveolar stops were the most frequently deleted when they occurred as the second final coda consonants of a CVCC syllable; this deletion may be an intermediate process on the way from the abstract form CVCC (with the rime VCC) to the actual pronunciation CVC (with the rime VC), a production strategy employed by some individual speakers. Second, in the internal structure of the rime, the proportion of deletion of the final coda consonant depended on the frequency of the word rather than on the position of postvocalic consonants on the sonority hierarchy. Finally, the segment following the consonant cluster proved to have an effect on the reduction of that cluster; more precisely, the following contrast was observed between obstruents and non-obstruents, reflecting the effect of sonority: when the segment following the consonant cluster was an obstruent, the proportion of deletion of the final coda consonant was increased. Among these results, the effect of word frequency played a critical role for promoting the deletion of the second coda consonant for clusters in CVCC syllables in spontaneous speech. The current study implies that the structure of syllables as phonological units can vary depending on individual speakers' lexical representation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.3-16
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• 2010

This study aims at setting the hierarchy of difficulty of the 7 Korean monophthongs for Mongolian learners of Korean according to Prator's theory based on the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. In addition to that, it will be shown that the difficulties and errors for Mongolian learners of Korean as a second or foreign language proceed directly from this hierarchy of difficulty. This study began by looking at the speeches of 60 Mongolians for Mongolian monophthongs; data were investigated and analyzed into formant frequencies F1 and F2 of each vowel. Then, the 7 Korean monophthongs were compared with the resultant Mongolian formant values and are assigned to 3 levels, 'same', 'similar' or 'different sound'. The findings in assessing the differences of the 8 nearest equivalents of Korean and Mongolian vowels are as follows: First, Korean /a/ and /$\wedge$/ turned out as a 'same sound' with their counterparts, Mongolian /a/ and /ɔ/. Second, Korean /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/ turned out as a 'similar sound' with each their Mongolian counterparts /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/. Third, Korean /ɨ/ which is nearest to Mongolian /i/ in terms of phonetic features seriously differs from it and is thus assigned to 'different sound'. And lastly, Mongolian /$\mho$/ turned out as a 'different sound' with its nearest counterpart, Korean /u/. Based on these findings the hierarchy of difficulty was constructed. Firstly, 4 Korean monophthongs /a/, /$\wedge$/, /i/, /e/ would be Level 0(Transfer); they would be transferred positively from their Mongolian counterparts when Mongolians learn Korean. Secondly, Korean /o/, /u/ would be Level 5(Split); they would require the Mongolian learner to make a new distinction and cause interference in learning the Korean language because Mongolian /o/, /u/ each have 2 similar counterpart sounds; Korean /o, u/, /u, o/. Thirdly, Korean /ɨ/ which is not in the Mongolian vowel system will be Level 4(Overdifferentiation); the new vowel /ɨ/ which bears little similarity to Mongolian /i/, must be learned entirely anew and will cause much difficulty for Mongolian learners in speaking and writing Korean. And lastly, Mongolian /$\mho$/ will be Level 2(Underdifferentiation); it is absent in the Korean language and doesn‘t cause interference in learning Korean as long as Mongolian learners avoid using it.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.510-524
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• 2009

Objective : This study was designed to find the correlation between Sasang Constitution and heart rate variability(HRV). Method : There were 665 subjects (280 men and 385 women), between 39 and 72 years old. in a rural community. Sasang Constitution was diagnosed by a Sasang constitutional specialist using PSSC (Phonetic System for Sasang Constitution), face and tongue photo and checkup-list. A structured-questionnaire was used to assess the general characteristics. HRV was recorded using SA-2000 (medi-core). HRV was assessed by time domain and by frequency domain analysis. Metabolic syndrome was defined on the basis of clustering of risk factors, when three or more of the following cardiovascular risk factors were included : blood pressure, fasting blood sugar, triglyceride HDL-cholesterol, and abdominal obesity (waist). Because of the skewness of the data, logarithmic transformation was performed on the absolute units of the spectral components of HRV, and the resulting logarithmic values and normalized units were compared between the groups by a logistic regression. The 95% confidence interval (CI) of the odds ratio was used and calculated from the data laid out for a cross sectional study. Results : 1. Odds ratios of Taeeumin and Soeumin in female adults below 60 years old were significantly lower than that of Soyangin in LF norm and LF/HF ratio. Odds ratios of Taeeumin and Soeumin in female adults below 60 years old were significantly higher than that of Soyangin in HF norm. 2. There was no significant correlation between HRV and Sasang Constitution in female adults from 60 years old and over. 3. There was no significant correlation between HRV and Sasang Constitution in male adults. Conclusion : There is a statistically significant correlation between the HRV and Sasang Constitution. There is a tendency of increase in the sympathetic activity in Soyangin. There is a tendency of decrease in the parasympathetic activity in Taeeumin and Soeumin.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.51-64
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to establish the Standard Korean Vocal Sound into Character Conversion Rule (Standard VSCC Rule) by reversely applying the Korean Standard Pronunciation Rule that regulates the way of reading written Hangeul sentences. The Standard VSCC Rule performs a crucially important role in Korean speech recognition. The general method of speech recognition is to find the most similar pattern among the standard voice patterns to the input voice pattern. Each of the standard voice patterns is an average of several sample voice patterns. If the unit of the standard voice pattern is a word, then the number of entries of the standard voice pattern will be greater than a few millions (taking inflection and postpositional particles into account). This many entries require a huge database and an impractically too many comparisons in the process of finding the most similar pattern. Therefore, the unit of the standard voice pattern should be a syllable. In this case, we have to resolve the problem of the difference between the Korean vocal sounds and the writing characters. The process of converting a sequence of Korean vocal sounds into a sequence of characters requires our Standard VSCC Rule. Making use of our Standard VSCC Rule, we have implemented a Korean vocal sounds into Hangeul character conversion system. The Korean Standard Pronunciation Rule consists of 30 items. In order to show soundness and completeness of our Standard VSCC Rule, we have tested the conversion system with various data sets reflecting all the 30 items. The test results will be presented in this paper.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.231-237
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between the preferred sensation type and speech sounds, especially on $F_0$ and the speech rates. Data for the sensation types and speech sounds were collected from 36 undergraduate and graduate students (17 male, 19 female). Subjects were asked to read a given text (400 syllables), describe a drawing, and give answers to some questions. We measured speakers' $F_0$ and speech rates. The results show that type V (Visual) has the correlation with the speech rates when type D (Digital) was ruled out, and type A (Auditory) has the correlation with the speech rates when type D was included. Furthermore, the analysis of the mean values of V, A, K (Visual, Auditory, Kinethetic) indicates that type V is characterized with faster speech rates and higher $F_0$ in all parts except for interview and the same is true for that of V, A, K, D (Visual, Auditory, Kinethetic, Digital) in all parts. In conclusion, this study proved that the preferred sensation type has the correlation with $F_0$ and speech rates. Based on the results of this study, $F_0$ and speech rates can be used to analyze the sensation types for individualized education as well as consultation. In addition, this study has great significance in that it lays a foundation for the study on the correlation between a preferred sensation type and speech sounds.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.77-102
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• 1994

Many studies have been made on the masticatory and esthetic effects of prosthodontic treatments, but few on the restoration of pronunciation, especially in complete denture wearers. The purpose of this study is to provide a basis that could be of help to the complete denture wearers' speech adaptation by analyzing the influence of the palatal coverage upon the duration of consonants and vowels with the method of experimental phonetics. For this study, metal plates and resin plates were made for 3 male subjects in their twenties, who have good occlusion, and do not have speech and hearing disorders. Then 8 Korean consonants and 4 Korean vowels were selected, systemically considering phonetic variants such as the place and manner of articulation, lenis/fortis, mutual effect of each phoneme, etc. They were combined into meaningless tested words in the form of /VCV/, and were included in the carrier sentences. Each informant uttered the sentences 1) without the plate, 2) with the metal plate, 3) with the resin plate. The recorded data were analyzed through the waveform of sounds and spectrogram by using the program SoundEdit, Signalize, Statview 512+for the Macintosh computer. The duration of each segment was measured by searching for the boundaries between the preceding vowels and consonants, and between the consonants and the following vowels. The study led to the conclusion that. 1. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the tested words increased and the duration increased more with the resin plate than with the metal plate. 2. With the palatal plate, the duration of all the preceding vowels, consonants, and following vowels increased, but the temporal structure of the tested words was maintained. 3. As for the manner of articulation, fricative /s/(ㅅ) was greatly influenced by both kinds of palatal plates. 4. As for the place of articulation, alveolar sounds /d/(ㄷ), /n/(ㄴ) were greatly influnced by the kinds of palatal plates, and the velar sounds /n/(ㅇ), /g/(ㄱ) were influenced by the platal plates, but the kind of the palatal plates did not show any significance. 5. As for the lenis/fortis, lenis was influenced more by the kind of the palatal plates. 6. As for the influence of vowels upon each segment in the tested words, palatal vowel /i/(ㅣ) had greater influence than pharyngeal vowel /a/(ㅏ), and following vowels than preceding vowels.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.225-230
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• 2020

This paper highlights the influence and the importance of the syntactic-grammatical knowledge on "the reading machine", appeared in Jackendoff (1999). Due to the lack of the detailed testing and implementation in his research, this paper tests an extensive data array using a component of Google Translate, currently available freely and most widely on the internet. Although outdated, Jackendoff's paper, "Why can't Computers use English?", argues that syntactic-grammatical knowledge plays a key role in the outputs of computers and computer-based reading machines. The current research has implemented some testings of his thought-provoking examples, in order to find out whether Google Translate can handle the same problems after two decades or so. As a result, it is argued that in the field of NLP, I-language in the sense of Chomsky (1986, 1995 etc) is real and the syntactic, grammatical, and categorial knowledge is essential in the faculty of language. Therefore, it is reassured in this paper that when it comes to human language, even the most advanced "machine" is still no match for human faculty of language, the syntactic-grammatical knowledge.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.495-505
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• 2019

This study reported the treatment of a patient with excessive worn dentition and limited maxillo-mandibular space for restoration, utilizing the computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) technology. After the thorough examination of the patient's occlusal vertical dimension (OVD), full mouth rehabilitation was planned with increase of the OVD. The patient was satisfied with the provisional restorations establishing the increased OVD. The horizontal and vertical data of the patient's jaw relation that the provisional restorations contained were transferred to the definitive metal ceramic fixed prostheses by double scanning and three-dimensional printing. After the fixed restorations were cemented to the abutments, electronic surveying and three-dimensional printing were used to fabricate metal frameworks for the patient's removable partial dentures. The mandibular definitive removable prostheses were delivered to the patient's mouth and the full mouth rehabilitation procedures were completed. The digital technologies used for this case produced fixed and removable restorations satisfactory in masticatory, phonetic and aesthetic functions to both the patient and the dental clinician.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.28
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• pp.115-139
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• 2012

Interval or duration of segments, syllables, words and phrases is an important acoustic feature which influences the naturalness of speech. A number of cross-sectional studies regarding acoustic characteristics of children's speech development found that intervals of segments, syllables, words and phrases tend to change with the growing age. One hypothesis assumed that decreases in intervals would be greater when children were younger and smaller decreases in intervals when older (Thelen,1991), it has been supported by quite a number of researches on the basis of cross-sectional studies (Tingley & Allen,1975; Kent & Forner,1980; Chermak & Schneiderman, 1986), but the other hypothesis predicted that decreases in intervals would be smaller when children were younger and greater decreases in intervals when older (Smith, Kenney & Hussain, 1996). Researchers seem to come up with conflicting postulations and inconsistent results about the change trends concerning intervals of segments, syllables, words and phrases, leaving it as an issue unresolved. Most acoustic investigations of children's speech production have been conducted via cross-sectional designs, which involves studying several groups of children. So far, there are only a few longitudinal studies. This issue needs more longitudinal investigations; moreover, the acoustic measures of the intervals of child speech are hardly available. All former studies focus on word stages excluding the babbling stages especially the canonical babbling stage, but we need to find out when concrete changes of intervals begin to occur and what causes the changes. Therefore, we conducted an acoustic study of interval characteristics of segments and words concerning Canonical Babble ( CB) and early speech in an infant aged from 0;9 to 2;4 acquiring Mandarin Chinese. The current research addresses the following two questions: 1. Whether decreases in interval would be greater when children were younger and smaller when they were older or vice versa? 2. Whether the child speech concerning the acoustic features of interval drifts in the direction of the language they are exposed to? The female infant whose L1 was Southern Mandarin living in Changsha was audio- and video-taped at her home for about one hour almost on a weekly basis during her age range from 0;9 to 2;4 under natural observation by us investigators. The recordings were digitized. Parts of the digitized material were labeled. All the repetitions were excluded. The utterances were extracted from 44 sessions ranging from 30 minutes to one hour. The utterances were divided into segments as well as syllable-sized units. Age stages are 0;9-1;0,1;1-1;5, 1;6-2;0, 2;1-2;4. The subject was a monolingual normal child from parents with a good education. The infant was audio-and video-taped in her home almost every week. The data were digitized, segments and syllables from 44 sessions spanning the transition from babble to speech were transcribed in narrow IPA and coded for analysis. Babble was coded from age 0;9-1;0, and words were coded from 1;0 to 2;4, the data has been checked by two professionally trained persons who majored in phonetics. The present investigation is a longitudinal analysis of some temporal characteristics of the child speech during the age periods of 0;9-1;0, 1;1-1;5, 1;6-2;0, 2;1-2;4. The answer to Research Question 1 is that our results are in agreement with neither of the hypotheses. One hypothesis assumed that decreases in intervals would be greater when children were younger and smaller decreases in intervals when older (Thelen,1991); but the other hypothesis predicted that decreases in intervals would be smaller when children were younger and greater decreases in intervals when older (Smith, Kenney & Hussain, 1996). On the whole, there is a tendency of decrease in segmental and syllabic duration with the growing age, but the changes are not drastic and abrupt. For example, /a/ after /k/ in Table 1 has greater decrease during 1;1-1;5, while /a/ after /p/, /t/ and /w/ has greater decrease during 2;1-2;4. /ka/ has greater decrease during 1;1-1;5, while /ta/ and /na/ has greater decrease during 2;1-2;4.Across the age periods, interval change experiences lots of fluctuation all the time. The answer to Research Question 2 is yes. Babbling stage is a period in which the children's acoustic features of intervals of segments, syllables, words and phrases is shifted in the direction of the language to be learned, babbling and children's speech emergence is greatly influenced by ambient language. The phonetic changes in terms of duration would go on until as late as 10-12 years of age before reaching adult-like levels. Definitely, with the increase of exposure to ambient language, the variation would be less and less until they attain the adult-like competence. Via the analysis of the SPSS 15.0, the decrease of segmental and syllabic intervals across the four age periods proves to be of no significant difference (p>0.05). It means that the change of segmental and syllabic intervals is continuous. It reveals that the process of child speech development is gradual and cumulative.

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