• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.93-105
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• 2000

The English schwa sound has special characteristics which are distinct from other vowels. It is non-phonemic and occurs only in an unstressed syllable. Compared with the English schwa, the Korean /e/ is a full vowel which has phonemic contrast. This paper had three aims. One was to see whether there is any relationship between English full vowels and their reduced vowel schwas. Second was to see whether there is any possible target in the English schwa sounds which are derived from different full vowels. The third was to compare the English non-phoneme vowel schwa and the Korean full vowel /e/ in terms of articulatory positions and duration. The study results showed that there is no relationship between each of the full vowels and its schwa. The schwa tended to converge into a possible target which was F1 456 and F2 1560. The Korean vowel /e/ seemed to have its distinct position speaker-individual which is different from the neutral tongue position. The evidence that the Korean /e/ is a back vowel was supported by the Seoul dialect speaker. In duration, the English schwa was much shorter than the full vowels, but there was no significant difference in length between the Korean /e/ and other Korean vowels.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.197-217
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• 1999

In a noisy class, the acoustic-phonetic features of the teacher and the perceptual features of learners are changed comparison with a quiet environment. Acoustical analyses were carried out on a set of French monosyllables consisting of 17 consonants and three vowel /a, e, i/, produced by 1 male speaker talking in quiet and in 50, 60 and 70 dB SPL of masking noise on headphone. The results of the acoustic analyses showed consistent differences in energy and formant center frequency amplitude of consonants and vowels, $F_1$ frequency of vowel and duration of voiceless stops suggesting the increase of vocal effort. The perceptual experiments in which 18 undergraduate female students learning French served as the subjects, were conducted in quiet and in 50, 60 dB of masking noise. The identification scores on consonants were higher in Lombard speech than in normal speech, suggesting that the speaker's vocal effort is useful to overcome the masking effect of noise. And, with increased noise level, the perceptual response to the French consonants given had a tendency to be complex and the subjective reaction score on the noise using the vocabulary representative of 'unpleasant' sensation to be higher. And, in the point of view on the L2(second language) acquisition, the influence of L1 (first language) on L2 examined in the perceptual result supports the interference theory.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.55-81
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• 1997

In the present paper, V-to-V coarticulation in Korean VCV sequences is discussed, focusing on links between consonantal production and degree of V-to-V coarticulation. Temporal and spatial differences between three types of Korean alveolar stops (lax /t/. aspirated /$t^h$/ and thense /t'/) are examined from VCV sequences involving all possible combinations of three Korean unrounded vowels /a, i,/ based on spectrographic and electrographic data(two male speakers and one female speaker and one female speaker respectively). Closure duration and voice onset time (VOT) were measured from acoustic data. 'Total duration', which is defined as the sum of the closure duration and the VOT, was also calculated in order to see the temporal distance between two vowels in a VCV sequence. Differences in lingual-palatal contact pattern at the maximum contact (MC) point between the three types of stop were observed from EPG data. V-to-V coarticulation was investigated by measuring the offset or onset of the second formant (F2) of the target vowels from spectrograms. Two different dimensions of articulation, temporal and spatial, seem to playa role in determining the degree of V-to-V coarticulation. The degree of V-to-V anticipatory coarticulation is influenced by the spatial characteristics of the intervening consonant while the degree of carryover coarticulation is influenced by the temporal characteristics of the consonant.