• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.35-46
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• 1998

In this paper production and perception data were examined to discover what acoustic features are used in distinguishing wh-questions and yes/no-questions. Production data show that the two question types are distinguished by different accentual phrasing, pitch ranges in wh-phrases, and initial lenis stop voicing of the first syllable in verb phrases. Perception data by synthetic intonation show that the two question types are distinguished by the width of pitch ranges between the first and the second syllable in wh-phrases. Initial lenis stop voicing of the first syllable in verb phrases produces a strong effect on the perceptual discrimination of the two question types.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.41-48
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• 2018

This study examined the acoustic characteristics of Korean alveolar fricatives of normal children. Developing children aged 3 and 7, typically produced 2 types of nonsense syllables containing alveolar fricative /sV/ and /VsV/ sequences where V was any one of three corner vowels (/i, a, and u/). Stimuli containing the speech materials used in a production experiment were presented randomly to 12 speech language pathologists (SLPs) for a perception test. The SLPs responded by selecting one of seven alternative sounds. Acoustic measures such as duration of frication noise, normalized intensity, skewness, and center of gravity were examined. There was significant difference in acoustic measures when comparing vowels. Comparison of syllable structures indicated statistically significant differences in duration of frication noise and normalized intensity. Acoustic parameters could account for the perceptual data. Relating the acoustic and perception data by means of logistic regression suggests that duration of frication noise and normalized intensity are the primary cues to perceiving Korean fricatives.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.45-52
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• 2023

Previous studies have established a role for cognitive differences in explaining variability in speech processing across individuals. In the case of perceptual cue weighting in the context of a sound change, studies have produced conflicting results regarding the relationship between executive function and the use of redundant cues. The current study aimed to explore this relationship in acoustic cue weighting during speech production. Forty-one Korean-speaking children read a list of stop-initial words and completed two tests that assess executive function, i.e., Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) and digit n-back. Voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) were measured in each word, and analyses were carried out to determine the extent to which children's executive function predicted their use of both informative and less informative cues to the three pairs comprising the Korean three-way stop laryngeal contrast. No evidence was found for a relationship between cognitive ability and acoustic cue weighting in production, which is at odds with previous, albeit conflicting, results for speech perception. While this result may be due to the lack of task demands in the production task used here, it nevertheless expands the empirical ground upon which future work in this area may proceed.

• MALSORI
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• v.55
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• pp.15-31
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• 2005

This study tests the hypothesis that the voiced-voiceless distinction is influenced by the relationship between acoustics and perception. Production and perception tests are conducted with temporal cues in different environments(CV, VCV, VC). The result showed that acoustic cues indicating significant difference between voiceless/voiced plosives do not behave just as do in perception. The result also showed that there existed an asymmetry between acoustics and perception.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.215-234
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• 2002

This study is designed for two purposes. The first one is to compare the realization and perception of English contrastive focus between Korean learners of English and native speakers of English. The second purpose is to study the phonological and phonetical features of contrastive focus by examining the results of production and perception experiments. English native speakers' results show that the English contrastive accents are generally accompanied by higher peak heights. The findings agree with the results of Bartels & Kingston (1994). Unlike native speakers of English, Korean speakers seem to be poor at relating the phonetical features of contrastive focus to their actual speech. Korean speakers' results are especially unsuccessful when the contrast is not distinctly grasped through syntactic structure, or when the function words are contrasted. Furthermore, Korean speakers' utterances tend to have pitch accents on every content word, whether the word is contrasted or not.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.119-129
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• 2015

This paper investigates the status of the merger between the mid front unrounded vowels ㅔ[e] and ㅐ[${\varepsilon}$] in contemporary Korean. Our analysis is based on a balanced corpus of production and perception data from young subjects from three dialectal areas (Seoul, Daegu and Gwangju). Except for expected gender differences, the production data display no difference in the realization of these vowels, in any of the dialects. The perception data, while mostly in line with the production results, show that Seoul females tend to better discriminate the two vowels in terms of perceived height: vowels with a lower F1 are more likely to be categorized as ㅔ by this group. We then investigate the possible causes of this merger: based on an empirical study of transcribed spoken Korean, we show that the pair of vowels ㅔ/ㅐ has a very low functional load. We argue that this factor, together with the phonetic similarity of the two vowels, may have been responsible for the observed merger.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.249-253
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• 2005

This paper summarizes some recent findings with respect to how prosodic structure is manifested in fine-grained phonetic details and how such phonetic manifestation of prosodic structure may be exploited in spoken word recognition.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.81-90
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• 2013

This study explored how Korean L2 learners of English utilize multiple acoustic cues (VOT and F0) in perceiving and producing the English alveolar stop with a voicing contrast. Thirty-four 18-year-old high-school students participated in the study. Their English proficiency level was classified as either 'high' (HEP) or 'low' (LEP) according to high-school English level standardization. Thirty different synthesized syllables were presented in audio stimuli by combining a 6-step VOTs and a 5-step F0s. The listeners judged how close the audio stimulus was to /t/ or /d/ in L2 using a visual analogue scale. The L2 /d/ and /t/ productions collected from the 22 learners (12 HEP, 10 LEP) were acoustically analyzed by measuring VOT and F0 at the vowel onset. Results showed that LEP listeners attended to the F0 in the stimuli more sensitively than HEP listeners, suggesting that HEP listeners could inhibit less important acoustic dimensions better than LEP listeners in their L2 perception. The L2 production patterns also exhibited a group-difference between HEP and LEP in that HEP speakers utilized their VOT dimension (primary cue in L2) more effectively than LEP speakers. Taken together, the study showed that the relative cue-weighting strategies in L2 perception and production are closely related to the learner's L2 proficiency level in that more proficient learners had a better control of inhibiting and enhancing the relevant acoustic parameters.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.285-294
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• 2021

Motivated by the mixed results in the previous studies on the relationship between speech production and perception, the current study aims to investigate the relationship between production and perception in depth through a case study on how Korean EFL university students produce and perceive American English vowels. To this end, 19 Korean students at a university located in the Seoul-metropolitan area participated in the production and perception tests on American English vowels to elucidate the precedence relationship and the correlation between production and perception. Results showed that precedence of neither perception nor production was found in the overall result. However, either precedence of perception or production was found for the vowels [ɛ], [α], [ɔ], [u], which implies that the precedence relationship between production and perception varies depending on individual vowels. As for the correlation between production and perception, no correlation was attested between production and perception, suggesting that production and perception skills are not closely linked for these participants. Given that mastering language requires to coordinate two distinct production and perception skills and that L2 learners' preception and production skills become more closely connected as the learners' L2 experience and proficiency increases, no correlation between production and perception attested by the current EFL students implies that the correlation between production and perception varies during the course of foreign language/L2 acquisition in such a way that production and perception skills become increasingly related. Implications of the findings were further discussed and pedagogical suggestions were provided.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.169-184
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• 2002

Korean has two types of voiceless alveolar fricatives: a non-tense fricative /$S^{h}$ and a tense fricative /s'/. Twenty native speakers of Korean produced five pairs of isolated words containing word initial $S^{h}V$ and /s'V/ sequences where V was any one of five (/a, e, i, o, u/) of Korean vowels. Acoustic measures such as duration, fricative noise prominent frequency, energy change of following vowel, and fundamental frequency at vowel onset were examined. Results showed that among the parameters, aspiration noise duration of /s'/ in mid and low vowel contexts was less than 21 ms. In a perception experiment, where only the aspiration noise interval of the /$S^{h}$/ tokens was incrementally reduced, some listeners shifted perception from /$S^{h}$/ to /s'/.