• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.53-62
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to examine the English l sound in an English short story produced by 16 Korean students in order to determine various allophones of the sound using acoustic visual displays and perceptual judgments. The subjects read the story in a quiet office at normal speed. Each word included the lateral sound in onset or coda positions and before a vowel of the following word. Results showed as follows: Firstly, there was a durational difference between the two major groups. Also the majority of the subjects produced the clear l regardless of the contexts. Some students produced the sound as the Korean flap or the English glide [r]. A few missing cases were also seen. The dark l was mostly produced by the subjects of English majors in coda position with a few cases before a vowel in a phrase. Visual displays using the computer analysis were very helpful in distinguishing lateral variants but sometimes perceptual process would be necessary to judge them in fast and weak production of the target word. Further studies would be desirable to test the discrepancies between the acoustical and perceptual decisions.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.208-213
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• 2010

Generally, the mal factor for speech recognition is the background noise in speech recognition. The noise is the reason to reduce the speech recognition performance. Owing to the fact, the place to recognize is very important. To improve the recognition performance from the sound having noise, we implemented the noise filtered Wiener filter at the signal process step which adopted the FIR filter. In FIR filter, it deal with the filtered speech signal which is appropriate frequency range of human speech frequency range. Therefore, we make the recognition system distinguish between noise and speech sound from the incoming speech signal.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.67-76
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• 2021

Nanta means "tapping" using percussion instruments such as drums, which is the rhythm of Samulnori, a tradtional Korean music. Nanta speech rhythm intervention program was developed and applied for the children with limited speech sound production and investigated its effect. Nanta program provided audible stimulation, various sound loudness and beats, and rhythms. Nanta program consists of three stages : Respiration, phonation and articulation with the rhythm. Six children with language development delay participated in this study. Children were encouraged to explore sounds and beats and freely express sounds and beats. Along with the rhythm, children also were encouraged to produce speech sounds by increasing the length of syllables in mimetic and imitating words. A total of 15 sessions were conducted twice a week for 40 minutes per session. For exploring the effectiveness, raw scores from preschool receptive-expressive scales (PRES) and receptive-expressive vocabulary test (REVT) were obtained and compared before and after therapy. The results demonstrated that significantly improved receptive (p=.027) and expressive language scores (p=.024) in PRES and receptive (p=.028) and expressive (p=.028) vocabulary scores following intervention using Wilcoxon signed-rank test.These findings suggest that the nanta rhythm program can be useful for improving language development and vocabulary in children with limited speech sound production.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

Previous studies have reported on the overlapping of $F_1$ and $F_2$ distribution for the vowels /o/ and /u/ produced by young Korean speakers of the Seoul dialect. It has been suggested that the overlapping of /o/ and /u/ occurs due to sound change. However, few studies have examined whether speech rate influences the overlapping of /o/ and /u/. On the other hand, previous studies have reported that the overlapping of /o/ and /u/ in syllable produced by male speakers is smaller than by female speakers. Few reports have investigated on the overlapping of the two vowels in read speech produced by male speakers. In the current study, we examined whether speech rates affect overlapping of /o/ and /u/ in read speech by male and female speakers. Read speech produced by twelve young adult native speakers of Seoul dialect were recorded in three speech rates. For female speakers, discriminant analysis showed that the discriminant rate became lower as the speech rate increases from slow to fast. Thus, this indicates that speech rate is one of the factors affecting the overlapping of /o/ and /u/. For male speakers, on the other hand, the discriminant rate was not correlated with speech rate, but the overlapping was larger than that of female speakers in read speech. Moreover, read speech by male speakers was less clear than by female speakers. This indicates that the overlapping may be related to unclear speech by sociolinguistic reasons for male speakers.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.369-377
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• 2018

This study investigated the effect of noise and reverberation on subjective measure of speech transmission performance for elderly person with hearing loss in residential space through listening test. Floor impact, road traffic, airborne, and drainage noise were employed as the residential noise, and several impulse responses were obtained through room acoustical computer simulation for an apartment building. Sound sources for the listening test consisted of residential noises and speech sounds for boh the young (the original sound) and the aged (the sound filtered out by filters with frequency responses of hearing loss of 65 years elderly person). In the listening test, subjects evaluated speech intelligibility and listening difficulty for the presented word ($L_{Aeq}$ 55 dB) at three noise levels ($L_{Aeq}$ 30, 40, 50 dB) and three reverberation times (0.5, 1.0, 1.5 s). Results showed that the residential space with noise level lower than equal to 50 dB ($L_{i,Fmax,AW}$) for jumping noise and 40 dB ($L_{Aeq}$) for road traffic, airborne, and drainage noise had speech intelligibility of 90 % and over and listening difficulty of 30 % and below. Speech intelligibility and listening difficulty for the aged sound source was shown to be 0 % ~ 5 % lower and 2 % ~ 20 % higher than those for the young sound source, respectively.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.39-47
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• 2016

While acoustic studies in the past decade documented a raised /o/ by showing their lowered first formants (F1) almost overlapped with those of high back vowel /u/, no consensus has been made in terms of how this /o/-raising affects the vowels as a system in Seoul Korean. The current study aimed to investigate the age- and gender-related differences of the relative distance among the vowels to better understand the influence of this on-going sound change on the vowel system. We measured the static and dynamic spectral characteristics (F1 and F2) of the seven Korean monophthong vowels /e a ʌ o u ɨ i/ in the spontaneous speech of Seoul Corpus, and depicted the patterns of 30 individual speakers (10 speakers in each group of teens, 20s and 40s) as a function of age and gender. The static spectral examination showed low F1 values of /o/ in the spontaneous speech corpus confirming the vowel /o/ raising, and also revealed greater F2 values of /u, ɨ/ suggesting their anterior articulations. The tendencies were stronger when the speakers were younger and female. The spectral trajectories further showed that the F1 and F2 between /o/ and /u/ were differentiated throughout the vowel mid-point although the trajectories gradually merged near the vowel mid point in the older male speakers' productions. The acoustic evidence of contrast among /o, u, ɨ/ supports that the raised /o/ is not indicative of a merger with /u/ but rather implying a chain-like vowel shift in the Seoul Korean.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.335-345
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• 2013

The present study investigates the effect of the inter-aural level difference(ILD) on the syllable articulation test in classrooms which can be occurred by the absorption of interior surfaces. In order to do this, the sound absorbing materials were installed in the classroom and sound pressure level(SPL) at each ear was measured using binaural recording systems. Also, syllable articulation tests were carried out at a classroom with and without sound absorption materials by 20 students who have normal hearing condition, in order to investigates the effect of the ILD on the speech intelligibility. As a result, it was found that the larger inter-aural level differences was occurred at the nearer positions to lateral walls after sound absorptions were applied to lateral walls in the classroom. At some places, the measured ILD was lager than JND of sound level (3dB). Also, it was shown that the correlation coefficient of inter-aural level difference with the score of syllable test has the significant result(-0.441). Thus, It is concluded that ILD can affect the subjective speech intelligibility in classrooms.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.87-97
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• 2002

The purpose of this study is to analyze the speech duration in Korean-speaking aphasics. Five patients with nonfluent aphasia (2 with traumatic brain injury and 3 with strokes) and five normal adults participated in this experiment. The mean age in patients with nonfluent aphasia was $45.8\pm2.3$ years and $47.4\pm2.3$ years for the normal adults. The Computerized Speech Lab was used to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of the subjects. Voice onset time, vowel duration, total duration, hold and consonant duration were evaluated for the monosyllabic and the polysyllabic words. The patients with nonfluent aphasia did not show the voicing bar on hold area, however, it was seen in the normal persons in the intervocalic position. Explosion duration of glottalized stops in the intervocalic position was significantly prolonged in nonfluent aphasics in comparison with the normal persons. This suggestes that the laryngeal adjustment is disturbed in these patients. Consonant duration, vowel duration, and total duration of the polysyllabic words were significantly longer in the patients with nonfluent aphasia than those of the normal persons. These results demonstrate the disturbances in controlling articulatory muscles during sound production in patients with nonfluent aphasia. The objective and quantitative analysis based on the acoustic characteristics of nonfluent aphasics, will be very useful in therapeutic planning and on the the effects of speech therapy.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.53 no.9
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• pp.834-839
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• 2010

Purpose: This study investigates Korean speech sound development, including articulatory error patterns, among the Japanese-Korean children whose mothers are Japanese immigrants to Korea. Methods: The subjects were 28 Japanese-Korean children with normal development born to Japanese women immigrants who lived in Jeonbuk province, Korea. They were assessed through Computerized Speech Lab 4500. The control group consisted of 15 Korean children who lived in the same area. Results: The values of the voice onset time of consonants /$p^h$/, /t/, /$t^h$/, and/$k^*$/ among the children were prolonged. The children replaced the lenis sounds with aspirated or fortis sounds rather than replacing the fortis sounds with lenis or aspirated sounds, which are typical among Japanese immigrants. The children showed numerous articulatory errors for /c/ and /I/ sounds (similar to Koreans) rather than errors on /p/ sounds, which are more frequent among Japanese immigrants. The vowel formants of the children showed a significantly prolonged vowel /o/ as compared to that of Korean children ($P$<0.05). The Japanese immigrants and their children showed a similar substitution /n/ for /ɧ/ [Japanese immigrants (62.5%) vs Japanese-Korean children (14.3%)], which is rarely seen among Koreans. Conclusion: The findings suggest that Korean speech sound development among Japanese-Korean children is influenced not only by the Korean language environment but also by their maternal language. Therefore, appropriate language education programs may be warranted not only or immigrant women but also for their children.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Educational Facilities
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.5-14
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• 2004

Since 1990s in Korea, elementary school classrooms have been designed toward open education system in pursuit of variety of educational purpose. Also, the architectural designs of schools have been acomplished for individual school not based on the standard design code. The present paper aims to investigate the acoustic environment of existing classrooms and to compare the sound insulation capacity between the ordinary classrooms and the newly built classrooms for open education. The current acoustical situation of elementary classrooms was analyzed using field measurements and questionnaire survey. In order to this, Three elementary schools were selected which were built in 1978, 1996 and 2000 respectively. Room acoustical parameters including Reverberation time(RT), Definition(D50), Speech Intelligibility(RASTI), Transmission loss(TL) and STC were measured in a classroom in each elementary school classroom. Each measurement was undertaken with the windows and doors being open or closed. As the result, it was found that the transmission loss between rooms in open classrooms is, $5{\sim}6dB$ in average, inferior than the ordinary classrooms. The RASTI of 0.70 was measured in newly built classrooms which is better than old classrooms(0.70) and open classrooms(0.73). This was shown as same in the speech definition measurements. This results from the condition of sealing and airtightness of classrooms and floor materials. The results denote that open classrooms have poor acoustic condition in sound insulation and speech intelligibility.