• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.957-963
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• 2007

In this paper, Nonlinear Autoregressive (NAR) method based on Least Square-Support Vector Regression (LS-SVR) is introduced and tested for nonlinear sustained vowel modeling. In the database of total 43 sustained vowel of Benign Vocal Fold Lesions having aperiodic waveform, this nonlinear synthesizer near perfectly reproduced chaotic sustained vowels, and also conserved the naturalness of sound such as jitter, compared to Linear Predictive Coding does not keep these naturalness. However, the results of some phonation are quite different from the original sounds. These results are assumed that single-band model can not afford to control and decompose the high frequency components. Therefore multi-band model with wavelet filterbank is adopted for substituting single band model. As a results, multi-band model results in improved stability. Finally, nonlinear sustained vowel modeling using NAR based on LS-SVR can successfully reconstruct synthesized sounds nearly similar to original voiced sounds.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2013

During adolescence the mutational period is characterized by the changes in the laryngeal structure, the length of the vocal cords, and a tone of voice. Usually, adolescents at 15 or 16 reach the voice of adults but the mutational period is sometimes delayed. Therefore, studies on the voice of adolescents between 16 ~ 18 right after the mutational period are required. Accordingly, this paper attempted to provide basic data about the normal standard for patients with voice disorders during this period by evaluating the vocal characteristics of males and females between 16 ~ 18 with an objective device bycomparing and analyzing them by sex and age. The study was conducted on a total of 60 subjects composed of each 10 subjects of each age. The vocal analysis was conducted by MPT (Maximum Phonation Time) measurement, sustained vowels and sentence reading. As for /a/ sustained vowels, fundamental frequency, hereinafter referred to as $F_0$, jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonic ratio, hereinafter referred to as NHR were measured by using the Multi-dimensional voice program (MDVP) among the Multi-Speech program of Computerized Speech Lab (Kay Elemetrics). The sentence reading, mean $F_0$, maximum $F_0$ and minimum $F_0$ were measured using the Real-Time Pitch (RTP) Model 5121 among the Multi-Speech program of Computerized Speech Lab (Kay Elemetrics). As a result, according to sex, there were statistically significant differences in $F_0$, jitter, shimmer, mean $F_0$, maximum $F_0$, and minimum $F_0$; and according to age, there were statistically significant differences in MPT. In conclusion, the voice of the adolescents between 16 ~ 18 reached the maturity levels of adults but the voice quality which can be considered on the scale of voice disorders showed transition to the voice of an adult during the mutational period.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.133-140
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• 2004

Background and Objectives : Vowels and resonant including nasals and liquid are produced with vocal folds vibration have been used for voice therapy of hyperadduction patients. This study was conducted to investigate phonatory characteristics of vowels and resonant consonants through the EGG measures from Lx. Speech studio (Laryngograph Ltd, UK). Materials and Method : 7 male adults produced sustained vowel /a/, /i/, /u/, nasals /m/, /n/, /${\eta}$/and liquid /I/ and read the sentences (1nasals-liquid sentence, 1 non-nasals-liquid sentence) and tongue-tip trill and humming. Fx(Hz), Ox(%) were obtained of vowels, nasals, liquid and each of the posterior vowel /a/ of /ma/, /na/, /la/, /ha/ with same F0(around F#165Hz) and amplitude (75${\pm}$5db). And also DFx(Hz), DQx(%), CFx(%) and CAx(%) were obtained from reading two kinds of sentences. Results : Qx(%) was the highest in /u/ of vowels, and nasal/n/ of the resonant consonants and nasals-liquid sentence was higher Qx than non-nasals-liquid sentence but significant differences were not found. Qx(%) of the posterior vowel /a/ of nasal consonants/n/ was higher than in the isolated vowel/a/ and other posterior vowel of resonant consonants and fricatives /h/. Regularity or periodicity and higher Qx were observed in the nasals-liquid sentence than non-nasals-liquid sentence in graphs of QxFx & CFx produced by Quantiative analysis. In the nasalance score, /u/vowel was significant higher among the vowels and /I/ liquid was significant lower among the resonant consonants and nasals-liquid sentence is higher than non-nasals -liquid sentence. CQ(%) was not significantly correlated with nasalance(%). Conclusion : These findings might signify resonant phonation was not correlated with nasalance.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.129-143
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• 2003

Fundamental frequency (Fo), jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (NHR) have been measured to see their interactions between the parameters using Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP). 100 Korean normal adults (50 males and 50 females) ranging from their early 20's to their early 30's produced the eight sustained vowels including /a/, /i/, /u/, /c/, /e/,/$\varepsilon$/, /i/, and /e/. The subjects were asked to read the above vowels five times in isolation with the interval of five seconds, respectively. Male voices, on the average, showed 130.7 Hz in Fo, 0.6696% in jitter, 1.8151% in shimmer, and 0.12 in NHR, while female voices showed 232.8 Hz in Fo, 0.9222% in jitter, 1.9199% in shimmer, and 0.1098 in NHR. As to the correlation coefficient, it was found that for male speakers jitter vs. shimmer, shimmer vs. NHR, Fo vs. shimmer, and Fo vs. NHR are statistically significant. It was found that for female subjects jitter vs. shimmer and Fo vs. shimmer are statistically significant. However, it is concluded that the correlation coefficient in females are not meaningful in a practical way though they are all statistically significant.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.71-78
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to compare the acoustic voice outcomes of children with cochlear implant to those of children with normal hearing. Participants were 41 children using unilateral cochlear implant (18 males and 23 females), and children with normal hearing from the same age and sex. Mean age of implantation was approximately 3 years old, mean duration of implant use was 4 years in CI group. Acoustic analyses were performed using MDVP of CSL. Speech samples were 3 sustained vowels, /a, i, u/. 9 parameters (F0, Fhi, Flo, Jitter, Shimmer, vF0, vAm, NHR, and SPI) were analyzed. Children with CI did not show the significant differences in those parameters after the vowel /a/ phonation. Meanwhile, there were significantly different results in F0, Fhi, vF0, and SPI after /i, u/ phonation. These results revealed that differences of voice characteristics in children with CI compare to children with NH persist regarding vowel context. It suggests that high vowels would recommend as speech samples for acoustic evaluation. Futhermore perceptual analysis and speech therapy for phonation control would be necessary for children with CI.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.69-89
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• 1998

The aim of this study is to develop an objectively method of speech evaluation for children with cleft palates. To assess velopharyngeal function, Visi-Pitch, Computerized Speech Lab. (CSL), Nasometer and Palatometer were used for this study. Acoustic parameters were measured depending on the diagnostic instruments: Pitch (Hz), sound pressure level (dB), jitter (%) and diadochokinetic rate by Visi-Pitch, VOT and vowels formant ($F_1\;&\;F_2$) by a Spectrography and the degree of hypernasality by Nasometer. In addition, Palatometer was used to find the lingual-palatal patterns of cleft palate. Ten children with cleft palates and fifty normal children participated in the experiment. The results are as follows: (1) Higher nasalance of children with cleft palates showed the resonance disorder. (2) The cleft palate showed palatal misarticulation and lateral misarticulation on the palatogram. (3) Children with cleft palates showed the phonatory and respiratory problems. The duration of sustained vowels in children with cleft palates was shorter than in the control groups. The pitch of children with cleft palates was higher than in the control groups. However, intensity, jitter and diadochokinetic rate of children with cleft palates were lower than in the control group. (4) On the Spectrogram, the VOT of children with cleft palates was longer than control group. $F_1\;&\;F_2$ were lower than in the control group.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.135-142
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• 2001

The present study was performed to investigate adequate levels of utterances which can give essential as well as useful information about the patients' voice, by examining the degrees of correlation between the levels of utterances (vowels, words, and phrase paragraph reading) and the entire utterance including all of the levels. For this purpose, a total of 10 individual utterance samples (5 vowels, 3 words, 1 phrase, 1 paragraph reading) were collected from each of the 30 subjects with voice disorder patients, and four experienced voice therapists evaluated them using GRBAS. The results showed that four therapists highly agreed upon on 'G' parameter. The coefficient of the correlation between each level of utterance and entire utterance tended to be above 0.70. Judgements of the vowel /$\varepsilon$/ as well as /o/ highly correlated with the judgement of the entire utterance. Regardless of severity, the judgement of the entire utterance highly correlated with the judgements of the vowel /u/ and the paragraph reading. These results suggest that experienced voice therapists can precisely evaluate patients' voice quality with only one sustained vowel in the clinic field, as is done with the entire utterance evaluation.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.189-200
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• 2003

The objective of this study was to examine two new parameters by which we could screen people with malignant vocal folds. The new parameters were the difference sums and Pearson correlation coefficients between adjacent pairs of intensity level matrices of narrow-band spectra. Audio files from the Korean Disordered Speech Database were analyzed by Praat, a speech analysis software, to obtain matrices of 400 intensity levels at 16 time points of each sustained vowel spectra. We limited our study to 12 normal subjects and 20 patients with malignant vocal folds who recorded at least three Korean vowels at a sound-proofed booth in Busan National University Hospital. Results indicated that the average coefficients of the abnormal subjects were much lower than those of the normal subjects while the average difference sums of the patients were much higher than those of the normal ones. Also, we found that the degree of the malignancy of the vocal folds was related to the coefficients and sums. However, some subjects at the initial stages of cancerous vocal folds yielded almost comparable coefficients and difference sums to those of the normal speakers. Further studies on larger databases will be desirable to set certain criteria or threshold levels for screening people with vocal fold diseases.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.61-70
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• 2012

The current study observes the durational interaction of tautosyllabic consonants and vowels in the word-initial position of English and Korean child-directed speech (CDS). The effect of phonological laryngeal contrasts in stops on the following vowel duration, and the effect of the intrinsic vowel duration on the release duration of preceding stops in addition to the acoustic realization of the contrastive segments are explored in different prosodic contexts - phrase-initial/medial, focal accented/non-focused - in a marked speech style of CDS. A trade-off relationship between Voice Onset Time (VOT), as consonant release duration, and voicing phonation time, as vowel duration, reported from adult-to-adult speech, and patterns of durational variability are investigated in CDS of two languages with different linguistic rhythms, under systematically controlled prosodic contexts. Speech data were collected from four native English mothers and four native Korean mothers who were talking to their one-word staged infants. In addition to the acoustic measurements, the transformed delta measure is employed as a variability index of individual tokens. Results confirm the durational correlation between prevocalic consonants and following vowels. The interaction is revealed in a compensatory pattern such as longer VOTs followed by shorter vowel durations in both languages. An asymmetry is found in CV interaction in that the effect of consonant on vowel duration is greater than the VOT differences induced by the vowel. Prosodic effects are found such that the acoustic difference is enhanced between the contrastive segments under focal accent, supporting the paradigmatic strengthening effect. Positional variation, however, does not show any systematic effects on the variations of the measured acoustic quantities. Overall vowel duration and syllable duration are longer in English tokens but involve less variability across the prosodic variations. The constancy of syllable duration, therefore, is not found to be more strongly sustained in Korean CDS. The stylistic variation is discussed in relation to the listener under linguistic development in CDS.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.33-38
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• 2007

Background and Objectives: It has been suggested that tonsillectomy possibly causes changes of voice because the morphology of the vocal tract is altered. This may cause serious problems for professional voice users. Materials and Method: Subjects were 26 patients. The oral and nasal sound spectrum of oral vowel /a/, /e/ and /i/ were measured before and after tonsillectomy. The formant frequencies and intensities for oral and nasal spectra were compared. The nasality and fundamental frequencies for oral vowel were measured. Results: The first formant frequencies for oral spectra of all vowels were not changed after surgery, but the second formant frequencies were increased significantly after surgery in the vowel /e/ and /i/. The first and second formant intensities for oral spectra were increased significantly after surgery in the all vowels. The first and second formant frequencies for nasal spectra of all vowels were not changed after surgery, but their intensities for nasal spectra were increased after surgery. The nasalities for oral vowel were not changed after surgery. Conclusion : Tonsillectomy appeared to change the spectral features of oral and nasal components of oral vowel, especially spectral intensities.