• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.83-95
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• 2006

This study attempts to suggest a criterion of Korean language development. For this purpose we investigated speaking rates of the spontaneous utterances produced by 144 children, aged 3 to 8. We analyzed each subject's speaking rate and its relevance with speaker's age, gender and utterance length. To determine the relative contributions of variables to the speaking rate, multiple regression was conducted. Results of this study can be summarized as follows: (1) The mean and maximum values of the speaking rate increased with the growth of age. (2) A statistically significant increase in speaking rate appeared at two-year intervals. (3) There was no significant difference between male and female groups in the speaking rate. (4) The multiple regression analysis has shown that along with the speaker's age, the utterance length(the mean number of syllables per utterance) is also important in estimating the speaking rates.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.27-39
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• 2017

This paper deals with how speech rate in Korean is affected by the sociolinguistic factors such as region, gender and generation. Speech rate was quantified as articulation rate (excluding physical pauses) and speaking rate (including physical pauses), both expressed as the number of syllables per second (sps). Other acoustic measures such as pause frequency and duration were also examined. Four hundred twelve subjects were chosen from Korean Standard Speech Database considering their age, gender and region. The result shows that generation has a significant effect on both speaking rate and articulation rate. Younger speakers produce their speech with significantly faster speaking rate and articulation rate than older speakers. Mean duration of total pause interval and the total number of pause of older speakers are also significantly different to those of younger speakers. Gender has a significant effect only on articulation rate, which means male speakers' speech rate is characterized by faster articulation rate, longer and more frequent pauses. Finally, region has no effect both on speaking and articulation rates.