• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.193-206
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• 2002

The aim of this study is to find out how the labiovelar onglide /w/ in English kwV sequences that have minimal pairs with kV sequences is pronounced differently among Korean EFL learners based on acoustic evidence. This study tries to identify /w/ sound in English kwV sequences through spectrograms and to examine the duration ratios of each segment in kwV words to compare the patterns of an English native speaker with those of Korean speakers of English. In spectrographic analyses, the complete deletion of /w/ and partial pronunciation of /w/ dubbed [$k^{w}$] were identified as well as the targetappropriate production of /w/. The general production patterns with respect to the duration ratios in English [kw] sequence words showed that the subjects who produced /w/ had similar ratio patterns that the native speaker had in that the vowel duration ratio in kwV sequences was shorter than that in kV sequences. By contrast, the subjects who deleted [w] had a long ratio of the onset [$k^{h}$] while the speaker with a partial pronunciation of /w/ had a long ratio of the following vowel.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.53-61
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• 2011

The present work is a follow-up study to that of Han, Choi, Lim and Lee (2011), where an asymmetry in the source segments eliciting the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB) was found such that the vowels which did not match any vowel of the Korean language were likely to elicit more ISIB than matched vowels. In order to identify the source of the stronger ISIB in non-matched vowels, acoustic analyses of the stimuli were performed. Two pairs of English front vowels [i] vs. [I], and $[{\varepsilon}]$ vs. $[{\ae}]$ were recorded by English native talkers and two groups of Korean learners according to their English proficiency, and then their vowel duration and the frequencies of the first two formants (F1, F2) were measured. The results demonstrated that the non-matched vowels such as [I], and $[{\ae}]$ produced by Korean talkers seemed to show more deviated acoustic characteristics from those of the natives, with longer duration and with closer formant values to the matched vowels, [i] and $[{\varepsilon}]$, than those of the English natives. Combining the results of acoustic measurements in the present study and those of word identification in Han et al. (2011), we suggest that relatively better performance in word identification by Korean talkers/listeners than the native English talkers/listeners is associated with the shared interlanguage of Korean talkers and listeners.

• MALSORI
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• no.65
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• pp.13-36
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• 2008

This paper attempts to analyze the characteristics of Korean vowel production by 12 Korean native speakers and 36 adult learners. The analyses have been performed with investigations of F1and F2 values. Results showed that there's no significant difference between /ㅔ/ and /H/ and between /ㅗ/ and /ㅜ/ in Korean native speakers' pronunciations. The distinguishing tendencies found in the analyses of foreign learners' pronunciations are fronting and lowering of /ㅗ/ by English speakers, backing and heightening of /ㅓ/ by Japanese speakers and backing and lowering of /ㅏ/ by Chinese speakers. For the limitations of this paper, it has a meaning of a preliminary study and could be developed into further research to show the order of acquisition and L1 transference.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.25-28
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• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to represent values of acoustic cues for Korean oral stops in the multi-dimensional space, and to attempt to find possible relationships among acoustic cues through correlation coefficient analyses. The acoustic cues used for differentiation of 3 types of Korean stops are closure duration, voice onset time and fundamental frequency of a vowel after a stop. The values of these cues are plotted in the two and three dimensional space and see what the critical cues are for complete separation of different types of stops. Correlation coefficient analyses show that there are statistically significant relationships among acoustic cues but they are not strong enough to make a conjecture that there is a possible articulatory relationship among the mechanisms employed by the acoustic cues.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.27-34
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• 2017

The purpose of this work is to examine the English and Korean voiceless plosives from the Buckeye[15] and Seoul[16] corpus in terms of their static spectral characteristics. The plosives were automatically extracted by a Praat script. In order to estimate the percent correctness in the classification of the plosives, discriminant analyses were performed whose trainings were based on four spectral moments, i.e. the center of gravity, variance, skewness and kurtosis as suggested in [6]. Another set of discriminant analyses were performed based on the spectral tilts. In the last set of analyeses, the spectral moments and tilts were both used in the training. Results showed that the correct classification rate did not exceed around 65% in the best case, which suggested that phonetic cues other than the release burst would be necessary including the dynamic spectral aspects and vowel-onset cues.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2005

The phenomenon of vocal vibrato may be regarded as an acoustic representation of one of the most rapid and continuous changes in pitch and intensity that the human vocal mechanism is capable of producing. Singers are likely to use vibrato effectively to enrich their voice. The purpose of this study was to obtain acoustic measurements (vF0 and vAm) of 45 subjects (15 trot and 15 ballad singers and 15 non-singers) and to compare acoustic measurements of the vowel /a/ produced by 3 groups on 2 voice sampling conditions (prolongation and singing of /a/). Thirty singers of trot and ballad were selected by a producer and a concert director working for the KBS (Korean Broadcasting System). The MDVP was used to measure the acoustic parameters. A two-way MANOVA was used for statistical analyses. The results were as follows; Firstly, there was no significant difference among the 3 groups in vF0 and vAm in prolongation of /a/, but in singing voice, there was a significant difference among 3 groups in vF0 and vAm. Secondly, there was an interaction between music genre and voice sampling condition in vF0, and vAm. Finally, trot singers sing with more vibrato than ballad singers. It was concluded that it is very important to analyze singers' voice including various voice conditions (prolongation, reading, conversation, and singing) and to identify differences of singing voice characteristics among music genre.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.31-49
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• 1988

This study was performed to investigate the sound distortion following the alternation of the palatal plate thickness, for this study, 3 subjects who were born in Seoul and spoke Seoul dialect were recruited from K university male student population. First, their sounds of /아(a)/, 어(e)/, 오(o)/, 우(u)/, 으($\.{+}$), 이(i)/,에(e)/ without inserting plate were recorded , and then the sounds with palatal plates of different thickness were recorded, respectively. The palatal plates was constructed to cover the alveolar & palatal surfaces of the maxilla with an approximate thickness of 1.0mm, 2.5mm, and thickness of 2.5mm over the alveolar ridge & 1.0mm elsewhere and, named B, C, D-type, in succession. Series of analysis were administered through Computer (16 bit IBM PC/AT) at analyze the sound distortions. These experiments were analyzed by the LPC, Log Area Ratio. The findings led to the following conclusions: 1. Sound distortions were relatively minute in each condition and informations, however, /이(i)/ was the most distorted vowel in all conditions. 2. By and large, sound distortion was large in C, D-types. However, there was no correlation of the distortion rate on the 3 informants, and all tested vowels. 3. It was similar to LPC, Log Area Ratio distortion rates. 4. It was found that the sound distortion wit]1 plate inserted was verified to the numeric value with LPC and Log Area Ratio method.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.91-99
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• 2018

Korean stops are currently undergoing a tonogenetic sound change, as found in the Seoul dialect in which a merged VOT of aspirated and lax stops induces F0 to be the primary cue for distinguishing the two stops and the lax stops have lower F0 than the aspirated stops. In tonal languages, low tone is produced with a breathy voice. This study investigated whether there are changes in voice quality with respect to the tonogenetic sound change of Korean stops. Two age groups speaking the Seoul dialect participated in this study: five females and six males born in the 1940s and 1950s and nine females and eight males born in the 1980s and 1990s. This study replicated previous findings of VOT and F0 and further examined H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A2 to see how they correlate with the sound change. In the older and younger generations, H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A2 were significantly lower after the tense stops than after the aspirated and lax stops, but they were not significantly different after the aspirated and lax stops. However, the younger females exhibited some different results for H1-H2 and H1-A2 than the older generation. In the younger females, the H1-H2 mean was higher after the aspirated stops than it was after the lax stops at the vowel onset, and the H1-H2 difference increased at the vowel midpoint. Although there was an inter-speaker variation in the results of H1-H2 and H1-A1, analyses of individual speakers showed that the H1-H2 and H1-A1 were higher after the lax stops than after the aspirated stops in the younger female speakers. These results indicate that lax stops tend to be breathier than aspirated stops in the younger female speakers. They also indicate that changes in voice quality are on Korean stops with tonal sound change, but are still developing.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.121-128
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• 2005

This study was an attempt to determine acoustic characteristics in myna bird's notes. Two myna birds' sounds imitating a normal male voice in his late 20's were sampled and analyzed. The analyses included the mean values of F1, F2, F3 and pitch contours. The results were as follows; First, there was a significan difference in the mean values of F1, F2, and F3 in isolatd vowel /a/ and /i/ between the myna birds' sounds and the human voice. However, there was no apparent difference in pitch contour of their formants. Second, there was a difference in pitch contour of their formants in their sentence ('hn-nyung-ha-se-yo?' meaning 'How are you?') production. Namely, the myna birds' pitch contour was located higher than that of the human's.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.27 no.10
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• pp.138-145
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• 1990

This paper present a rule-based speech synthesis method for improving the naturalness of synthetic speech and using the small data base based on demisyllable units. A 12-pole Linear Prediction Coding method is used to analyses demisyllable speech signals. A syllable and vowel concatenation rule is developed to improve the naturalness and intelligibility of the synthetic speech. in addiion, phonological structure transform rule using neural net and prosody rules are applied to the synthetic speech.