• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권3호
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• pp.161-169
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of speech intelligibility of spontaneous speech and the vowel space parameters in patients with Parkinson's disease. Ten PD patients (M=5, F=5) and a corresponding control group of ten normal adults participated in this study. Firstly, subjects were asked to tell a story about their hometown and youth in order to analyze speech intelligibility. Secondly, the subjects were also asked to repeat four vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/) five times in order to compare their vowel spaces. The results were as follows: (1) the speech intelligibility of the PD group was lower than that of the control group. (2) Four parameters including vowel area, vowel articulatory index, formant centralization ratio, F2i/F1u ratio were significantly different in each group. For instance, vowel area and F2 ratio were wider and higher, respectively. As a result, a decrease in speech intelligibility of patients with PD is likely to show different types of errors from the normal group. The results of this research are meaningful in a sense that they could provide the objective standard of speech intelligibility and vowel space parameters.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.85-96
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of articulatory intervention using visual phonics to improve the speech intelligibility of children with impaired hearing. The subjects of the study were five hearing impaired children. As per the results of the UTAP articulation tests, five phonemes with the most frequent errors were selected for each child and a total of 10 sessions were provided. The methodology involved analyzing vowel space and related measures (vowel space area, vowel articulatory index, formant centralization ratio, and F2i/F2u ratio) before and after the visual phonics intervention. After the articulation intervention, every child's speech intelligibility improved, their vowel space area was widened, the FCR value decreased, and the F2ratio value increased. These results show that the use of visual phonics through symbolic images and hand clues has a positive effect in terms of improving the speech intelligibility of children with impaired hearing.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.185-192
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• 2010

The acoustic vowel space has been used as an acoustic parameter in dysarthric speech. The aim of this work was to examine mathematical formulae for acoustic vowel space and to apply these to Korean speakers with idiopathic Parkinson's disease(IPD). Five acoustic parameters were chosen from earlier works and one new parameter was proposed, the pentagonal vowel space. The six parameters included triangular vowel space (3 area), irregular quadrilateral vowel space (4 area), irregular pentagonal vowel space (5 area), vowel articulatory index (VAI), formant centralization ratio (FCR) and F2i/F1u ratio (F2 ratio). An experimental group of 32 IPD patients(male:female=16:16) and a control group of twenty healthy people (male:female=8:12) participated in the study and repeated vowels (/a-i-u-e-o/) three times. A correlation analysis was performed among the six parameters, 2-way ANOVA was done with gender and groups as independent factors, and an independent sample t-test was conducted between the male and the female group as post hoc comparison. All parameters were highly correlated with each other and only the FCR showed a high negative correlation with the others. The results of ANOVA showed a significant difference in F2 ratio, 3 area, 4 area and 5 area between gender and in 4 area and 5 area between groups. For the male members of the two groups, significant statistical differences were found in all parameters whereas no such differences were found for the female members. These findings indicated that the vowel space of the female group was wider than the vowel space of the male group. These differences may have been caused by gender-specific speech styles rather than by patho-physiological mechanisms. We also claim that the pentagonal vowel space is better than the other vowel spaces at representing the disordered speech in natural speech situations.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.51-59
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• 2016

The purpose of present study is to examine differences between habitual speech (HS) and clear speech (CS) in individuals with mild dysarthria. Twelve speakers with mild dysarthria and twelve healthy control speakers read sentences in two speaking styles. Formant and intensity related values, triangular area, and center of gravity of /a/, /i/, and /u/ were measured. In addition, formant-ratio variables such as vowel space area(VSA), vowel articulatory index (VAI), formant centralization ratio (FCR) and F2i/F1u ratio (F2 ratio) were calculated. The results of repeated-measures ANOVA showed a significant difference in F2 of vowel /i/ and F2 energy of vowel /a/ between groups. Regarding formant energy, F2 energy of vowel /a/ were observed as meaningful variables between speaking styles. There were significant speaking style-by-group interactions for F2 energy of vowel /a/. These findings indicated that current parameters could discriminate healthy group and mild dysarthria group meaningfully and that speaker with dysarthria had larger clear speech benefit than healthy talkers. We also claim that various acoustic changes of clear speech may contribute to improving vowel intelligibility.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제13권2호
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• pp.57-66
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• 2021

본 논문은 말 명료도 기준의 마비말장애 중증도 자동 분류 문제에 초점을 둔다. 말 명료도는 호흡, 발성, 공명, 조음, 운율 등 다양한 말 기능 특징의 영향을 받는다. 그러나 대부분의 선행연구는 한 개의 말 기능 특징만을 중증도 자동분류에 사용하였다. 본 논문에서는 음성의 장애 특성을 효과적으로 포착하기 위해 마비말장애 중증도 자동 분류에서 음질, 운율, 발음의 다양한 말 기능 특징을 반영하고자 하였다. 음질은 jitter, shimmer, HNR, voice breaks 개수, voice breaks 정도로 구성된다. 운율은 발화 속도(전체 길이, 말 길이, 말 속도, 조음 속도), 음높이(F0 평균, 표준편차, 최솟값, 최댓값, 중간값, 25 사분위값, 75 사분위값), 그리고 리듬(% V, deltas, Varcos, rPVIs, nPVIs)을 포함한다. 발음에는 음소 정확도(자음 정확도, 모음 정확도, 전체 음소 정확도)와 모음 왜곡도[VSA(vowel space area), FCR (formant centralized ratio), VAI(vowel articulatory index), F2 비율]가 있다. 본 논문에서는 다양한 특징 조합을 사용하여 중증도 자동 분류를 시행하였다. 실험 결과, 음질, 운율, 발음 특징 세 가지 말 기능 특징 모두를 분류에 사용했을 때 F1-score 80.15%로 가장 높은 성능이 나타났다. 이는 마비말장애 중증도 자동 분류에는 음질, 운율, 발음 특징이 모두 함께 고려되어야 함을 시사한다.