• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.529-533
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• 1996

There are some similar phonological properties shared by different languages. The phenomenon of vowel length is just one of them which shows distinctive futures. In some languages long vowels serve to differentiate meanings. In that case the phonological context it creates is important and so it has to be incorporated into the phonemic inventory of the language, otherwise there will be misunderstanding. In this paper I will try to explain the Turkish vowel system as well as the Korean, and then to show how long vowels take their forms in Turkish and Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.119-127
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• 2010

Recently, we have launched a large-scale articulatory study to investigate how the three-way contrastive stops (i.e., lenis, fortis, and aspirated) in Korean are kinematically expressed (i.e., in terms of articulatory movement characteristics) in various contexts, using a magnetometer (Electromagnetic Articulography). In this paper, we report some preliminary results about how the three-way bilabial series /p,$p^h,p^*$/ produced in /Ca/ context in isolation are kinematically characterized not only during the lip closure but also during the following vocalic articulation. Some important notes could be made from the results. First, the degree of lip constriction (as measured by the lip aperture between the upper and lower lips) was smaller for the lenis /p/ and larger for the fortis/aspirated /$p^*,p^h$/, showing a two-way distinction during the closure. Second, the tongue lowering for the following vowel was more extreme after the lenis /p/ than after the fortis/aspirated /$p^*,p^h$/. Regarding this vocalic articulatory difference in the tongue height, we discussed the possibility that the articulatory tension associated with the fortis/aspirated stops is further reflected in the lingual vocalic movement maintaining the tongue position to a certain level for the following vowel /a/, while the lenis consonant does not impose such articulatory constraints, resulting in more tongue lowering. Finally, the temporal relationship between the release of the stop closure and the lowest tongue position of the following vowel remained constant, suggesting that CV coordination is invariantly maintained across the consonant type. This pattern was interpreted as supporting the view that the consonant and vowel gestures are coordinated in much the same way across languages.

• MALSORI
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• no.56
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• pp.75-101
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• 2005

This study investigated the articulatory and acoustic correlates of Korean /1/. In particular, direct comparison between Korean /1/ and English /1/ was made to evaluate the current assumption about Korean /1/ such that Korean /1/ is phonetically similar to English clear /1/. The present study revealed that Korea /1/ is different from English /1/ in several properties. First, F2 for Korean /1/ is around 600-700 Hz higher than F2 for English /1/. The overall higher F2 for Korean /1/ is attributed to the fact that Korean /1/ involves tongue body raising while it lacks a dorsal gesture. Second, F3 value for Korean /1/ becomes significantly lower when the preceeding vowel is a back vowel. This kind of variable F3 pattern was not observed in English /1/. The current study relates the F3 lowering to the retroflexion of Korean /1/ in the back vowel context.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2011

Formant structure of speech associated with five different emotions (anger, fear, happiness, neutral, sadness) was analysed. Acoustic separability of vowels (or emotions) associated with a specific emotion (or vowel) was estimated using F-ratio. According to the results, neutral showed the highest separability of vowels followed by anger, happiness, fear, and sadness in descending order. Vowel /A/ showed the highest separability of emotions followed by /U/, /O/, /I/ and /E/ in descending order. The acoustic results were interpreted and explained in the context of previous articulatory and perceptual studies. Suggestions for the performance improvement of an automatic emotion recognition system and automatic speech recognition system were made.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.81-91
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• 2003

The aim of this study was to estimate the target F2 values of the coronal plain stop in Korean and the degree of deviation from the target in the context of various vowels, and to compare the results of Korean regarding the coronal stop with those of English and French. An acoustic analysis showed that the mean F2 value of the Korean coronal stop produced by 10 male speakers was 1,855 Hz and the deviation from the target was 94 Hz in the context of [i], 204 Hz in the context of [u], and 407 Hz in the context of [o]. The target F2s of the coronal stop were the highest in English (1,929 Hz) and the lowest in French (1,662 Hz), and the deviation from the targets in the context of the high back vowel was the largest in French (257 Hz) and the smallest in English (73 Hz).

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.388-402
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• 2003

In this paper, we carried out the word, 4 continuous digits. continuous, and task-independent word recognition experiments to verify the effectiveness of the re-defined phoneme-likely units (PLUs) for the phonetic decision tree based HM-Net (Hidden Markov Network) context-dependent (CD) acoustic modeling in Korean appropriately. In case of the 48 PLUs, the phonemes /ㅂ/, /ㄷ/, /ㄱ/ are separated by initial sound, medial vowel, final consonant, and the consonants /ㄹ/, /ㅈ/, /ㅎ/ are also separated by initial sound, final consonant according to the position of syllable, word, and sentence, respectively. In this paper. therefore, we re-define the 39 PLUs by unifying the one phoneme in the separated initial sound, medial vowel, and final consonant of the 48 PLUs to construct the CD acoustic models effectively. Through the experimental results using the re-defined 39 PLUs, in word recognition experiments with the context-independent (CI) acoustic models, the 48 PLUs has an average of 7.06%, higher recognition accuracy than the 39 PLUs used. But in the speaker-independent word recognition experiments with the CD acoustic models, the 39 PLUs has an average of 0.61% better recognition accuracy than the 48 PLUs used. In the 4 continuous digits recognition experiments with the liaison phenomena. the 39 PLUs has also an average of 6.55% higher recognition accuracy. And then, in continuous speech recognition experiments, the 39 PLUs has an average of 15.08% better recognition accuracy than the 48 PLUs used too. Finally, though the 48, 39 PLUs have the lower recognition accuracy, the 39 PLUs has an average of 1.17% higher recognition characteristic than the 48 PLUs used in the task-independent word recognition experiments according to the unknown contextual factor. Through the above experiments, we verified the effectiveness of the re-defined 39 PLUs compared to the 48PLUs to construct the CD acoustic models in this paper.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.521-528
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• 1996

This presentation explores on the perceptual characteristics of the lateral sound /l/ in CV syllables. At initial position we found that /l/ has well marked formant transitions. Then several questions arise: 1) are these formant structures dependent on the following vowel\ulcorner. 2) Are the formant transitions giving an additional cue for the identification\ulcorner Considering that the French vocalic system presents a greater variety of vowels than Spanish, several experiments were designed to verify to what extent a more extensive range of vocalic timbres contribute to the perception of /l/. Natural emissions of /l/ produced in Argentine Spanish and Canadian French CV syllables were recorded, where V was successively /i, e, a, o, u/ for Spanish and /i, e, $\varepsilon$, a, $\alpha$, o, u, y, \phi$/ for French. For each item, the segment C was maintained and V was replaced by cutting & splicing by each of the remaining vowels without transitions. Results of the identification tests for Spanish show that natural /l/ segments with low Fl and high formants F3, F4 can be clearly identified in the /i, e, u/ vowel contexts without transitions. For French subjects the combination of /l/ with a vowel without transitions reflected correct identifications for its own original vowel context in /e, $\varepsilon$, y, $\phi$/. For both languages, in all these combinations, F1 values remained rather steady along the syllable. In the case of /o, u/ very likely the F2 difference lead to a variety of perceptions of the original /l/. For example in Ilul, French subjects reported some identifications of /l/ as a vowel, mainly /y/. Our observations reinforce the importance of F1 as a relevant cue for /l/, and the incidence of the relative distance between formants frequencies of both components.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.85-94
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• 2020

Vowel articulation in subjects related to speech disorders seems to be difficult. A chant method that properly reflects the characteristics of language could be used as an effective way of addressing the difficulties. The purpose of this study was to find out whether the chant method is effective as a means of enhancing vowel articulation. The subjects of this study were 60 normal adults (30 males and 30 females) in their 20s and 30s whose native language is Korean. Eight utterance conditions including chanting and reading conditions were recorded and their acoustic data were analyzed. The results of the analysis of the acoustic variables related to the formant confirmed that the F1 and F2 values of the vowel formants are increased and the direction of movement of the center of gravity of the vowel triangle is statistically significantly forwarded and lowered in the chant method in both the word and the phrase context. The results also proved that accent is the most influential musical factor in chant. There was no significant difference between four repeated tokens, which increased the reliability of the results. In other words, chanting is an effective way to shift the center of gravity of the vowel triangle, which suggests that it can help to improve speech intelligibility by forming a desirable place for articulation.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.217-232
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• 2000

In this study, I investigate the role of post-consonantal fundamental frequency (F0) as a cue for automatic distinction of types of Korean stops and affricates. Rather than examining data obtained by restricting contexts to a minimum to prevent the interference of irrelevant factors, a relatively natural speaker independent speech corpus is analysed. Automatic and statistical approaches are adopted to annotate data, to minimise speaker variability, and to evaluate the results. In spite of possible loss of information during those automatic analyses, statistics obtained suggest that vowel F0 is a useful cue for distinguishing manners of articulation of Korean non-continuant obstruents having the same place of articulation, especially of lax and aspirated stops and affricates. On the basis of the statistics, automatic classification is attempted over the relevant consonants in a specific context where the micro-prosodic effects appear to be maximised. The results confirm the usefulness of this effect in application for Korean phone recognition.