• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.57-66
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• 2021

This study focuses on the issue of automatic severity classification of dysarthric speakers based on speech intelligibility. Speech intelligibility is a complex measure that is affected by the features of multiple speech dimensions. However, most previous studies are restricted to using features from a single speech dimension. To effectively capture the characteristics of the speech disorder, we extracted features of multiple speech dimensions: voice quality, prosody, and pronunciation. Voice quality consists of jitter, shimmer, Harmonic to Noise Ratio (HNR), number of voice breaks, and degree of voice breaks. Prosody includes speech rate (total duration, speech duration, speaking rate, articulation rate), pitch (F0 mean/std/min/max/med/25quartile/75 quartile), and rhythm (%V, deltas, Varcos, rPVIs, nPVIs). Pronunciation contains Percentage of Correct Phonemes (Percentage of Correct Consonants/Vowels/Total phonemes) and degree of vowel distortion (Vowel Space Area, Formant Centralized Ratio, Vowel Articulatory Index, F2-Ratio). Experiments were conducted using various feature combinations. The experimental results indicate that using features from all three speech dimensions gives the best result, with a 80.15 F1-score, compared to using features from just one or two speech dimensions. The result implies voice quality, prosody, and pronunciation features should all be considered in automatic severity classification of dysarthria.

• MALSORI
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• no.35_36
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• pp.121-129
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• 1998

In this paper, articulatory simulator 'Artsim' is used as a tool for the experiments to examine the articulatory characteristics of 6 different vowels. Each vowels are defined by some articulatory points from their vocal tract area functions and shapes of tongues. Each points are varied systematically to synthesize vowels and the synthesized sound is evaluated by human listners. Finally distributions of each vowels within vowel space is obtained. From the experimental results it is verified that our articulatory simulator can be used effectively to investigate the articulatory characteristics of speech.

• MALSORI
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• no.56
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• pp.103-125
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• 2005

We present a new method of measuring the volume and cross-sectional area of the vocal tract from magnetic resonance images. The vocal tract was divided by the 2 constriction points on the horizontal and vertical planes. The ratios of the volumes of the segment vocal tracts to that of the entire vocal tract play a crucial role in discriminating Korean monophthongs in that vowels were successfully discriminated by the ratios. The discriminant analysis also demonstrated that the acoustic parameters F1 and F2, in addition to the segment volumes, serve as significant parameters in discriminating Korean monophthongs.

• 재활복지
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.189-208
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• 2018

This case study investigated the changes in speech intelligibility of patients with head and neck cancers who participated in a therapeutic singing-based intervention. Three patients received a total of twelve 30-minute individual sessions. The intervention consisted of three steps: movements for relaxing breathing muscles, vocalization for increasing the range of articulatory movements, and therapeutic singing. In order to examine the changes in speech intelligibility, the voice quality parameters, diadochokinesis (DDK) and the quadrangle vowel space area (VSA) were measured at pre- and posttest. The recording of what each patient read a written paragraph, which were transcribed by blinded assessors, were also analyzed. The results demonstrated that all of the patients showed positive changes in the voice quality, the rate of repetitive syllable production measured by DDK, and the articulatory working space measured by VSA. Along with these measured changes, increases in positive mood and rehabilitation motivation reported by the patients support that the therapeutic singing-based intervention could induce meaningful changes in terms of speech intelligibility from patients with head and neck cancers. Given that this study was conducted with a small sample size, suggestions for further investigation on the effects of the intervention were also presented.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.51-57
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• 2018

In this paper, we studied about the extraction of the parameter and implementation of speechreading system to recognize the Korean 8 vowel. Face features are detected by amplifying, reducing the image value and making a comparison between the image value which is represented for various value in various color space. The eyes position, the nose position, the inner boundary of lip, the outer boundary of upper lip and the outer line of the tooth is found to the feature and using the analysis the area of inner lip, the hight and width of inner lip, the outer line length of the tooth rate about a inner mouth area and the distance between the nose and outer boundary of upper lip are used for the parameter. 2400 data are gathered and analyzed. Based on this analysis, the neural net is constructed and the recognition experiments are performed. In the experiment, 5 normal persons were sampled. The observational error between samples was corrected using normalization method. The experiment show very encouraging result about the usefulness of the parameter.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.173-182
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• 2009

In this paper, we studied about the extraction of the parameter and implementation of speechreading system to recognize the Korean 8 vowel. Face features are detected by amplifying, reducing the image value and making a comparison between the image value which is represented for various value in various color space. The eyes position, the nose position, the inner boundary of lip, the outer boundary of upper lip and the outer line of the tooth is found to the feature and using the analysis the area of inner lip, the hight and width of inner lip, the outer line length of the tooth rate about a inner mouth area and the distance between the nose and outer boundary of upper lip are used for the parameter. 2400 data are gathered and analyzed. Based on this analysis, the neural net is constructed and the recognition experiments are performed. In the experiment, 5 normal persons were sampled. The observational error between samples was corrected using normalization method. The experiment show very encouraging result about the usefulness of the parameter.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.721-728
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• 2004

Velopharyngeal closure is a sphincter mechanism between the activities of the soft palate, lateral pharyngeal wall and the posterior pharyngeal wall, which divides the oral and nasal cavity. It participates in physiological activities such as swallowing, breathing and speech. It is called a velopharyngeal dysfunction when this mechanism malfunctions. The causes of this dysfunction are defects in (1) length, function, posture of the soft palate, (2) depth and width of the nasopharynx and (3) activity of the posterior and lateral pharyngeal wall. The purposes of this study are to analyze the nasopharynx of cleft palate patients using cephalometry and to evaluate the degree of hypernasality using nasometry to find its relationship with velopharyngeal dysfunction. The following results were obtained : 1. In cephalometry, there were significant differences in soft palate length, soft palate thickness, nasopharyngeal depth, nasopharyngeal area, and adequate ratio between two groups. 2. In nasometry, there were significant differences between two groups in vowel /o/ and sentences including oral consonants. 3. In cleft palate patients, though no general correlation was found between Anatomic VPI and nasalance scores, vowel /i/ and sentences including oral consonants were slightly correlated. In conclusion, cephalometry and nasometer results were significantly different between the two groups. Though in the cleft palate group, Anatomic VPI and nasalance scores, which are indices for velopharyngeal closure, excluding the vowel /i/ and sentences including oral consonants show generally no significance.