An Acoustical Study of Korean Diphthongs

한국어 이중모음의 음향학적 연구

The goals of the present study were (3) to collect and analyze sets of fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequency (F1, F2, F3) data of Korean diphthongs from ten linguistically homogeneous speakers of Korean males, and (2) to make a comparative study of Korean monophthongs and diphthongs. Various definitions, kinds, and previous studies of diphthongs were examined in the introduction. Procedures for screening subjects to form a linguistically homogeneous group, time point selection and formant determination were explained in the following section. The principal findings were as follows: 1. Much variation was observed in the ongliding part of diphthongs. 2. F2 values of (j) group descended while those of [w] group ascended, 3. The average duration of diphthongs were about 110 msec, and there was not much variation between speakers and diphthongs. 4. In a comparative study of monophthongs and diphthongs, Fl and F2 values of the same offgliding part at the third time point almost converged. 5. The gliding of diphthongs was very short beginning from the h-noise. Perceptual studies using speech synthesis are desirable to find major parameters for diphthongs. The results of the present study wi11 be useful in the area of automated speech recognition and computer synthesis of speech.