• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.719-744
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• 2009

This paper aims to reexamine Homorganic Cluster Lengthening in Late Old English whereby OE short vowels became lengthened before specific consonant clusters such as /-ld, -nd, -mb, -rd, -rð, -ng, -rz/. As for the motivation for this apparently odd-looking sound change, I propose that it was the result of phonologization of the phonetic lengthening of syllables containing resonants homorganic with a following voiced obstruent. Adopting Luick's (1898) view of "resonant+voiced homorganic obstruent" phonologically as a single coda, I show that Homorganic Cluster Lengthening is in fact a natural sound change that can be explained with the proper postulation of a few quantity-related universal constraints within the framework of the Optimality Theory. The fact that the constraints and their ranking as posited in this paper can also account for Pre-Cluster Shortening points to the validity of my approach in the analysis of other quantity changes in Middle English.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.60-64
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• 2000

This paper studies the relation between the Fundamental Frequency (F0) and the formants of simple vowels in the Korean language sung by sopranos. It is hewn that, in soprano singing, the F0 of a vowel affects its formants. For this reason the formants of simple vowels sung by sopranos must be considered in all over the soprano singing range. We recorded the five simple vowel sounds /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ sung by five professional sopranos from A3 (220.0Hz) to A5 (880.0Hz) in the major scale and compared the formants of the sung vowels with those of spoken vowels. We observed that F1 and F2 of sung vowels were stable in low F0 (lower than B4) but in high F0 (higher than B4), F1 and F2 lost their stabilities. In the case of /a/, /o/, and /u/, the slope of the F1-F2 graph was about 2.6, and those of the F0-F2 and F0-Fl graphs were 2.2-2.5 and 0.7-1.0, respectively. And as the F0 increases, the F1 and F2 of sung vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ were almost the same. At A5, the Fl and F2 of five sung vowels had the same values. This results suggest that the relation between the F0 and the formants be used to synthesize soprano's singing vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

This study aims to enhance English pronunciation education for Korean students by examining the impact of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect on the articulation of English vowels. Data were obtained through the Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC). Seven Korean words and ten English mono-syllabic words were uttered by adult, male speakers of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect, in particular, speakers with little to no experience living abroad were selected. Formant frequencies of the recorded corpus data were measured using spectrograms, provided by the speech analysis program, Praat. The recorded data were analyzed using the articulatory graph for formants. The results show that in comparison with speakers using standard Korean, those using the Gyeongsang regional dialect articulated both Korean and English vowels in the back. Moreover, the contrast between standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect in the pronunciation of Korean vowels (/으/, /어/) affected how the corresponding English vowels (/ə/, /ʊ/) were articulated. Regardless of the use of regional dialect, a general feature of vowel pronunciation among Korean people is that they show more narrow articulatory movements, compared with that of native English speakers. Korean people generally experience difficulties with discriminating tense and lax vowels, whereas native English speakers have clear distinctions in vowel articulation.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.179-186
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• 2005

We can extract spectrum of the voices and analyze those, after employing features of frequency that voices have. In the spectrum of the voices monophthongs are thought to be stable, but when a consonant(s) meet a vowel(s) in a syllable or a word, there is a lot of changes. This becomes the biggest obstacle to phoneme speech recognition. In this study, using Mel Cepstrum and Mel Band that count Frequency Band and auditory information, we analyze the spectrums that each and every consonant and vowel has and the changes in the voices reftects auditory features and make it a system. Finally we are going to present the basis that can segment the voices by an unit of phoneme.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to investigate age-specific features of 2;1- to 4;1-year -olds' production of monophthongs and diphthongs through both auditory perceptual analysis and acoustic analysis. Test material included {vowel+'da'} consisting of 7 monophthongs and 10 diphthongs and meaningful words beginning with vowels. The percentage of correct vowels was used for perceptual analysis and Praat(5.2.12) was used for acoustic analysis, analyzing variables related to monophthongs and diphthongs. The results of this study are as follows: First, perceptual analysis showed that children from an age group of 2;1 to 2;8 years showed significant difference in the accuracy level of both monophthongs and diphthongs as compared to those aged 2;9 to 3;4 years and those aged 3;5 to 4;1 years. Second, the results of acoustic analysis provided that formant (F1 and F2) of monophthong, in general, tended to decrease as age increased. In terms of F2 differentiation slope and regression slope, which were diphthong-related variables, the age group of 3;5 to 4;1 years showed a large general slope change.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2014

The current study presents an instrumental phonetic analysis of Korean monophthong vowels in the early twentieth century Seoul Korean, based on audio recordings of elementary school textbooks Botonghakgyo Joseoneodokbon (Korean Reading Textbook for Elementary School). The data examined in this study were a list of the Korean mono syllables (Banjeol), and a short passage, recorded by one 41-year-old male speaker in 1935, as well as a short passage recorded by one 11-year-old male speaker in 1935. The Korean monophthongs were examined in terms of acoustic analysis of the vowel formants (F1, F2) and compared to those recorded by 18 male speakers of Seoul Korean in 2013. The results show that in 1935, 1) /e/ and /ɛ/ were clearly separated in the vowel space; 2) /o/ and /u/ were also clearly separated without any overlapping values; 3) some tokens of /y/ and /ø/ were produced as monophthongs, not as diphthongs. Based on the results, we can observe the historical change of the Korean vowels over 80-90 years such as 1) /e/ and /ɛ/ have been merged; and 2) /o/ has been raised and overlapped with /u/.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.18-25
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• 1997

This study describes a modified preemphasis formula, what we call energy-dependent preemphasis(EDP). This uses the normalized short-term energy of speech signal, with the assumption that the source characteristics of the glottal pulses and the radiation characteristics of the lips are approximately proportional to the energy of speech signal. Using this method, speech analyses, such as AR spectrum estimation, formant detection, are performed for nonstationary starting parts of 5 Korean single vowels. The results are compared with the conventional two preemphasis methods. We found that the proposed preemphasis gave enhanced spectral shapes and more accurate formant frequencies and avoided overlapping phenomenon of adjacent two formants.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.287-301
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the same vowel sounds are perceived differently by the two local dialect speakers, Seoul dialect speakers (SDS) and Kyungnam dialect speakers (KDS), whose vowel systems differ each other. In the first experiment SDS and KDS heard vowels synthesized in vowel space with F1 by F2 and categorized them into one of 10 Korean monophthongs. The results showed that SDS and KDS perceived the synthesized vowels differently. For example, /$\varepsilon$ versus /e/ contrast, ${\o}$/, and /y/ are differentiated by SDS, whereas they are perceptually confused by KDS. We also observed that /i/ could not be perceived unless the vowel synthesis included F3 or higher formants. In the second experiment SDS and KDS performed the similarity rating task of 10 synthesized Korean monophthongs. Two-dimensional MDS solution based on the similarity rating scores was obtained for each dialect group. The first dimension can be named 'vowel advancement' and the second 'vowel height'. The comparison of the two MDS solutions showed that the overall psychological distances among the vowels are shorter in KDS than SDS and that especially the distance between /$\Lambda$/ and /i/ is shorter in KDS than SDS. The result suggested that perception or mental representation of vowels depends on the vowel system of the listener's dialect or language. Further research problems were discussed in the final section.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• autumn
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• pp.89-92
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• 2001

본 논문에서는 한국어 대용량 음성인식 시스템의 기초가 되는 자소(grapheme)가 지니는 음가를 분류하였다. 한국어 자소를 음성-음운학적으로 조음 위치와 방법에 따라 분류하여, 그 음가 분석에 관한 연구와 함께 한국어 음성인식에서 앞으로 많이 논의될 청음음성학(auditory phonetics)에 대하여 연구하였다. 한국어는 발음상의 구조와 특성에 따라 음소 분리가 가능하여 초성, 중성, 종성 자소로 나눌 수 있다. 본 논문에서 초성은 자음음소 18개, 중성은 모음 음소(단모음, 이중모음) 17개, 그리고 'ㅅ' 추가 8종성체계의 자음음소로 하였다. 청음음성학적 PLU(Phoneme Like Unit)의 구분 근거는 우리가 맞춤법 표기에서 주로 많이 틀리는 자소(특히, 모음)는 그 음가가 유사한 것으로 판단을 하였으며, 그 유사음소를 기반으로 작성한 PLU는 자음에 'ㅅ' 종성을 추가하였고, 모음에 (ㅔ, ㅐ)를 하나로, (ㅒ, ㅖ)를 하나로, 그리고 모음(ㅚ, ㅙ, ㅞ)를 하나의 자소로 분류하였다. 혀의 위치와 조음 방법과 위치에 따라 분류한 자음과 모음의 자소를 HTK를 이용하여 HMM(Hidden Markov Model)의 자소 Clustering하여 그것의 음가를 찾는 결정트리를 검색하여 고립어인식과 핵심어 검출 시스템에 적용 실험한 결과 시스템의 성능이 향상되었다.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.89-104
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• 2019

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of korean vowels by acoustically analyzing whether children produce Korean vowels differently according to their age and gender between ages 4 and 6. Methods : A total of 104 children aged 4~6 years (56 males and 48 females) participated in this study. The participants were classified as either 4, 5, or 6 years old. Vowel speech data was obtained by asking the subjects to pronounce meaningful words in which the vowel in question was located in the first syllable. Speech analysis was performed using the Multi-speech 3700 program. Results : Age, gender, and vowel being pronounced all had significant effects on intensity. There was significant decrease with increasing age, and the intensity was significantly higher in male children than female children. Neither age, gender, nor the vowel being produced affected the fundamental frequency. The fundamental frequency produced did not differ by age or gender. The first and second formants had considerable effect on age and vowels, significantly decreased with age, and did not have a gender difference. Conclusion : The results of this study showed that children aged 4~6 have similar anatomical structures, but that maturity of speech motor skills required to pronounce vowels was correlated with age. The results of this study can be used to evaluate children's speech and develop speech therapy programs.