• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.37-47
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• 2022

The purpose of the this study is to observe the effects of healthy adults' age on temporal features of speech and identify which could differentiate older and young adults. We examined speech rates(i.e., overall speaking rate, articulation rate), occurrence of pause, and duration of pause per utterance by utilizing the National Institute of Korean Language's open corpus. We selected a total of 30 healthy adults (10 young, 10 middle-aged, and 10 older adults) in this study. There were significant differences among the groups in the overall speaking rate, articulation rate, total occurrence of pause, the occurrence of pause between syntactic words, total duration of pause, and duration of pause between syntactic words. The older and middle-aged adults showed slower speech rates and longer and more frequent pause than young adults. But there were no significant differences among the three groups in terms of pause within syntactic word. The overall speaking rate significantly differentiated older adults from young adults. These findings suggested that the effect of speakers' age was reflected in gradual changes in the temporal features of their speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2024

This study investigated acoustic features in spectral moment analysis, comparing accurate articulations with distortions of alveolar fricatives such as dentalization, palatalization, and lateralization. A retrospective analysis was conducted on speech samples from 61 children (mean age: 5.6±1.5 years, 19 females, 42 males) using the Assessment of Phonology & Articulation for Children (APAC) and Urimal-test of Articulation and Phonology I (U-TAP I). Spectral moment analysis was applied to 169 speech samples. The results revealed that the center of gravity of accurate articulations was higher than that of palatalization, while palatalization was lower than dentalization. The variance of dentalization was higher than that of both accurate articulations and palatalization. The skewness of dentalization was higher than that of accurate articulations, and the skewness of palatalization was higher than that of accurate articulations. The kurtosis of palatalization was higher than that of both accurate articulations and dentalization. No significant differences were observed for the position of fricatives (initial, medial) and tense type (plain, tense) across all variables of spectral moment analysis for each distortion type. This study confirmed distinct patterns in center of gravity, variance, skewness, and kurtosis depending on the type of alveolar fricative distortion. The objective values provided in this study will serve as foundational data for diagnosing alveolar fricative distortions in children with speech sound disorders.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.125-132
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• 2018

This study was to investigate the speech sound production characteristics and evaluation aspects of preschool children through word test and connected speech test. For this, the authors conducted Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children(APAC) to 72 normal children(24 three-, four-, and five-year-olds each) and analyzed difference in percent of correct consonant(PCC) and intelligibility according to age and sex, correlation between PCC and intelligibility, and speech sound error patterns. PCC and intelligibility increased with age but there was no difference according to sex. The correlation was statistically significant in 5-year-old group. Speech sound error patterns were different in the two tests. This study showed that children's speech sound production varied according to language unit. Therefore, both types of tests should be done to grasp their speech sound production ability properly. This suggests that current standard to identify language impairment only by PCC of word level requires review and further studies.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2019

The paper investigates the minimal pair of Korean phonemes quantitatively. To achieve this goal, I calculated the number of consonant minimal pairs in the syllable-initial position as both raw counts and relative counts, and analyzed the part of speech relations of the two words in the minimal pair. "Urimalsaem" was chosen as the object of this study because it was judged that the minimal pair analysis should be done through a dictionary and it is the largest among Korean dictionaries. The results of the study are summarized as follows. First, there were 153 types of minimal pairs out of 337,135 examples. The ranking of phoneme pairs from highest to lowest was 'ㅅ-ㅈ, ㄱ-ㅅ, ㄱ-ㅈ, ㄱ-ㅂ, ㄱ-ㅎ, ${\ldots}$, ㅆ-ㅋ, ㄸ-ㅋ, ㅉ-ㅋ, ㄹ-ㅃ, ㅃ-ㅋ'. The phonemes that played a major role in the formation of the minimal pair were /ㄱ, ㅅ, ㅈ, ㅂ, ㅊ/, in that order, which showed a high proportion of palatals. The correlation between the raw count of minimal pairs and the relative count of minimal pairs was found to be quite high r=0.937. Second, 87.91% of the minimal pairs shared the part of speech (same syntactic category). The most frequently observed type has been 'noun-noun' pair (70.25%), and 'vowel-vowel' pair (14.77%) was the next ranking. It can be indicated that the minimal pair could be grouped into similar categories in terms of semantics. The results of this study can be useful for various research in Korean linguistics, speech-language pathology, language education, language acquisition, speech synthesis, and artificial intelligence-machine learning as basic data related to Korean phonemes.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.44-58
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• 1994

The formants of the 9 Korean standard vowels(which used by the average people of Seoul, central-area of the Korean peninsula) were measured by analysis with the linear predictive coding(LPC) and fast Fourier transform(FFT). The author already had reported the constriction area for the Korean standard vowels, and with the existing data, the distance from glottis to the constriction area in the vocal tract of each vowel was newly measured with videovelopharyngograms and lateral Rontgenograms of the vocal tract. We correlated the formant frequencies with the distance from glottis to the constriction area of the vocal tract. Also we tried to correlate the formant frequencies with the position of tongue in the vocal tract which is divided into 2 categories : The position of tongue in oral cavity by the distance from imaginary palatal line to the highest point of tongue and the position in pharyngeal cavity by the distance from back of tongue to posterior pharyngeal wall. This study was performed with 10 adults(male : 5, female : 5) who spoke primary 9 Korean standard vowels. We had already reported that the Korean vowel [i], [e], $[{\varepsilon}]$ were articulated at hard palate level, [$\dot{+}$], [u] were at soft palate level, [$\wedge$] was at upper pharynx level and the [$\wedge$], [$\partial$], [a] in a previous article. Also we had noted that the significance of pharyngeal cavity in vowel articulation. From this study we have concluded that ; 1) The F$_1$ is related with the oral cavity articulated vowel [i, e, $\varepsilon$, $\dot{+}$, u]. 2) Within the oral cavity articulated vowel [i, e, $\varepsilon$, $\dot{+}$, u] and the upper pharynx articulated vowel [o], the F$_2$ is elevated when the diatance from glottis to the constriction area is longer. But within the lower pharynx articulated vowel [$\partial$, $\wedge$, a], the F$_2$ is elevated when the distance from glottis to the constriction area is shorter. 3) With the stronger tendency of back-vowel, the higher the elevation of the F$_1$ and F$_2$ frequencies. 4) The F$_3$ and F$_4$ showed no correaltion with the constriction area nor the position of tongue in the vocal tract 5) The parameter F$_2$- F$_1$, which is the difference between F$_2$ frequency and F$_1$ frequency showed an excellent indicator of differenciating the oral cavity articulated vowels from pharyngeal cavity articulated vowels. If the F$_2$-F$_1$ is less than about 600Hz which indicates the vowel is articulated in the pharyngeal cavity, and more than about 600Hz, which indicates that the vowel is articulated in the oral cavity.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.656-664
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• 2002

We present a statistical analysis of Korean phonological variations using a Grapheme-to-Phoneme (GPT) system. The GTP system used for experiments generates pronunciation variants by applying rules modeling obligatory and optional phonemic changes and allophonic changes. These rules are derived form morphophonological analysis and government standard pronunciation rules. The GTP system is optimized for continuous speech recognition by generating phonetic transcriptions for training and constructing a pronunciation dictionary for recognition. In this paper, we describe Korean phonological variations by analyzing the statistics of phonemic change rule applications for the 60,000 sentences in the Samsung PBS Speech DB. Our results show that the most frequently happening obligatory phonemic variations are in the order of liaison, tensification, aspirationalization, and nasalization of obstruent, and that the most frequently happening optional phonemic variations are in the order of initial consonant h-deletion, insertion of final consonant with the same place of articulation as the next consonants, and deletion of final consonant with the same place of articulation as the next consonant's, These statistics can be used for improving the performance of speech recognition systems.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.45-55
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• 2021

This study aims to analyze the acoustic characteristics of Korean affricates produced by dysarthric speakers with cerebral palsy. Korean fricatives and affricates are the consonants that are prone to errors in dysarthric speech, but previous studies have focused only on fricatives. For this study, three affricates /tɕ, tɕ^h, ͈tɕ/ appearing at word initial and intervocalic positions produced by six mild-moderate male speakers of spastic dysarthria are selected from a QOLT database constructed in 2014. The parameters representing the acoustic characteristics of Korean affricates were extracted by using Praat: frication duration, closure duration, center of gravity, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and central moment. The results are as follows: 1) frication duration of the intervocalic affricates produced by dysarthric speakers was significantly longer than that of the non-disordered speakers; 2) the closure duration of dysarthric speakers was significantly longer; 3) in the case of the center of gravity, there was no significant difference between the two groups; 4) the skewness of the dysarthric speakers was significantly larger; and 5) the central moment of dysarthric speakers was significantly larger. This study investigated the characteristics of the affricates produced by dysarthric speakers and differences with non-disordered speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.37-47
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• 2024

This study was conducted on 27 male students majoring in or preparing for popular music vocals to determine whether they were aware of their voice classification and vocal range. Additionally, differences in the fundamental frequency and average speaking fundamental frequency were compared among the voice classifications. Moreover, considering that they may differ in their ability to produce high frequencies depending on the vowel, differences in voice ranges among the cardinal vowels, /a/, /i/, and /u/, were examined, and differences in voice ranges between vowels were compared by voice classification. The results showed that more than half of the male students majoring in or preparing for popular music vocals were not accurately aware of their voice types. In addition, statistically significant differences were found in the maximum fundamental frequency and frequency range among vowels, indicating differences in the voice range that can be produced depending on the vowel type. In particular, the voice range decreased in the following order: /a/>/u/>/i/. This suggests that while the vowel /a/ is easier to articulate in the high register compared to other vowels, vowels /u/ and /i/ as high vowels involve narrowing of the oral cavity due to the raised position of the tongue, accompanied by raising of the larynx, resulting in a decrease in voice range and difficulty in vocalizing in the high register.