• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.145-152
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• 2004

Background and Objectives : The current study aimed to 1) compare of Lingual function and alveolar sounds between 4-year-old Korean children with and without ankyloglossia, 2) investigate the correlation between ① maximum lingual length-protrusion(MLL-P) and percentage of consonants corrects(PCC) focused on alveolar sounds, ② lingual movement and PCC focused on alveolar sounds, ③ MLL-P and lingual movement. Materials and Method : Twenty-two 4-year-old children participated as subjects in the study: a control group of 11 normal children and an experimental group of 11 children who were previously diagnosed as having ankyloglossia. They were measured for lingual function (lingual length, lingual movement) and the performances of speech articulation. Results : Children with ankyloglossia displayed significantly shorter MLL-P than 4 year normal children. Experimental group displayed significantly worse lingual movement, lower PCC in Picture consonants test, and lower PCC of alveolar sounds than control group. Ther was significantly high correlation between MLL-P and lingual movement of experimental group. Conclusion : This paper describes clinical measure and functional aspects of the tongue. Such baseline analysis provides a more definitive appraisal of lingual function as well as a more objective basis for diagnosis and treatment of ankyloglossia.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.127-134
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• 2018

This study aims to explain the difficulties children with articulation and phonological disorders have in producing alveolar fricative sounds. The study will perform a comparative analysis revealing how ordinary children produce alveolar fricative sounds through five different acoustic variables, and consequently identifying objective differences, compared to children with articulation and phonological disorders. Therefore, this study compared and analyzed the differences between 10 children with articulation and phonological disorders and 10 ordinary children according to a phonation type of alveolar fricative sounds (/s/ and /$s^*$), a type of vowel (/i/, /ε/, /u/, /o/, /ɯ/, /ʌ/, /ɑ/), and a structure of syllables (CV, VCV) through acoustic variables including a central moment, skewness, kurtosis, a center of gravity and variance. That is, children with articulation and phonological disorders, when compared to ordinary children, have difficulties with concentrating an agile and momentary friction with strength when articulating alveolar fricative sounds, which uses strong energy and accompany tension. Furthermore, the values of alveolar fricative sounds of children with articulation and phonological disorders appeared to spread evenly over the average range, which means that the range of overall the standard deviation values for children with functional phonological disorders is wider than that of ordinary children. For a future study, if the mispronounced sounds relating to omission, substitution, and addition can be compared and analyzed for various target groups, it could be used effectively to help children with functional phonological disorders.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.73-79
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• 2014

Alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/ are learned last for normal children in the speech development process for Koreans. These are especially difficult to articulate for hearing-impaired children often causing articulation errors. The acoustic phonetic evaluation uses testing tools to provide indirect and object information. These objective resources can be compared with standardized resources on speech when interpreting the results of a test. However, most previous studies in Korea did not consider acoustic studies that used the spectrum moment values of hearing-impaired children. Therefore, this study was conducted to compare the characteristics of hearing-impaired children's pronunciation of fricative sounds using spectrum moment values. For this purpose, the study selected a total of 10 hearing-impaired children (5 boys and 5 girls) currently in 3rd or 5th grade and attending one of the elementary schools in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. For the selection process, their age, type of hearing aid, implantation of hearing aid (CI) before two years of age, hearing capacity (dB) before and after wearing the hearing aid, duration of speech rehabilitation, and time of learning alveolar fricative sounds were all considered. Also, 10 normal children (5 boys and 5 girls) were selected among 3rd or 5th grade students attending one of the elementary schools in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. The subjects were asked to read the carrier sentence, "I say _______," including a list of 12 meaningless syllables composed of CV and VCV syllables, including alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/ and vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/. The recorded resources were processed through the Time-frequency Analysis Software Program to measure M1 (mean), M2 (variance), M3 (skewness), and M4 (kurtosis) of the fricative noise. No significant differences were found when comparing spectrum threshold values in the acoustic phonetic characteristics of hearing-impaired children and normal children in alveolar fricative sound pronunciation according to vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/, and syllable structure (CV, VCV) other than, for M3 in the comparison of groups according to disability. In the comparison of syllable structures, there were statistically significant differences in M1, M2, M3, and M4 with clinical significance. However, there was no significant difference in results when comparing the alveolar fricative sounds according to the vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.129-136
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• 2012

Korean alveolar fricatives are late-developing speech sounds. Most previous research on phonemes used individual words or pseudo words to produce sounds, but word-level phonological analysis does not always reflect a child's practical articulation ability. Also, there has been limited research on articulation development looking at speech production by grammatical morphemes despite its importance in Korean language. Therefore, this research examines the articulation development and phonological patterns of the /s/ phoneme in terms of morphological types produced in children's spontaneous conversational speech. The subjects were twenty-two typically developing 3- and 4-year-old Koreans. All children showed normal levels in three screening tests: hearing, vocabulary, and articulation. Spontaneous conversational samples were recorded at the children's homes. The results are as follows. The error rates decreased with increasing age in all morphological contexts. Also, error percentages within an age group were significantly lower in lexical morphemes than in grammatical morphemes. The stopping of fricative sounds was the main error pattern in all morphological contexts and reduced as age increased. This research shows that articulation performance can differ significantly by morphological contexts. The present study provides data that can be used to identify the difficult context for articulatory evaluation and therapy of alveolar fricative sounds.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.247-250
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• 2007

The affricates of the Korean were alveolar sounds in the 15th century. Alveolar sounds have changed to post-alveolar or alveo-palatal sounds since the 18th century, at least in Southern Korean. These days, the advanced articulation of the affricates are observed, especially in the speech of young generations. The aim of this paper is to show the differences of the affricates when they are pronounced in alveo-palatal and in a more advanced position than in alveo-palatal by their cut-off frequencies. We have recorded speeches of freshmen(in their early twenties) at Seoul National University. The result was that the cut-off frequency of the advanced articulation in auditory observations was higher than that of the others. We have found in particular, that women have tendency to advance their place of articulation of the affricates.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.5-11
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• 2000

Background and Objectives : Tongue-tie, or partial ankyloglossia, is manifested by an abnormally short and thick lingual frenulum. Degree of tongue-tie varies from the mild to the rare, severe and its treatment of choice is frenulotomy. Theoretically tongue-tie can affect expression of alveolar sounds. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the degree of articulation problem and to evaluate the efficacy of frenulotomy itself on alveolar sounds in tongue-tie patients. Materials and Methods : Prospectively, the authors performed preoperative and postoperative speech evaluation using picture consonants test for tongue-tie patients. Percentage of consonants correct(PCC), mean value of each alveolar phoneme depends on articulation site were evaluated. for exclusion of other articulatory improving factors except of frenulotomy itself, postoperative picture consonants test was performed 1 month after surgery. Results : Preoperative speech evaluation was performed to 37(male 21, female 16) patients and postoperative speech evaluation was performed to 17(male 9, female 8) patients, the other 20 patients were follow-up loss. Low PCC was observed in tongue-tie patients and PCC of female was higher an at of male in 2-4 years old patients. Overall PCC was improved after frenulotomy. Preoperative mean value of liquids and fricatives was lower than the other alveolar phonemes(p＜0.05) and it was improved postoperatively(p＜0.05). Conclusion : Frenulotomy itself can improve the articulation of liquids and fricatives on short follow-up. Speech therapy would be needful for improvement of the other alveolar phonemes.

• MALSORI
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• no.61
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• pp.1-14
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between segmental correctness and speech intelligibility in adults with hearing impairment. Segmental correctness was measured by percentage of correct vowels(PCV) and percentage of correct consonants(PCC). The results were shown as follows: First, PCV and PCC could predict speech intelligibility with statistical significance. Second, in consonant classes divided by place and manner of articulation, the PCC of plosives and alveolar sounds were significant predicting variables in each group ($R^{2}=50%;\;59%$). According to this study, the importance of segmental correctness on speech intelligibility of adults with hearing impairment was confirmed. Also correctness of plosive sounds in manner and alveolar sounds in place were significant factors to speech intelligibility.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.37-46
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• 2010

This study investigates acoustic characteristics of English and Korean voiceless sibilant fricatives as they appear before the three vowels, /i/, /$\alpha$/ and /u/. Three measurements - duration, center of gravity and major spectral peak - are employed to compare acoustic properties and vowel effect for each fricative sound. This study also investigates the question of whether Korean sibilant fricatives are acoustically similar to the English voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ or to the palato-alveolar /$\int$/. The results show that in the duration of frication noise, English /$\int$/ is the longest and Korean lax /s/ the shortest of the four sounds. It is also observed that English alveolar /s/ has the highest value, whereas Korean /s/ shows the lowest value in the frequency of center of gravity. In terms of major spectral peak, while English /s/ reveals the highest frequency, English /$\int$/ shows the lowest value. In addition, evidence indicates that there is a strong vowel effect in the fricative sounds of both languages, although the vowel effect patterns of the two languages are inconsistent. For instance, in the major spectral peak, both Korean lax /s/ and tense /$s^*$/ show significantly higher frequencies before the vowel /$\alpha$/ than before the other vowels, whereas both English /s/ and /$\int$/ exhibit significantly higher frequencies before the vowel /i/ than before the other vowels. These results indicate that Korean sibilant fricatives are acoustically distinct from both English /s/ and /$\int$/.

• MALSORI
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• no.21_24
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• pp.3-24
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• 1992

This study was designed to investigate the changes of phonological processes in normal Korean children aged from 2- to 6-years. Forty eight children who lived in Seoul or Kyung-Ki do were tested with a picture articulation test and their articulation errors including omissions, additions and substitutions were coded into phonological processes. Those phonological processes were discussed in several ways: syllable structure, place, manner, assimilation, tenseness, and aspiration of sounds. Data were analyzed by two ways: (1) number of subjects who showed each process and (2) percentage of occurrence of each process. Analyses in omission-addition processes demonstrated that postvocalic omission occurred most frequently, followed by velar-, alveolar-, and glottal omission. Analyses in substitution processes showed that fronting (palatal and velar), backing (alveolar), and alveolization occurred most frequently in terms of the place of sounds. In terms of assimilation, alveolar-, stopping, and aspiration assimilation occurred frequently. Analyses by the tenseness and aspiration showed similar occurrences among the 4 processes, with slightly higher occurrences in tensing and aspiration than lanxing and deaspiration. All of the processes decreased by age. The numbers of the processes showed by more than half of the children or exceeded 10％ of occurrence were 20 in 2-years of age, 10 in 3-years of age, 1 in 4-years of age, and none in ages of 5 and 6.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.9-18
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• 2018

This paper presents an acoustic and phonological study of the alveolar flaps in American English. Based on the Buckeye Corpus, the flapping tokens produced by twenty men are analyzed at both lexical and post-lexical levels. The data, analyzed with Pratt speech analysis, include duration, F2 and F3 in voicing during the flap, as well as duration, F1, F2, F3, and f0 in the adjacent vowels. The results provide evidence on two issues: (1) The different ways in which voiced and voiceless alveolar stops give rise to neutralized flapping stops by following lexical and post-lexical levels, (2) The extent to which the vowel features (height, frontness, and tenseness) affect flapping sounds. The results show that flaps are affected by pre-consonantal vowel features at the lexical as well as post-lexical levels. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the Praat method to distinguish flapped from unflapped tokens in the Buckeye Corpus and examines connections between the lexical and post-lexical levels.