• Journal of Haehwa Medicine
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.219-228
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• 2011

Objective : Sasang constitution medicine utilizes voice characteristics to diagnose a person's constitution. In this paper we propose methods to analyze Sasang constitution using speech information technology. That is, this study aims at establishing the relationship between Sasang constitutions and their corresponding voice characteristics by investigating various speech variables. Materials & Methods : Voice recordings of 1,406 speakers are obtained whose constitutions have been already diagnosed by the experts in the fields. A total of 144 speech features obtained from five vowels and a sentence are used. The features include pitch, intensity, formant, bandwidth, MDVP and MFCC related variables for each constitution. We analyze the speech variables and find whether there are statistically significant differences among three constitutions. Results : The main speech variables classifying three constitutions are related to pitch and MFCCs for male, and formant and MFCCs for female. The correct decision rate is 73.7% for male Soeumin, 63.3% for male Soyangin, 57.3% for male Taeumin, 74.0% for female Soeumin, 75.6% for female Soyangin, 94.3% for female Taeumin, and 73.0% on the average. Conclusion : Experimental results show that statistically significant correlation between some speech variables and the constitutions is observed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

The current study investigated whether Korean learners' English-learning environments, especially target English accent (General American English (GAE) vs. Southern British English (SBE)) and English-language experience affected their production of English vowels. Thirty six EFL learners, 27 ESL-US learners, and 33 ESL-UK learners produced 8 English vowels with a bVt frame (beat, bit, bet, bat, bought, bot, boat, boot). The learners' productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of F1 and F2 frequencies. The overall results revealed that the learners' target accent had an effect on their production of some English vowels. The EFL and ESL-US learners' (especially, female learners') production of bought, bot, boat, and boot, which show characteristic differences between the GAE and SBE accents, was closer to that of the native American English (AE) speakers than the native British English (BE) speakers. In contrast, the ESL-UK learners' production of bought and bot demonstrated the opposite pattern. Thus, the impact of target accent was not demonstrated across the board. The effect of the learners' different English-language experience was also rather limited. This was because the EFL learners' production was not much different from the ESL-US learners' production, in spite of the ESL-US learners' residence in the US for more than 9 years. Furthermore, the Korean learners, irrespective of their different English-language experience, tended to produce bit and bat with lower F1 than the native AE and BE speakers, thus resulting in bit and bat to be produced similarly to beat and bet, respectively. This demonstrates the learners' persistent L1 effects on their English vowel production despite the learners' residence in the English speaking countries or their high English proficiency.

• MALSORI
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• no.53
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• pp.1-16
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• 2005

This experimental study aims to test the hypothesis that the occurrence of English sentence-final stop release is, at least, partly predictable by examining its phonetic context. 10 native(5 male and 5 female) speakers of American English recorded, in a sound-proof booth, sentences excerpted from novels and the natural documents on the World Wide Web. Based on the waveforms and spectrograms of the recorded sentences, judgements of the release of a sentence-final stop were made. If the aperiodic energy of a given final stop lasted more than .015 second, it was considered to be "released." The result reveals that English sentence-final stops tend to be released when they are 1) velar consonants, 2) preceeded by tense vowels, and 3) coda consonants of content words. The phonetic environment in which final stops are often released can be characterized by the articulatory comfortableness and the need for release burst noise, without which the final stops may not be correctly perceived. By examining the release of English final stops, it is concluded that the phonological events, which had been considered to occur rather "randomly," in fact, reflect the universal tendency of human speech: to minimize the speakers' and hearers' effort.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.53-69
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• 1996

Much research has been done on the rues differentiating the three Korean stops in word initial position. This paper focuses on a more neglected area: the acoustic cues differentiating the medial tense and lax unaspirated stops. Eight adult Korean native speakers, four males and four females, pronounced sixteen minimal pairs containing the two series of medial stops with different preceding vowel qualities. The average duration of vowels before lax stops is 31 msec longer than before their tense counterparts (70 msec for lax vs 39 msec for tense). In addition, the average duration of the stop closure of tense stops is 135 msec longer than that of lax stops (69 msec for lax vs 204msec for tense). THESE DURATIONAL DIFFERENCES ARE 50 LARGE THAT THEY MAY BE PHONOLOGICALLY DETERMINED, NOT PHONETICALLY. Moreover, vowel duration varies with the speaker's sex. Female speakers have 5 msec shorter vowel duration before both stops. The quality of voicing, tense or lax, is also a cue to these two stop types, as it is in initial position, but the relative duration of the stops appears to be much more important cues. The duration of stops changes the stop perception while that of preceding vowel does not. The consequences of these results for the phonological description of Korean as well as the synthesis and automatic recognition of Korean will be discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.35-43
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• 2019

This study examines the voice onset times (VOTs) of Korean stops produced by Korean learners of English with high language proficiency and long L2 exposure (i.e., Korean-English bilinguals) to assess whether the VOTs of their lax and aspirated stops are merging and, if so, which types of stops are being changed. Thirteen Korean speakers (six female and seven male) who had studied in the USA for more than three to ten years participated. The results show that the speakers in this study with long L2 exposure are participating in the VOT merger, in which VOTs for aspirated stops are reduced while those for lax stops are increased. In other words, change in VOT affects not only aspirated stops but also lax stops. The results indicate that L1 phonetic drift may not be primarily affected by the amount of L2 exposure, and language contact may not be the primary factor triggering a sound change in the Korean stop system. Further study is necessary focusing on the phonetic shift of the "lax" category because it may play a pivotal role in a tonogenetic-like sound change in present-day Korean.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.139-159
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• 1999

The purposes of this study are two-folds: to find out the acoustic features of Korean stops in various utterance positions and their influence on the neighbouring segments. Korean stops($/p,\;p',\;p^{h};\;t,\;t',\;t^{h};\;k,\;k',\;k^{h}/$) are examined from CV, $V_1CV_2,\;V_1NCV_2,\;V_1LCV_2$ sequences. Three speakers (two male and one female speakers of Seoul dialect) served as subjects for the present study. VOT, closure duration of the target stops and duration of the neighbouring segments were measured from acoustic data. The results can be summarized as follows. First, stops show different temporal aspects depending on their place of articulation as well as their voice types. Velar stops tend to have shorter closure duration and longer VOT due to relatively slower movement of the articulator (i.e. tongue body) and higher supraglottal air pressure during the closure, respectively. Second, temporal aspects of the neighbouring segments appear to be influenced by the voice type of stop. The preceding segment tends to be longer when a stop has shorter duration. On the other hand, the following segment tends to be shorter, when a stop has longer VOT.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.51-58
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• 2010

English vowels play an important role in the daily communication between Korean students and international visitors. However, many Korean students still have difficulty producing them distinctively. Vowels vary according to shapes of oral and pharyngeal cavities, which are mainly determined by the degree of jaw opening and tongue position. Yang (2008a) proposed a simplified chart of English and Korean vowels for an educational purpose. He also suggested to use wooden chopsticks to secure distinguishable jaw openings. The purpose of this study is to tap whether wooden chopsticks can be applicable to a method for correcting English vowel pronunciation. Twelve male and female students participated in the recordings of eight /hVd/ words followed by additional recordings with wooden chopsticks between upper and lower teeth. The first and second formant trajectories of both natural and controlled vowel productions were obtained and compared at six equidistant measurement points using Praat. Results showed that the formant values of natural vowel productions were comparable to those of controlled productions. Vowels with similar formant trajectories of male students were separated with the aid of chopsticks. The width of each chopstick could be controlled similarly in the experiment. The author concludes that wooden chopsticks can be useful to correct vowel pronunciation. Further studies are desirable for native speakers to make perceptual evaluations of controlled vowel productions by nonnative speakers.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.255-261
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• 2005

In this paper. experiments are conducted to extract a set of non-Parametric warping functions to examine the characteristics of the warping among speakers' utterances. For this Purpose. we made use of MFCC and LP spectra of vowels in choosing reference spectrum of each vowel as well as representative spectra of each speaker. These spectra are compared by DTW to give the warping functions of each speaker. The set of warping functions are then defined by clustering the warping functions of all the speakers. Noting that male and female warping functions have shapes similar to Piecewise linear function and Power function respectively, a new hybrid set of warping functions is defined. The effectiveness of the extracted warping functions are evaluated by conducting phone level recognition experiments, and improvements in accuracy rate are observed in both warping functions.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.158-165
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• 2019

Through the use of speech software technology, this paper examines the effects of voice interactions within the inner circle of English. The fundamental frequency (F0) was obtained by analyzing native speakers (aged 30-55) speech effects based on nationality, age, and gender. The findings within this study reveal that the Caucasian British female (age 33) and the Caucasian American male (age 55) produced the most interactive speech. The contributing factor is the students' experience with various language styles throughout their language acquisition studies. The results of this study are compatible with $Traunm{\ddot{u}}eller$ & Eriksson (1995) and previous studies which agree that continuous speech above average is paramount towards student engagement and interactions.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.225-243
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• 2009

This study investigates the use of different speech act of apology strategies between male and female EFL college students by comparing the components of intensity, stylistic competence, and semantic formulas. The data was collected from 37 participants who were studying freshmen English reading course at the Department of English Education of C University in Seoul. Most students were English majors taking pre-teacher course of teaching English for secondary school students. The participants were divided into two gender groups of male and female. The discourse completion test (DCT) which was revised from the speech act of apology by Olshtain and Cohen (1990) was provided with the participants after the researcher explained the speech act of apology in ten situations. The speech act of apology depends on situation variables: social solidarity, severity of offense, and social status. The results show that in the preference of intensity, male and female have almost the similar ratio in high (female: 24.7%, male 24%) and low intensity (female: 75.3%, male: 76%). In the use of stylistic competence, male group (21%) expresses more diversely formal features than female group (12%), while female (87%) use more informal features than male (66%). Most of participants show a limitation in the use of speaking four types of semantic formulas: expression of apology (APOL), acknowledgment of responsibility (RESP), offer of repair (REPR), and promise of forbearance (FORB). As nonnative speakers, the participants cannot conduct the semantic formula in some situations regardless of the tasks provided. The results suggest that English teachers should recognize pragmatic variations in which students feel difficulty in appropriate speaking strategies on apology. This study also contributes to teaching learners the strategies and speaking patterns in the course of various apology situations.