• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.139-156
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• 2001

Speech intelligibility in patients with complete dentures is an important clinical problem depending on the material used. The objective of this study was to investigate the speech of two edentulous subjects fitted with a complete maxillary prosthesis made of two different palatal materials: chrome-cobalt alloy and acrylic resin. Three patients with complete dentures in the experiment group and ten people in the controls groups participated in the experiment. CSL, Visi-Pitch were used to measure speech characteristics. The test words consisted of a simple vowel /e/, meaningless three syllabic words containing fricative, affricated and stops sounds, and sustained fricative sounds /s/ and /$\int$/. The analysis speech parameters were vowel and lateral formants, VOT, sound durations, sound pressure level and fricative frequency. Data analysis was conducted by a series of paired T-test. The findings like the following: (1) Vowel formant one of patients with complete denture is higher than that of the control group (p<0.05), while lateral formant three of patients with complete denture is lower than that of the control group (p<0.0l). (2) Patients with complete denture produced lower speech intelligibility with low fricative frequency (/$\int$/) than control group (p<0.0). The speech intelligibility of patients with metal prosthesis was higher than that of those with resin prosthesis (p<0.05). (3) Fricative, lateral and stop sound durations of patients with complete denture were longer than those of the control group (p<0.01 and p<0.05), respectively. Total sound durations of patients with metal prosthesis were similar to that of the control group (p<0.05), while those with resin prosthesis had a shorter duration (p<0.01). This implied that those with metal prosthesis had higher speech intelligibility than those with resin prosthesis. (4) Patients with complete denture had higher sound pressure levels /t/ and /c/ than the control group (p<0.01). However, sound pressure levels for /c/ of patients with metal prosthesis or resin prosthesis was similar to the control group (p<0.05). (5) Patients with complete denture had higher fundamental frequency than the control group (p<0.01).

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.97-105
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• 2006

The objective of this study was to analyze the acoustic patterns of Japanese /t/ produced by 40 Korean speakers in order to find an effective method of teaching it to Koreans. The experimental data consisted of 400 /t/ phonemes in word initial or non-initial positions of 10 words. Informants were in their twenties and raised in Daejeon and the surrounding area. Results showed that there were distinctive trends in duration and intensity of the major and non-major groups productions. Both groups pronounced the phoneme longer than the native speakers with more open mouths but with less loudness. The formant analysis showed that F1 values of the Japanese /t/ pronounced by Japanese major group were lower than those of the non-major. Its F2 values by the major group were higher than those of the non-major, which would suggest that the Koreans produced the tongue blade in more frontal position than the native speakers.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.101-113
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• 2020

This study aimed to explore how effective explicit form-focused instruction (FFI) is in teaching the schwa vowel /ə/ to EFL students in a classroom setting. The participants were 25 female high school students, who were divided into the experimental group (n=13) and the control group (n=12). One female American also participated in the study for a speech sample as a reference. The treatment, which involves shadowing model pronunciation by the researcher and a free text-to-speech software and the researcher's feedback in a private session, was given to the control group over a month and a half. The speech samples, for which the participants read the 14 polysyllabic stimulus words followed by the sentences containing the words, were collected before and after the treatment. The paired-samples t test and non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used for analysis. The results showed that the participants of the experimental group in the post-test reduced the duration of the schwa by around 40 percent compared to the pre-test. However, little effect was found in approximating the participants' distribution patterns of /ə/ measured by the F1/F2 formant frequencies to the reference point, which was 539 Hz (F1) by 1797 Hz (F2). The findings of this study suggest that explicit FFI with multiple repetitions and corrective feedback is partly effective in teaching pronunciation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2020

This study aims to compare the acoustic characteristics of vowel phonation in children with spastic and dyskinetic cerebral palsy (CP). Thirty-four children aged 4-12 years with CP participated in the study (spastic 26, dyskinetic 8). Voice samples for the acoustic analysis were extracted from a sustained vowel /a/. All acoustic measures were made using Praat. Group differences were compared by an independent t-test or Welch-Aspin test, if the equivalence assumption was not met. The results of this study are as follow. First, maximum phonation time(MPT) was significantly shorter for the dyskinetic CP than for the spastic CP. Second, shimmer percent was significantly increased in the dyskinetic CP than in the spastic CP. Lastly, there were no significant group differences in both the first formant and the second formant. These findings indicate that the dyskinetic CP has a poorer respiratory capacity and poorer laryngeal function than the spastic CP. On the other hand, both groups have a comparable ability to articulate the vowel /a/. The results of the present study help speech language pathologists identify the speech motor control ability of children with two types of CP (spastic and dyskinetic) and help to make an intervention plan associated with a specific type of CP.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.48-53
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• 2010

Backgraound and Objectives : The voice change can occur in acute epiglottitis or peritonsillar abscess, and the labelings of both changes as a "muffled voice" or "hot potato voice", The aim of this study was to investigate the difference of changes in acoustic feature of voice before and after treatment in patients with acute epiglottitis or peritonsillar abscess. Subjects and Method: 13 patients with acute epiglottitis and 12 patients with peritonsillar abscess were enrolled in the study. Acoustic analysis on sustained Korean vowels /${\alpha}$/, /u/ and /i/ were performed before and after treatment. Results: In patients with acute epiglottitis, the first formant frequency (F1) of /${\alpha}$/ was increased, and the second frequency (F2) of /i/ was decreased. In patients with peritonsillar abscess, F1 and F2 of /${\alpha}$/ were decreased. F1 of /i/ and /u/ were increased, while F2 were decreased. Conclusion : The anatomical and functional changes of oropharynx and larynx by acute epiglottitis and peritonsillar abscess can cause different change in resonance and speech quality. We suggest that these changes could be the cause of 'muffled vocie' in patients of acute epiglottitis or peritonsillar abscess, but different characteristics of phonation in each disease should be distinguished.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.185-192
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• 2010

The acoustic vowel space has been used as an acoustic parameter in dysarthric speech. The aim of this work was to examine mathematical formulae for acoustic vowel space and to apply these to Korean speakers with idiopathic Parkinson's disease(IPD). Five acoustic parameters were chosen from earlier works and one new parameter was proposed, the pentagonal vowel space. The six parameters included triangular vowel space (3 area), irregular quadrilateral vowel space (4 area), irregular pentagonal vowel space (5 area), vowel articulatory index (VAI), formant centralization ratio (FCR) and F2i/F1u ratio (F2 ratio). An experimental group of 32 IPD patients(male:female=16:16) and a control group of twenty healthy people (male:female=8:12) participated in the study and repeated vowels (/a-i-u-e-o/) three times. A correlation analysis was performed among the six parameters, 2-way ANOVA was done with gender and groups as independent factors, and an independent sample t-test was conducted between the male and the female group as post hoc comparison. All parameters were highly correlated with each other and only the FCR showed a high negative correlation with the others. The results of ANOVA showed a significant difference in F2 ratio, 3 area, 4 area and 5 area between gender and in 4 area and 5 area between groups. For the male members of the two groups, significant statistical differences were found in all parameters whereas no such differences were found for the female members. These findings indicated that the vowel space of the female group was wider than the vowel space of the male group. These differences may have been caused by gender-specific speech styles rather than by patho-physiological mechanisms. We also claim that the pentagonal vowel space is better than the other vowel spaces at representing the disordered speech in natural speech situations.

• Annual Conference of KIPS
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.1430-1433
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• 2010

삶의 지표가 상승함에 따라 선진국에서는 건강에 대한 관심도가 높아져 질병이 발생되기 전에 조기에 진단하여 예방하는 건강 패턴이 행해지고 있는 실정이다. 이와 같은 예방 분야를 반영한 것이 대체의학이며 이침 요법은 부작용이 적은 방법으로 널리 사용되고 있다. 이침 요법은 교육과정을 거친 후 자가 진단을 통해 응급처지가 가능한 것으로 실생활에서 손쉽게 이용되고 있다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 신장에 해당하는 이(耳)혈 상응점을 자극하여 신장과 관련된 음성 요소의 변화를 측정하였다. 이를 위해 신장 이혈 상응점을 자극하기 전과 후의 음성을 수집하여 음성 분석 요소 중 제 1 Formant Bandwidth와 Jitter, Shimmer값을 적용하여 비교, 분석하였다. 결과적으로 신장 이혈 상응점 자극에 의해 성대 진동의 변화율이 낮아져 발음의 정확성을 나타내는 결론을 도출하였다.

• MALSORI
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• no.33_34
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• pp.111-125
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• 1997

This experimental phonetic analysis aims to describe standard Korean simple vowels with a view to presenting the vowel quality change from generation to generation, especially between the 50's and the 20's. This change reflects that the contemporary vowel system has both stable and unstable aspect: the former can be affirmed in the vowels with extreme positions in the vowel quadrilateral. and the latter in some vowels(e.g.,'ㅔ/ㅐ') which have the non-quantal vowel characteristics in the current vowel system. Formant values are measured to show these. And the results of acoustic analysis are presented graphically in the vowel quadrilateral for the convenience' sake. The comparison between the articulatory vowel quadrilateral and the acoustic one shows a lot concerning the current vowel quality change.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.127-137
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• 2000

This paper presents a macro script to analyze numeric sounds by a speech analysis shareware, Praat, and analyzes those sounds produced by three students who were born and raised in Pusan. Recording was done in a quiet office. To make a meaningful comparison, dynamic time points in relation to the total duration of voicing segments were determined to measure acoustical values. Results showed that a strong correlation coefficient was found between the repetitive production of numeric sounds within and across the speakers. Very high coefficients among diphthongal numbers (0 and 6) which usually show wide formant variation were noticed. This supports that each speaker produced numbers quite coherently. Also, the frequency differences between the three subjects were within a perceptually similar range. To identify a speaker among others may require to find subtle individual differences within this range. Perceptual experiments by synthesized numeric sounds may lead to resolve the issue.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.3-10
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• 1991

The teach pendant and keyboard have been used as an input device of control command in human-robot sustem. But, many problems occur in case that the usef is a novice. So, speech recognition system is required to communicate between a human and the robot. In this study, Korean voice commands, eitht robot commands, and ten digits based on the broad phonetic analysis are described. Applying broad phonetic analysis, phonemes of voice commands are divided into phoneme groups, such as plosive, fricative, affricative, nasal, and glide sound, having similar features. And then, the feature parameters and their ranges to detect phoneme groups are found by minimax method. Classification rules are consisted of combination of the feature parameters, such as zero corssing rate(ZCR), log engery(LE), up and down(UD), formant frequency, and their ranges. Voice commands were recognized by the classification rules. The recognition rate was over 90 percent in this experiment. Also, this experiment showed that the recognition rate about digits was better than that about robot commands.