• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.391-417
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• 2017

Southeast Asian languages are famous for having a large number of vowel sounds with an average of more than 20 vowel sounds in this certain language family. In addition, there are approximately 1,500 languages in this area, which accounts for approximately 20% of total languages in the world. For this reason, vowel systems of Southeast Asian languages should be explored to determine the nature of vowel structures of human natural languages. In this study, we analyze vowel systems of three languages, Tagalog, Malay and Thai, that have only primary or normal vowels and thus are relatively simple structures based on descriptive and analytic universals. We would also like to confirm if the six criteria of the tentative evaluation model taken from several previous literature is appropriate in applying analysis of vowel system universals under the method of the Greenbergian Universals or statistic universals. What we have found from this research are (i) the three languages have high level of universals with some exceptional cases such as three-vowel system of Tagalog, and (ii) some of the six criteria, together with some cases of analytic universals, are not quite suitable for understanding language-specific universals that are different from other languages.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.85-92
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• 2015

This study aimed to establish characteristics related to voice and speech through the natural base frequency analysis of esophagus vocalization. In the study, 8 subjects were selected for esophagus vocals, and 10 other subjects were selected for a control group. MDVP(Multi-dimensional Voice Program, Model 4800, USA, 2001), Multi Speech(Model 3700, Kaypantax, USA, 2008) were used as experiment equipment. The speech samples selected for evaluation were vowels and sentences (both declarative and interrogative). For acoustic analysis, the intonation form of fo, jitter, energy, shimmer, HNR, and intonation patterns of the speech sample were measured. The results were as follows: First, the natural intrinsic frequency of extended vowels in the esophagus vocal group was lower than the frequency in the normal vocal group. In particular, the intrinsic frequency difference for high vowel /i/ was much greater than the frequency difference for low vowel /a/. Second, the jitter values of the esophagus vocal group were higher than the control group. In particular, there was a large difference between the jitter values for /a/ and /i/, with the jitter values being highest for /i/. Third, there was no significant difference in vocal strength between the esophagus vocal patient group and the control group. Fourth, the shimmer values of the voices in the esophagus vocal group were higher than shimmer values in the control group. In particular, there was a large difference in shimmer values for low vowel /a/. Fifth, the HNR values of the esophagus vocal group were showed significantly lower than the control group. In particular, the largest difference in HNR values between the two groups was for high vowel /i/. Sixth, the pitch contours of interrogative and declarative sentences of the esophagus vocal patient group showed a different form or only had with small differences compared to the pitch contours of the normal vocal group, thus presenting an inconsistent pattern.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.25-45
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• 1994

The presnt study investigated the effect of stimulus-response compatibility (S-R compatibility) on Hangul transcription typing. In this experiment, two condition were manipulated, the first was a low S-R compatibility condition in which consonants were typed with left hand and vowels with right hand; the second was a high S-R compatibility condition in which hands for consonants and vowels were reversed. Subjects were requested to type the letter presented on the screen as accurately and immediately as possible. It was found that the compatibility interacted with the vowel shape. That is, in the high S-R compatibility condition, the response time was shorter when letters of vertically- shaped vowel were typed than when those of horizontally-shaped vowel were typed. In the low S-R compatibility codition, however, the response time was shorter for letters of horizontally-shaped vowel than for those of vertically-shaped vowel.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.221-228
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• 2009

The purpose of the study was to investigate the characteristics of the pronunciation of Korean vowels in patients with class III malocclusion. 11 adult male patients with class III malocclusion(mean ages 22.3 years) and four adult males with normal occlusion(mean ages 26.5 years) were selected for the analysis of eight Korean monophthongs /ㅣ, ㅔ, ㅐ, ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅗ, ㅡ, ㅜ/. The values and relationships of F1, F2 and F3 were derived from the stable section of target vowel in each sentence, and the analysis using formant plots and vowel triangles' distance and area was conducted to find the features of two groups' vowel distributions. Consequently, it was identified that the pronunciation of males patients with class III malocclusion showed high values of F1 in the low vowels, high values of F2 in the back vowels, and remarkably low position of /ㅏ/. The vowel triangle suggested that the triangle areas of male patients with class III malocclusion were shown wider vertically and narrower horizontally than those of males with normal occlusion. These characteristics could reflect the structural features of class III malocclusion such as the prognathic mandible, low tongue position, and advancement of back position of the tongue.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.13-21
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• 2011

The present study investigated the effects of two different sources of prosodic strengthening, i.e., boundary and accent, in the articulation of English high front vowels, /i/ and /I/. The vowels were investigated in vowel-initial ('eat' vs. 'it'), /h/-initial ('heat' vs. 'hit') and /p/-initial words ('Pete' vs. 'pit'), which were placed in varying prosodic conditions. Using Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA), the tongue dorsum positions in the x and y dimensions, the lip opening and the jaw opening (lowering) were measured. With respect to the boundary-induced strengthening, results showed that /i/ and /I/ in vowel-initial words ('eat' - 'it') are produced with a higher tongue position in the domain-intial than domain-medial positions. The fact that the vowels only in the vowel-initial condition showed the domain-intial strengthening (DIS) effect suggests that the DIS effect is localized mainly to the initial position (the locality account). As for the accent-induced strengthening, vowels were produced with a more fronted tongue position and larger lip opening in accented than unaccented positions. This suggests that the presence of accent increases overall sonority of the vowels in various prosodic contexts, and enhances primarily the frontedness of the front high vowels. Taken together, the results indicate that the two types of prosodic strengthening are articulatorily realized differently, supporting the view that they are encoded separately in the speech planning process. The present study also showed the distinction between the two high front vowels in the tongue position (in both the frontedness and the height dimensions), while the jaw did not seem to contribute to the distinction robustly, suggesting that the tongue contributes more in distinguishing the two vowels than the jaw does.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.189-192
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• 2005

This study investigates the asymmetry effect between acoustics and perception. The examined cues are closure duration, closure voicing, VOT, release, pre-vowel duration, post-vowel duration. Five native speakers of English and 30 Korean college students participated in the present study. The results showed that high level Korean English learners parallels native speakers in their responses, while mid and low level Korean learners are substantially different from natives.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2016

The Korean high back vowels /o/ and /u/ have been reported to be in a state of near-merger especially among young female speakers. Along with cross-generational changes, the vowel position within a word has been reported to render different phonetic realization. The current study examines native English speakers' ability to attend to the phonetic cues that distinguish the two merging vowels and the positional effects (word-initial vs. word-final) on the identification accuracy. 28 two-syllable words containing /o/ or /u/ in either initial or final position were produced by native female Korean speakers. The CV part of each target word were excised and presented to six native English speakers. The results showed that although the identification accuracy was the lowest for /o/ in word- final position (41%), it increased up to 80% in word-initial position. The acoustic analyses of the target vowels showed that /o/ and /u/ were differentiated on the height dimension only in word-initial position, suggesting that English speakers may have perceived the distinctive F1 difference retained in the prominent position.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.48-51
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• 2003

The purpose of this paper is to research the realization of /h/ between sonorant sounds. For this purpose, we analyze speech of 5 people using standard Korean. As a result, we can find that the possibility of deletion of /h/ is increasing, when speech rate is high, the AP has more syllables, and /h/ is far from the AP-initial. While the position of AP or IP has no relation to realization of /h/. The deletion of /h/ is more often in this order. Followed segments: lateral>nasal>vowel, following segments: vowel>glide. And there is no change on duration of following vowel after /h/ deletion.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.142-146
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• 1998

Background : It has been established that the fundamental frequency(Fo) of the vowels varies systemically as a function of vowel height. Specifically, high vowels have a higher Fo than low vowels. Two major explanations or hypotheses dominate contemporary accounts of fired to explain the mechanisms underlying intrinsic variation in vowel Fo, source-tract coupling hypothesis and tongue-pull hypothesis. Objectives : Total laryngectomy surgery necessiates removal of all structures between the hyoid bone and the tracheal rings. Therefore, the assumption that no direct interconnection exists between the tongue and pharyngoesophageal segment that would mediate systematic variation in vowel Fo appears quite reasonable. If tongue-pull hypothesis is correct, systemic differences in Fo between high versus low vowels produced by esophageal speakers would not Or expected. We analyzed the Fo in the vowels of esophageal voice. Materials and method : The subjects were 11 cases of laryngectomee patients with fluent esophageal voice. The five essential vowels were recorded and analyzed with computer speech analysis system(Computerized Speech Lab). The Fo was measured using acoustic waveform, automatically and manually, and narrow band spectral analysis. Results : The results of this study reveal that intrinsic variation in vowel Fo is clearly evident in esophageal speech. By analysis using acoustic waveform automatically, the signals were too irregular to measure the Fo precisely. So the data from automatic analysis of acoustic waveform is not logical. But the Fo by measuring with manually calculated acoustic waveform or narrowband spectral analysis resulted in acceptable results. These results were interpreted to support neither the source-tract coupling nor the tongue-pull hypotheses and led us to offer an alternative explanation to account for intrinsic variation of Fo.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.133-135
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• 2008

Background and Objectives: The voice changes can occur in peritonsillar abscess and the labeling of this changes as a "muffled voice". The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in acoustic feature of voice before and after treatment in patients with peritonsillar abscess. Materials and Method: 12 patients with peritonsillar abscess were enrolled in the study. Acoustic analysis on sustained Korean vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ were performed before and after treatment. Results: In patients with peritonsillar abscess, the first formant frequency (F1) and second formant frequency (F2) of /a/ were decreased. There was tendency of articulation of back-low vowel /a/ as back-high vowel /u/. F1 of /i/ and /u/ were increased, while F2 were decreased. There was tendency of articulation of front-high vowel /i/ as back-low vowel /a/. The third, forth, fifth formant frequency (F3, F4, F5) of /a/, /i/ and /u/ were decreased although statistically not significant. Conclusion: The anatomical and functional changes of oropharynx by peritonsillar abscess can cause changes in resonance and speech quality. We suggest that these changes could be the cause of 'muffled voice' in patients of peritonsillar abscess.