• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.31-41
• /
• 2012

Recent studies have shown that the stop system of Korean is undergoing a sound change in terms of the two acoustic parameters, voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (f0). Because of a VOT merger of a consonantal opposition and onset-f0 interaction, the relative importance of the two parameters has been changing in Korean where f0 is a primary cue and VOT is a secondary cue in distinguishing lax from aspirated stops in speech production as well as perception. In English, however, VOT is a primary cue and f0 is a secondary cue in contrasting voiced and voiceless stops. This study examines how Korean English learners use the two acoustic parameters of L1 in producing L2 English stops and whether the sound change of acoustic parameters in L1 affects L2 speech production. The data were collected from six adult Korean English learners. Results show that Korean English learners use not only VOT but also f0 to contrast L2 voiced and voiceless stops. However, unlike VOT variations among speakers, the magnitude effect of onset consonants on f0 in L2 English was steady and robust, indicating that f0 also plays an important role in contrasting the [voice] contrast in L2 English. The results suggest that the important role of f0 in contrasting lax and aspirated stops in L1 Korean is transferred to the contrast of voiced and voiceless stops in L2 English. The results imply that, for Korean English learners, f0 rather than VOT will play an important perceptual cue in contrasting voiced and voiceless stops in L2 English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.89-95
• /
• 2015

We explored Dutch listeners' perception of Korean three-way contrast of fortis, lenis, and aspirated stops. The three Korean stops are all voiceless word-initially, whereas Dutch distinguishes between voiced and voiceless stops, so Korean voiceless stops were expected to be difficult for the Dutch listeners. Among the three Korean stops, fortis stops are phonetically most similar to Dutch voiceless stops, thus they were expected to be the easiest to distinguish for the Dutch listeners. Dutch and Korean listeners carried out a discrimination task using three crucial comparisons, i.e., fortis-lenis, fortis-aspirated, and lenis-aspirated stops. Results showed that discrimination between lenis and aspirated stops was the most difficult among the three comparisons for both Dutch and Korean listeners. As expected, Dutch listeners discriminated fortis from the other stops relatively accurately. It seems likely that Dutch listeners relied heavily on VOT but less on F0 when discriminating between the three Korean stops.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2004.05a
• /
• pp.143-146
• /
• 2004

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the stem-final consonant clusters beginning with the liquid /ㄹ/ in Korean are realized in speech. Most scholars claim that the Korean stem-final consonant clusters are simplified and reduced to a stop consonant when pronounced. An attempt is made in this paper to verify the claim by conducting a series of listening tests and an acoustic analysis. The listening tests show that, contrary to the previous claims, some Koreans actually pronounce the stem-final consonant clusters as a whole. The result of the spectrographical study confirms our auditory observation. It has been found that the duration time taken by the stem-final consonant clusters is clearly longer when both consonants are pronounced than when only a liquid is pronounced. Similarly the vowel length of the previous syllable in the former is found to be longer in scale than the latter.

• Korean Journal of Cleft Lip And Palate
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2002

Some children with Cleft Palate have shown a speech disorders after repaired surgical operation. A diagnostic evaluation of speech in children with cleft palates is important in preventing speech disorders. However, standard speech evaluation form for children with cleft palates has not yet developed in Korea. The purpose of this study is to make the standard speech evaluation form for children with cleft palates. Thirty control children group and ten children with cleft palate participated in this experiment. The test words are composed of meaningless two syllabic words containing the three different types of korean stop consonants,

• Proceedings of the KSLP Conference
• /
• 1996.11a
• /
• pp.89-89
• /
• 1996

정상인 20명을 대상으로 하여, 우리말의 양순 파열음인 /ㅂ, ㅃ, ㅍ/의 발음시, 각각의 음소에서의 구강내압의 크기와 폐쇄기 및 VOT의 길이를 측정하고, 목표 자음이 어두에 나올 때 및 음절 초에 나올 때, 그리고 어음을 보통 소리로 말했을 때와 큰 소리로 말했을 때, 그 세 측정치가 어떻게 변화하는지를 파악하기 위한 실험을 실시하였다 채취된 어음의 구강내압은 발음시 Pressure sensor를 사용함으로써 산출된 파형을 이용하여 측정하였고, 폐쇄기와 VOT는 컴퓨터에 입력된 음성신호를 Spectrogram으로 분석하여 측정하였다. 그 결과, 양순 파열음 중 구강내압은 /ㅍ/＞/ㅃ/＞/ㅂ/의 순이었고, 폐쇄기의 길이는 /ㅃ/＞/ㅍ/＞/ㅂ/, 그리고, VOT의 길이는 /ㅍ/＞/ㅂ/＞/ㅃ/의 순이었다. 양순 파열음이 어두에 올 패보다 음절 초에 올 때 더 큰 구강내압을 보였으며, 폐쇄기의 길이는 더 짧아지는 경향을 보였고, VOT의 길이도 폐쇄기와 마찬가지로 짧아지는 경향을 보였다 그리고, 양순 파열음을 큰 소리로 발음했을 때, 목표 자음의 위치에 상관없이, 구강내압의 크기는 의미 있게 커졌으며, 폐쇄기와 VOT는 짧아지는 경향을 보였다.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
• /
• v.50 no.9
• /
• pp.896-900
• /
• 2007

Purpose : The aim of this study was to investigate the speech problems in benign rolandic epilepsy (BRE) according to the seizure focus in EEG and semiology. Methods : Twenty three patients [right origin (13 patients) or left side (10 patients)] who met the BRE criteria by International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) were prospectively enrolled. We excluded the patients who had abnormal MRI or showed both side spikes in EEG. Computerized Speech Lab was used to assess the speech characteristics of the patients. Results : The error pattern of laryngeal articulation in BRE was exclusively substitution of stop consonants, these errors showed more frequent in the left group (16.0% vs 25.5%). Voice onset time (VOT) of stop consonants and Total duration (TD) of word in both groups were prolonged than normal control group, especially in left group (P<0.05). The first formant of vowel /o/ and second formant of /e/ were significantly decreased in left group (P<0.05). The right group scored wider on pitch range ($192.9{\pm}54.0Hz$) and energy range in spontaneous speech ($14.2{\pm}6.4db$) than the left group ($233.3{\pm}12.5Hz$, $19.4{\pm}9.3db$, respectively, P>0.05). Duration of counting (5 to 9) in left group slower than right group ($8.6{\pm}1.7$ vs $7.9{\pm}1.8sec$). Conclusion : Our data suggested that interictal spikes and seizures in either centrotemporal sides, especially left side group, may induce speech problems. We recommend the logopedic and phoniatric evaluations of speech in BRE patients.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.87-103
• /
• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.3 no.3
• /
• pp.3-10
• /
• 2011

This study examined the production of aspirated stop consonants in Korean and English words to address how the influences differed particularly in terms of proficiency in L2 English. Voice onset times (VOTs) were measured from two American monolinguals and seven Korean speakers. The results showed that VOT patterns for both L1 and L2 stops differed according to their proficiency in L2 English. In L2 English, high proficient speakers produced VOTs that were similar to those of native speakers of English whereas low proficient speakers produced VOTs that were significantly longer than those of proficient speakers. In L1 Korean and L2 English, most of the proficient speakers produced VOTs similarly. Unlike previous findings, Korean VOTs were even shorter than English counterparts. The VOT shortening of aspirated stops in Korean was found for most of the proficient speakers. The findings of the present study suggest that cross language phonetic influences as well as the ongoing VOT shortening in Korean aspirated stops may be correlated with L2 proficiency. Since this is a pilot study with a small number of subjects for each proficiency group, further quantitative study is necessary to generalize.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Cognitive Science Conference
• /
• 2005.05a
• /
• pp.154-157
• /
• 2005

본 연구는 한국어를 학습한 경험이 없는 일본인의 한국어 치경폐쇄음 세 음소 범주(/ㄷ/, /ㄸ/, /ㅌ/)에 대한 지각 학습이 양순폐쇄음 세 음소(/ㅂ/. /ㅃ/, /ㅍ/) 지각에 미치는 효과를 검토하였다. 김윤현과 김정오 (2005)는 일본인들이 지각 학습과제에서 한국어 치경폐쇄음 세 범주를 구분할 때 기식성. 긴장성과 같은 변별 자질에 선택주의 하게 됨을 시사하는 결과를 얻었다. 치경음에 대한 지각 학습으로 적절한 단서에 선택주의 하게 되었다면, 같은 지각 차원에 따라 세 범주로 구분되는 양순음의 경우에도 치경폐쇄음 학습 후 음성자극들을 옳게 범주화를 할 것이다. 실험 결과, 치경폐쇄음 자극(/다/, /따/, /타/)만으로 이루어진 동일-상이판단 학습 과제에서 치경폐쇄음 파악의 정확율은 29.1%(표준오차=3.02) 증가하였고, 조음 위치의 변화에 따른 음향적 차이에도 불구하고 양순폐쇄음의 정반응율도 15.8%(표준오차=3.27)의 향상을 보였다. 이 전이효과는 치경음 지각 학습 때문에 일본인들이 폐쇄음의 세 음소 범주를 구분하는 적절한 지각 차원에 선택주의하게 되었음을 시사한다.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.141-151
• /
• 2014

This study reports anti-hierarchical initial-syllable lengthening of an utterance-internal phrase in Korean. That is, the phrase-initial syllable (e.g., /a/ of "apa-do" or /ma/ of "mapa-do") starting with a voiced phoneme (i.e., vowels or voiced consonants) manifests itself as significantly longer when it is preceded by another phrase without a pause than when it leads an utterance or follows a pause utterance-internally. The phenomenon was examined with regard to two other factors: (1) tempo and (2) tenseness of the consonant (/p, $p^{\prime}$, $p^h$/) following the target syllable /a/. First, the effect of tempo on initial lengthening was not significant. Apart from the statistical significance, however, a tendency was observed, i.e., the slower the tempo is, the greater the lengthening. By contrast, the faster the tempo is, the higher the ratio (%) of lengthening. Second, contrary to our expectations, initial-syllable lengthening was even greater before tense stops /$p^{\prime}$, $p^h$/ than before lax stop /p/ regardless of tempo, and it was remarkable when it comes to the ratio (%), which means that initial lengthening is free of the pre-consonantal vowel shortening effect. Final-syllable lengthening is a pre-boundary marker, while the initial-syllable lengthening is regarded as a post-boundary marker of a phrase.