• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.495-503
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Korean speakers produce English vowels. Twenty one Korean learners produced the vowels [i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ʌ, ɔ, oʊ, ʊ, u] in bVt or pVt forms of real words. Acoustic measurements were conducted for the vowel formant frequencies (F1, F2) and duration. Results showed that Korean learners tended to produce the vowel duration longer than native English speakers. Also, the front vowels produced by Korean participants tended to be produced at the more frontal part of the tongue. In addition, Korean participants distinguished the tense and lax pairs not through quality(F1, F2) but through vowel duration. This is different from the native English speakers in that they differentiate tense and lax pairs by quality(F1, F2) as well as vowel duration. Based on these results, pedagogical implications are discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.79-88
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• 2015

English vowels are difficult to teach and learn because both teachers and learners cannot show or see shapes of vocal tract inside their own mouth cavities. The aim of this study is to examine what kind of changes occur in production and perception of English vowels by college students before and after lessons in order to provide fundamental materials for teaching students English vowels. Fifteen volunteer female students attending an English phonetics course participated in the lessons for one and half a month period. Formant values of vowels produced and perceived before and after the lessons were obtained using Flying Popcorn and Praat. Results showed that a produced vowel space after the lessons was greater than that before the lessons with no significant difference. Distances between some adjacent corner vowels were too close to be distinguished. Secondly, perceived vowels before and after the lessons were almost the same. Here again, some adjacent vowels were closely spaced. Thirdly, three groups which were divided by the length of the distance between the vowel /i-${\ae}$/ showed similar patterns in their perception and production. Generally the vowel space expanded from [u] to [${\ae}$]. The author concluded that there was no drastic improvement of vowel perception and production within a short period of time. Further studies would be desirable to examine how successful any long-term English vowel lessons would be and which methods should be taken to evaluate students' achievements proposed here.

• MALSORI
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• no.51
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• pp.1-16
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• 2004

The aim of this paper is to analyze vowels in voice imitation and disguised voice, and to find the invariable phonetic features of the speaker. In this paper we examined the formants of monophthongs /a, u, i, o, {$\omega},{\;}{\varepsilon},{\;}{\Lambda}$/. The results of the present are as follows : $\circled1$ Speakers change their vocal tract features. $\circled2$ Vowels /a, ${\varepsilon}$, i/ appear to be proper for speaker recognition since they show invariable acoustic feature during voice modulation. $\circled3$ F1 does not change easily compared to higher formants. $\circled4$ F3-F2 appears to be constituent for a speaker identification in vowel /a/ and /$\varepsilon$/, and F4-F2 in vowel /i/. $\circled5$ Resulting of F-ratio, differences of each formants were more useful than individual formant of a vowel to speaker recognition.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.24-32
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• 1991

Cleft palate or velopharyngeal incompetence shows many disorders and disabilities affecting speech transmission. including distortion. substitution. and the nasalization of the vowels. The nasalized vowels are produced primarily by lowering of the velum. resulting in opening a side passage for the air flow through the nasal cavity. These abnormal movements give rise to complex modification of the physical property of the sound or in the sound spectrum. The authors employed Sonagraph$^{\circledR}$ as a sound analyzer in order to ascertain the features which characterize the nasalization of vowels. Twenty healthy Korean male adult voluteers were analyzed in artificial conditions of anterior and posterior nasal obstruction. and velo-pharyngeal incompetence. The results were as follows : 1) Fundamental frequency was not changed by nasal obstruction or velopharyngeal incompetence. 2) There was no significant difference of the formant intensity between normal and nasal vowels. 3) In VPI, a decrease of the frequency of $F_2$ was observed in /e/ and /i/ vowels(p<0.001). 4) In VPI, the $F_2$ was frequently missed in /o/ and /u/ vowels. 5) In the consonant spectra of VPI, the 'release burst' was usually not observed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.25-47
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• 2002

Human language activity in the information society has been developing the communication system between humans and machines. The aim of this study was to analyze dialectal speech in Korea. One hundred Kyungsang and one hundred Cholla informants participated in this study. A CSL and Flexible laryngeal fiberscope were used for analysis of the acoustic and glottal gestures of all the vowels and consonants. Test words were made on the picture cards and letter cards which contained each vowel and each consonant, respectively. The dialogue between the examiner and the informants was recorded in a question and answer manner. The acoustic results of two dialects were as follows: Kyungsang and Cholla informants showed neutralization between /e/ and /$\varepsilon$. However, the apertures of Kyungsang vowels /i, w, u, o/ were higher than those of Cholla vowels. The /wi/ and /$\varepsilon$/ of Kyungsang Diphthong vowels were shown as simple vowels /i/ and /$\varepsilon$/ in Cholla dialect. The VOT of Cholla dilaect was longer than that of Kyungsang dialect. The fricative frequence of Kyurlgsang dialect was about 1000Hz higher than that of Cholla dialect. The glottal widths on fiberscopic images showed that the consonant durations of Kyungsang and Cholla dialects were correlated all together with the acoustic duration on the spectrogram.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.71-79
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• 2013

This study provided longitudinal examination of the Chinese learners' acquisition of the Korean vowels. Specifically the author examined whether Korean monophthongs are acquired rapidly in early stages of learning (Flege, Munro and Skelton, 1992; Munro and Derwing, 2008) or they develop rather gradually in proportion to the learners' experience (Byee, 2001; Ellis, 2006). This study collected the Korean vowel production by 23 Chinese learners for a year, and then analysed F1 and F2 of each Korean vowel. The results showed that 1) Most of the second language (L2) vowels were rapidly improved during the first six or nine months of Korean learning before reaching the constant stage; and 2) The exact acquisition trajectories varied across the seven vowels. Specifically the vowels which were acquired in the early stage of learning were /i, e, ɨ/ for F1 and /ʌ, e, o, u/ for F2. Thus this study supports the hypothesis of Flege et al. (1992) and Munro and Derwing (2008) except the fact that each vowel showed the different learning route.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.44-58
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• 1994

The formants of the 9 Korean standard vowels(which used by the average people of Seoul, central-area of the Korean peninsula) were measured by analysis with the linear predictive coding(LPC) and fast Fourier transform(FFT). The author already had reported the constriction area for the Korean standard vowels, and with the existing data, the distance from glottis to the constriction area in the vocal tract of each vowel was newly measured with videovelopharyngograms and lateral Rontgenograms of the vocal tract. We correlated the formant frequencies with the distance from glottis to the constriction area of the vocal tract. Also we tried to correlate the formant frequencies with the position of tongue in the vocal tract which is divided into 2 categories : The position of tongue in oral cavity by the distance from imaginary palatal line to the highest point of tongue and the position in pharyngeal cavity by the distance from back of tongue to posterior pharyngeal wall. This study was performed with 10 adults(male : 5, female : 5) who spoke primary 9 Korean standard vowels. We had already reported that the Korean vowel [i], [e], $[{\varepsilon}]$ were articulated at hard palate level, [$\dot{+}$], [u] were at soft palate level, [$\wedge$] was at upper pharynx level and the [$\wedge$], [$\partial$], [a] in a previous article. Also we had noted that the significance of pharyngeal cavity in vowel articulation. From this study we have concluded that ; 1) The F$_1$ is related with the oral cavity articulated vowel [i, e, $\varepsilon$, $\dot{+}$, u]. 2) Within the oral cavity articulated vowel [i, e, $\varepsilon$, $\dot{+}$, u] and the upper pharynx articulated vowel [o], the F$_2$ is elevated when the diatance from glottis to the constriction area is longer. But within the lower pharynx articulated vowel [$\partial$, $\wedge$, a], the F$_2$ is elevated when the distance from glottis to the constriction area is shorter. 3) With the stronger tendency of back-vowel, the higher the elevation of the F$_1$ and F$_2$ frequencies. 4) The F$_3$ and F$_4$ showed no correaltion with the constriction area nor the position of tongue in the vocal tract 5) The parameter F$_2$- F$_1$, which is the difference between F$_2$ frequency and F$_1$ frequency showed an excellent indicator of differenciating the oral cavity articulated vowels from pharyngeal cavity articulated vowels. If the F$_2$-F$_1$ is less than about 600Hz which indicates the vowel is articulated in the pharyngeal cavity, and more than about 600Hz, which indicates that the vowel is articulated in the oral cavity.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.17-26
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• 1999

It has been claimed that Korean mid-vocalic voiceless unaspirated lax stops are phonetically realized with voicing throughout the oral closure phase. Acoustic measurements were undertaken to examine the claim with four Korean native speakers using /$V_1CV_2$/ words where the vowel ($V_1\;=\;V_2$) was /i, a, u/ and the C was voiceless unaspirated lax stops /p, t, k/. Findings: (1) During mid-vocalic stops /k/ and /p/ the vowel /u/ was accompanied generally by a significant increase in voice cessation time as percentage of the oral closure interval (PCT) than the vowel /a/, regardless of subjects, whereas in mid-vocalic alveolar stop /t/ the effects of vowels on PCT were subject-dependent, (2) The effects of vowels on PCT were significantly greater in mid-vocalic /k/ than /p/, regardless of subjects, (3) The mean PCT, averaged across six tokens, ranged from 17% to100%, giving overall mean 61% in which the standard deviation was ${\pm}30$, and (4) Overall % of the total of mid-vocalic unaspirated lax stops were produced with a substantial period of devocing and voicing lag. Considering these results, it is difficult to agree with the existing claims that Korean voiceless unaspirated lax stops are phonetically realized with voicing throughout the oral closure phase. Other phonetic variables, including the durations of pre/post-stop vowels, voice onset time, voice cessation time, and the duration of oral closure, were measured.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.140-148
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• 1999

The use of obturator is the prosthetic rehabilitation approach for restoration of the defected maxillary shape and function for the patients with palatal defect. The obturator can change the shape of vocal tract and nasality, but few reports on the effects of the change were presented. So, the authors performed the experimental study to compare the difference between the sizes of vowel triangles produced by maxillectomized patients before and after obturator-wearing and to consider how much improvement in speech intelligibility can be expected by obturator wearing. The 8 patients who were totally maxillectomized due to palatal cancer were participated as subjects. They produced 5 vowels(/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/) before and after obturator-wearing. The formants of the vowels were analyzed by the spectrogram of CSL, and their speech intelligibility were judged by normal 8 listeners. As results, the frequency of the first and the second formant showed no significant difference between the articulation before and after wearing, but the comparison of the sizes of vowel triangles, related with the speech intelligibility, showed significant difference. The vowel triangle of the articulation after wearing was larger than that of the articulation before wearing. /i/ showed the lowest speech intelligibility score among the vowel articulation before wearing. After wearing obturators, their scores increased on the whole, especially, in /a/, but the intelligibility of /u/ decreased after wearing.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.60-64
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• 2000

This paper studies the relation between the Fundamental Frequency (F0) and the formants of simple vowels in the Korean language sung by sopranos. It is hewn that, in soprano singing, the F0 of a vowel affects its formants. For this reason the formants of simple vowels sung by sopranos must be considered in all over the soprano singing range. We recorded the five simple vowel sounds /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ sung by five professional sopranos from A3 (220.0Hz) to A5 (880.0Hz) in the major scale and compared the formants of the sung vowels with those of spoken vowels. We observed that F1 and F2 of sung vowels were stable in low F0 (lower than B4) but in high F0 (higher than B4), F1 and F2 lost their stabilities. In the case of /a/, /o/, and /u/, the slope of the F1-F2 graph was about 2.6, and those of the F0-F2 and F0-Fl graphs were 2.2-2.5 and 0.7-1.0, respectively. And as the F0 increases, the F1 and F2 of sung vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ were almost the same. At A5, the Fl and F2 of five sung vowels had the same values. This results suggest that the relation between the F0 and the formants be used to synthesize soprano's singing vowels.