• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.107-116
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• 2015

The present experiment investigated the effect of word length on the length of f0 intervals for North Kyungsang children. In order to find out the lengths of the f0 intervals, the f0 values at the midpoints of vowels in words were measured. F0 estimates were computed as intervals consistent with the logarithmic scale corresponding to the number of syllables in the words. The results indicated that the mean f0 intervals in words of different lengths showed a significant difference for the HH in HH vs. HHL and the LH in LH vs. LLH for North Kyungsang children. Adult speakers from the North Kyungsang region significantly differed only within the HH in HH vs. HHL. Adult speakers made a noticeable contribution in this characteristic from the children. The result of the adult study was presented to confirm whether the children used a North Kyungsang dialect. With respect to individual speaker differences, the North Kyungsang children showed more or less consistent patterns in quantile-quantile plots for the HH vs. HHL, but for the HL vs. LHL and LH vs. LLH, there were more variations than for the HH vs. HHL. The individual speakers' variation was the largest for the HL vs. LHL and the smallest for HH vs. HHL. Considering these results, the effect of word length on f0 intervals tended to show pitch accent-type-specific characteristics in the process of prosodic acquisition.

• 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.9 no.4
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

The current study investigated the productions of /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/ in Kyungsang Korean, which is known for undergoing a dispersion for the younger generation. Specifically, to identify the nature of /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/ in Kyungsang Korean, this study examined the linguistic and social factors affecting directions and degrees of the /ɨ/-/${\Lambda}$/ dispersion. Sixteen young speakers of Kyungsang Korean repeated 112 (near) minimal pairs containing the two target vowels. The formant values of each production as well as the Euclidean distance between the two vowels were analyzed for four manipulated factors: gender (male vs. female), the existence of carrier phrases (words in isolation vs. words with a carrier phrase), the lexical status of stimulus words (real-word pairs vs. nonsense-word pairs), and the vowel position within a word (word-initial positions vs. word-final positions). The results indicated that the female speakers produced the two target vowels more distinctively than the male speakers, and so did when the words were produced in isolation. The results also revealed that the Euclidean distances were greater for the real-word pairs and in word-initial positions. Overall, the results suggested that the Kyungsang Korean speakers in their 20s could distinctively produce the two vowels /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/, but this vowel dispersion is not a completed process, but an ongoing one.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.43-49
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• 2012

This paper describes the categorical effects of pitch accent contrasts in a mimicry task. It focuses, specifically, on examining how fundamental frequency (f0) variation reflects phonological contrasts from speakers of two distinct varieties of Korean (i.e., North Kyungsang and South Cholla). The results showed that, in a mimicry task using synthetic speech continua, there was a categorical effect in f0 peak timing for North Kyungsang speakers, but the timing of f0 peaks and valleys in the responses of South Cholla speakers was more variable, presenting a gradient or non-categorical effect. Evidence of categorical effects was represented as the shift of f0 peak times along an acoustic continuum for North Kyungsang speakers. The range for the shift of f0 valley times was much narrower, compared to that of f0 peak times. The degree of a shift near the middle of the continuum showed variability across individual mimicry responses. However, the categorical structure in mimicry responses regarding the clustering of f0 peak points was more significant for North Kyungsang speakers than for South Cholla speakers. Additionally, the finding of the current study implies that the location of f0 peak times depends on individuals' imitative (or cognitive) abilities.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.53-65
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• 2014

The current research examines whether pitch contour shapes in North Kyungsang pitch accent contrasts provide a phonetic dimension for phonological discreteness in a mimicry task. Two pitch accent continua resynthesized were created for HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. To confirm a phonetic dimension for accounting for pitch accent categories in North Kyungsang Korean, the mimicries of speakers of two dialects (i.e., North Kyungsang & South Cholla) were compared. One of the findings showed that, for North Kyungsang speakers, the range of mean f0 peak times was a phonetic dimension undergoing a continuous shift within a stimulus continuum for both HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. On the other hand, for South Cholla speakers, there were no apparent shifts around categorical boundaries for either HH vs. HL or HH vs. LH. Regarding individual mimicries on f0 peak timing, there are many variations. For HH vs. LH, three North Kyungsang speakers showed a discrete pattern reflecting a shift in phonological categories, but for HH vs. HL, there was no such distinction showing a categorical shift, though there were statistically significant differences for two speakers. Interestingly, one of the North Kyungsang speakers showed a continuous phonetic dimension for both HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. Lastly, the f0 valley timing did not exhibit a discrete or gradient phonetic dimension for speakers of either dialect. On the basis of these results, what is interesting is that the tonal target such as high tone in North Kyungsang pitch accent categories within the autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory may be realized within individual cognitive systems for representing the interaction of perception and production.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2018

Categorical production in language processing helps speakers to produce phonemic contrasts. This categorization and production is utilized for the production-based and imitation-based approach in the present study. Contrastive signals in speakers' speech reflect the shapes of boundaries with categorical characteristics. Signals that provide information about lexical pitch accent contrasts can introduce categorical distinctions for productive and cognitive selection. This experiment was conducted with nine North Kyungsang speakers for a production task and nine North Kyungsang speakers for an imitation task. The first finding of the present study is the rigidity of categorical production, which controls the boundaries of lexical pitch accent contrasts. The categorization of North Kyungsang speakers' production allows them to classify minimal pitch accent contrasts. The categorical production in imitation appeared in two clusters, representing two meaningful contrasts. The second finding of the present study is that there are individual differences in speakers' production and imitation responses. The distinctive performances of individual speakers showed a variety of curves. For the HL-LH patterns, the categorical production tended to be highly distinctive as compared to the other pitch accent patterns (HH-HL and HH-LH), showing that there are more continuous curves than categorical curves. Finally, the present study shows that, for North Kyungsang speakers, imitative production is the core type of categorical production for determining the existence of the lexical pitch accent system. However, several questions remain for defining that categorical production, which leads to ideas for future research.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.37-54
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• 2004

The main goal of this study is to examine the current issue of the deletion of high tone vs. the downstep or upstep of high tone in North Kyungsang Korean (NKK). In this phonetic experiment, five native speakers of North Kyungsang Korean participated and two categories, such as compounds and two-word phrases were included as a test material. This experiment shows that when the first word belongs to the nonfinal class, the high tone of the second word is overwhelmingly deleted. When the first word belongs to the final class, the high tone of it is also overwhelmingly deleted. It is thus concluded that when two words are combined into a phrase, the peak of one word retains, whereas the peak of the other is deleted. It is confirmed that a single high tone prominence in a phonological phrase in NKK is not due to the processes of down step or upstep but the deletion process.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.123-130
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• 2015

Given a recent finding showing that female speakers of South Kyungsang Korean is undergoing a sound change of the lexical pitch accent, this study tested whether the change is also reflected for male speech. This study compared F0 scaling and timing properties of accent words produced by younger female and male speakers of South Kyungsang Korean. The results indicated clear gender-related differences, showing more distinct acoustic properties across the accent words for male production compared to females. Despite the better distinction, however, younger male speakers showed peak delay where the F0 peaks are located further to the right compared to conservative speakers' production. Therefore, it might be suggested that younger male speakers' accent productions are in between conservative and innovative phonetic forms.

• MALSORI
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• no.46
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• pp.1-11
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• 2003

This study examines the acoustic characteristics of Korean stops of two dialects, Seoul and Kyungsang, focusing on VOT(Voice Onset Time). 8 speakers of these two dialects were asked to read 590 words which contain the stops of different places of articulation and phonation types. The results showed that overall the VOTs of Kyungsang dialect were shorter than those of Seoul dialect. This was more prominent in lenis stops than in fortis or aspirated stops. It was also shown that there were significant VOT overlapping differences between the two dialects.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.53-59
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• 2017

The present study examined if individual listeners' perceptual variations were associated with their cognitive characteristics indexed by the Autistic Spectrum Quotient (AQ). This study first investigated the perception of the lexical pitch accent contrast in the Kyungsang Korean currently undergoing a sound change, and then tested if listeners' perceptual variations were correlated with their AQ scores. Eighteen Kyungsang listeners in their 20s participated in the perception experiment where they identified two contrastive accent words for auditory stimuli systematically varying F0 scaling and timing properties; the participants then completed the AQ questionnaire. In the results, the acoustic parameters reporting reduced phonetic differences across accent contrasts for younger Kyungsang generation played a reliable role in perceiving the HH word from HL, suggesting the discrepancy between the perception and the production in the context of sound change. This study also observed that individuals' perceptual variations were negatively correlated with their AQ sub scores. The present findings suggested that the sound change might appear differently between production and perception with a different time course, and deviant percepts could be explained by individuals' cognitive measure.