• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.470-480
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• 2010

Although e-Learning contents contain audio materials as well as visual materials, research on the design of audio materials has been focused on visual design. If it is considered that non-speech sounds which are a type of audio materials can promptly provide feedbacks of learners' responses and guide learners' learning process, the systemic design of non-speech sounds is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the learners' perceptions toward non-speech sounds contained the e-Learning contents with multidimensional scaling method. For this purpose, the eleven non-speech sounds were selected among non-speech sounds designed Korea Open Courseware. The 66 juniors in A university responded the degree of similarity among 11 non-speech sounds and the learners' perceptions towards non-speech sounds were represented in the multidimensional space. The result shows that learners perceive separately non-speech sounds by the length of non-speech sounds and the atmosphere which is positive or negative.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.1E
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• pp.10-13
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• 1998

We propose a robust non-speech rejection algorithm using the three types of pitch-related parameters. The robust non-speech rejection algorithm utilizes three kinds of pitch parameters : (1) pitch range, (2) difference of the successive pitch range, and (3) the number of successive pitches satisfying constraints related with the previous two parameters. The acceptance rate of the speech commands was 95% for -2.8dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) speech database that consisted of 2440 utterances. The rejection rate of the non-speech sounds was 100% while the acceptance rate of the speech commands was 97% in an office environment.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.201-214
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• 2002

In the Japanese language, there is a phonological contrast between not only initial stops, but also non initial in voiced and voiceless sounds. But in the Korean language, voiced sounds do not appear in the initial. Due to this, pronunciation of voiced sounds in the initial will be difficult for Korean. Through this research, I analyzed the minimal pairs by voiced/voiceless sounds of Japanese and Korean, and perception experiment in which Japanese listened to Korean speakers' pronunciations. Japanese pronunciations showed distinct acoustic differences between voiced and voiceless stops, especially in VOT. The duration of vowels after voiced stops was longer than that of voiceless ones. Vowel pitches after voiceless stops were higher. On the other hands, Korean showed three patterns of voiced sounds. There were-VOT values as native speakers, +VOT, and nasal formant tended to occur before prenasalized stops. Koreans pronounced voiceless sounds in strong aspirated, unaspirated, or tense sounds. Finally, Japanese judged sounds with not only -VOT values and prenasalized, but also with +VOT values as voiced. This suggests that we may not consider VOT values as the unique feature of voicing, and that such other phonetic characteristics as the following vowel lengthening should be included here.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.79-89
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• 2005

Acoustic feedback between microphone and receiver can be effectively cancelled adaptive feedback cancellation algorithm. Although many speech sounds have non-Gaussian distribution, most algorithms were tested with speech like sounds whose distribution were Guassian type. In this paper, we proposed an adaptive feedback cancellation algorithm based on independent component analysis (ICA) for digital hearing aid. The algorithm was tested with not only Gaussian distribution but also Laplacian distribution. We verified that the proposed algorithm has better acoustic feedback cancelling performance than conventional normalized root mean square (NLMS) algorithm, especially speech like sounds with Laplacian distribution.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.14 no.1_2
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• pp.22-39
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• 1992

The purpose of this study was to evaluate hypernasality, nasal air emission, glottal stop, articulation disorder in patients with velopharyngeal incompetency(V.P.I.) and to analyze speech improvement after pharyngoplasty. In this study 61 patients with velopharyngeal incompetency were tested, and in patents with pharyngoplasty speech problems before pharyngoplasty were compared with those after pharyngoplasty. The results obtained are as follows : 1. There are few speech problems in pronouncing the vowel sounds. 2. There are many speech problems in pronouncing the pressure sounds and few speech problems in non-pressure sounds. 3. Speech problems in patients with cleft palate are influenced not by anatomical defect but by severity of velopharyngeal incompetence after palatorrhaphy. 4. Operation methods which decrease the velopharygeal incompetence must be considered for reducing the speech problems. 5. Among the 61 cases with V.P.I. 19 cases(31%) showed nasal air emission and 24 cases(39%) showed glottal stop. 6. Pharyngoplasty is of benefit to primary precipitating components such as hypernasality, nasal air emission but of no benefit to secondary compensating component such as glottal stop. 7. There as no significant difference in speech improvement between pre-and post-pharyngoplasty(p<0.05).

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.312-320
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• 2000

This presentation aims to explore some possibility of non-segmental phonetics usually ignored in phonetics education. In pedagogical phonetics, especially ESL/EFL oriented phonetics speech sounds tend to be classified in two criteria 1) 'pronunciation' which deals with segments and 2) 'prosody' or 'suprasegmentals', a criterion that deals with non-segmental elements such as stress and intonation. However, speech involves more dynamic processing. It is non-linear and multi-dimensional in spite of the linear sequence of symbols in phonetic/phonological transcriptions. No word is without pitch or voice quality apart from segmental characteristics whether it is spoken in isolation or cut out from continuous speech. This simply tells the dichotomy of pronunciation and prosody is merely a useful convention. There exists some room to consider dynamic non-segmental phonetics. Examples of non-segmental phonetic investigation, some of the analyses conducted within the frame of Firthian Prosodic Analysis, especially of the relation between vowel variants and foot types, are examined and we see what kind of auditory phonetic training is required to understand impressionistic transcriptions which lie behind the non-segmental phonetics.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.337-342
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• 1996

In prevoius works we have repored phonetic similarities between Japanese and Spanish voweis and syiiabic sounds. (1) (2) (3) (4). In the present communication we explore the relative importance of duration of the consonantal segment to elicit Spanish /l/ - /r/ distinction by native j Japanese talkers. Three Argentine and three trained native Japanese talkers recorded /l-r/ combined with /a/ in VCV sequences. Modifications of consonant duration and vowel context with transitions were m made by editing natural /ala/ sounds. Mixed VCV were produced by combining sounds of both languages. Perceptual tests were produced by combining sounds of both languages perceptual performed presenting the speech material, to native t trained and non trained Japanese listeners. In a tirst sessIOn a d discrimination procedure was applied. The items were arranged in pairs a and listeners Nere told to indicate the pair that sounded different. In the f following session they were asked to identify and type the letter corresponding to each one of the items. Responses arc examined in tenns of critical duration of the interval between vowels. Preliminary results indicate that the duration of intervocalic intervais was a relevant cue for the identification of /l/ and /r/. It seems that to differentiate the two sounds, Japanese listeners required relatively longer interval steps than the argentine suhjects. There was a tendency to conhlse more frequently /l/ for /r/ than viceversa.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.13-22
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• 2021

The present study employed an analytical framework that is characterised by a synthesis of quantitative and qualitative analyses with a specially designed computer software SpeechActConc to examine speech acts in business communication. The naturally occurring data from the audio recordings and the prosodic transcriptions of the business sub-corpora of the HKCSE (prosodic) are manually annotated with a speech act taxonomy for finding out the frequency of fillers, the co-occurring patterns of fillers with other speech acts, and the linguistic realisations of fillers. The discoursal function of fillers to sustain the discourse or to hold the floor has diverse linguistic realisations, ranging from a sound (e.g. 'uhuh') and a word (e.g. 'well') to sounds (e.g. 'um er') and words, namely phrase ('sort of') and clause (e.g. 'you know'). Some are even combinations of sound(s) and word(s) (e.g. 'and um', 'yes er um', 'sort of erm'). Among the top five frequent linguistic realisations of fillers, 'er' and 'um' are the most common ones found in all the six genres with relatively higher percentages of occurrence. The remaining more frequent realisations consist of clause ('you know'), word ('yeah') and sound ('erm'). These common forms are syntactically simpler than the less frequent realisations found in the genres. The co-occurring patterns of fillers and other speech acts are diverse. The more common co-occurring speech acts with fillers include informing and answering. The findings show that fillers are not only frequently used by speakers in spontaneous conversation but also mostly represented in sounds or non-linguistic realisations.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.31-38
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• 2017

This study aims to examine the acoustic characteristics of Korean sibilant, especially aspiration in Korean fricatives (plain: /s/, fortis: /s'/) and affricates (aspirated: /$ts^h$/, lenis: /ts/, and fortis: /ts'/). Duration values (closure duration, frication duration, aspiration duration), center of gravity (COG) (of the total duration, of the two portions, in 10 ms), H1-H2 values (at the vowel onset) were examined in order to investigate the phonetic feature of aspiration in frication noise. This study further discusses how to define criteria for identifying aspiration in sibilant sounds by adopting 3 visual criteria for assessing aspiration. This visually-designated aspiration onset points are further matched with the COG decline points in 10 ms windows. The result shows that all the non-fortis sounds (/s/, /$ts^h$/, /ts/) contain aspiration, causing similar values of COG and H1-H2.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.201-209
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• 2005

This study was investigated developmental temporal features in Putonghua-speaking children. The total of 212 children between the ages 2;6 and 6;5 participated in Shanghai. Speech materials were constructed according to aspiration feature in stop sounds of Putonghua. Six words were selected in this study. A voice onset time was measured. Non-parametric procedures were employed for all the analyses. The VOT value across bilabial, alveolar, and velar stops was significantly differed between aspirated and unaspirated stops for each age group. Effect of age is. significant for unaspirated stops. It is clear that each of Putonghua stops showed decreasing mean and standard deviation. The overshoot phenomenon of VOT was apparent from the age of 2;6-2;11 to 4;6-4;11. There was high variability in the production of lag time for aspirated stops.