• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.187-200
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• 2002

The purpose of the present study is to see in terms of $F_{0}$ variation in Japanese how discourse focus and the lexical word accent interact with each other in realizing overall intonation patterns. Discourse focus causes prosodic restructuring of phrase structures and, as a result, largely affects pitch contours, whereas the lexical word accent is said to delimit the $F_{0}$ into a certain range. Measurement of $F_{0}$ was made of utterances of Japanese sentences to observe behavior of pitch contours with varied focus assignment and lexical accent specifications. The utterances were obtained in question-answer discourse contexts so that in a sentence, either one NP was always focused or no focus was assigned. I set four points for $F_{0}$ measurement; $F_{1s},F_{1m}, F_{2s}$, and $F_{2m}$, two for each noun phrase corresponding to $F_{0}$ at the beginning of the first syllable and that of the vocalic portion of the second syllable in the two NP's. The results of present study were as follows: (1) for all combination of lexical accent types, the $F_{0}$ rise both in NP1 and NP2 are higher when focused than when not focused. (2) NP2 starts a new accentual phrase when focused, showing even higher $F_{0}$ than NP1, the latter of which implies that in forming a new accentual phrase by focusing, catathesis does not seem to take effect on NP2 preceded by accented NP1. (3) unfocused NP2 preceded by unaccented NP1 has higher $F_{0}$ than those preceded by accented NP1.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.61-70
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• 2012

The current study observes the durational interaction of tautosyllabic consonants and vowels in the word-initial position of English and Korean child-directed speech (CDS). The effect of phonological laryngeal contrasts in stops on the following vowel duration, and the effect of the intrinsic vowel duration on the release duration of preceding stops in addition to the acoustic realization of the contrastive segments are explored in different prosodic contexts - phrase-initial/medial, focal accented/non-focused - in a marked speech style of CDS. A trade-off relationship between Voice Onset Time (VOT), as consonant release duration, and voicing phonation time, as vowel duration, reported from adult-to-adult speech, and patterns of durational variability are investigated in CDS of two languages with different linguistic rhythms, under systematically controlled prosodic contexts. Speech data were collected from four native English mothers and four native Korean mothers who were talking to their one-word staged infants. In addition to the acoustic measurements, the transformed delta measure is employed as a variability index of individual tokens. Results confirm the durational correlation between prevocalic consonants and following vowels. The interaction is revealed in a compensatory pattern such as longer VOTs followed by shorter vowel durations in both languages. An asymmetry is found in CV interaction in that the effect of consonant on vowel duration is greater than the VOT differences induced by the vowel. Prosodic effects are found such that the acoustic difference is enhanced between the contrastive segments under focal accent, supporting the paradigmatic strengthening effect. Positional variation, however, does not show any systematic effects on the variations of the measured acoustic quantities. Overall vowel duration and syllable duration are longer in English tokens but involve less variability across the prosodic variations. The constancy of syllable duration, therefore, is not found to be more strongly sustained in Korean CDS. The stylistic variation is discussed in relation to the listener under linguistic development in CDS.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.54-61
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• 2016

Because a word is the basic unit of language processing, studies of the word recognition processing and the variables that contribute to word recognition processing are very important. Word frequency and word length are recognized as important factors on word recognition. This study examined the effects of those two variables on the Korean word recognition processing. In Experiment 1, two types of Hangul words, pure Hangul words and Hangul words with Hanja counterparts, were used to explore the frequency effects. A frequency effect was not observed for Hangul words with Hanja counterparts. In Experiment 2, the word length was manipulated to determine if the word length effect appears in Hangul words. Contrary to the expectation, one syllable words were processed more slowly than two syllable words. The possible explanations for these results and future research directions are discussed.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.112-117
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of revision cochlear implant (CI) surgery for better speech comprehension targeting patients with low satisfaction after first CI surgery. Subjects and Methods: Eight patients who could not upgrade speech processors because of an too early CI model and who wanted to change the whole system were included. After revision CI surgery, we compared speech comprehension before and after revision CI surgery. Categoies of Auditory Performance (CAP) score, vowel and consonant confusion test, Ling 6 sounds, word and sentence identification test were done. Results: The interval between surgeries ranged from eight years to 19 years. Same manufacturer's latest product was used for revision surgery in six cases of eight cases. Full insertion of electrode was possible in most of cases (seven of eight). CAP score (p-value=0.01), vowel confusion test (p-value=0.041), one syllable word identification test (p-value=0.026), two syllable identification test (p-value=0.028), sentence identification test (p-value=0.028) had significant improvement. Consonant confusion test (p-value=0.063), Ling 6 sound test (p-value=0.066) had improvement but it is not significant. Conclusions: Although there are some limitations of our study design, we could identify the effect of revision (upgrade) CI surgery indirectly. So we concluded that if patient complain low functional gain or low satisfaction after first CI surgery, revision (device upgrade) CI surgery is meaningful even if there is no device failure.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: The influence of visual stimulus on the auditory component in the perception of auditory-visual (AV) consonant-vowel syllables has been demonstrated in different languages. Inherent properties of unimodal stimuli are known to modulate AV integration. The present study investigated how the amount of McGurk effect (an outcome of AV integration) varies across three different consonant combinations in Kannada language. The importance of unimodal syllable identification on the amount of McGurk effect was also seen. Subjects and Methods: Twenty-eight individuals performed an AV identification task with ba/ga, pa/ka and ma/ṇa consonant combinations in AV congruent, AV incongruent (McGurk combination), audio alone and visual alone condition. Cluster analysis was performed using the identification scores for the incongruent stimuli, to classify the individuals into two groups; one with high and the other with low McGurk scores. The differences in the audio alone and visual alone scores between these groups were compared. Results: The results showed significantly higher McGurk scores for ma/ṇa compared to ba/ga and pa/ka combinations in both high and low McGurk score groups. No significant difference was noted between ba/ga and pa/ka combinations in either group. Identification of /ṇa/ presented in the visual alone condition correlated negatively with the higher McGurk scores. Conclusions: The results suggest that the final percept following the AV integration is not exclusively explained by the unimodal identification of the syllables. But there are other factors which may also contribute to making inferences about the final percept.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.112-117
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of revision cochlear implant (CI) surgery for better speech comprehension targeting patients with low satisfaction after first CI surgery. Subjects and Methods: Eight patients who could not upgrade speech processors because of an too early CI model and who wanted to change the whole system were included. After revision CI surgery, we compared speech comprehension before and after revision CI surgery. Categoies of Auditory Performance (CAP) score, vowel and consonant confusion test, Ling 6 sounds, word and sentence identification test were done. Results: The interval between surgeries ranged from eight years to 19 years. Same manufacturer's latest product was used for revision surgery in six cases of eight cases. Full insertion of electrode was possible in most of cases (seven of eight). CAP score (p-value=0.01), vowel confusion test (p-value=0.041), one syllable word identification test (p-value=0.026), two syllable identification test (p-value=0.028), sentence identification test (p-value=0.028) had significant improvement. Consonant confusion test (p-value=0.063), Ling 6 sound test (p-value=0.066) had improvement but it is not significant. Conclusions: Although there are some limitations of our study design, we could identify the effect of revision (upgrade) CI surgery indirectly. So we concluded that if patient complain low functional gain or low satisfaction after first CI surgery, revision (device upgrade) CI surgery is meaningful even if there is no device failure.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: The influence of visual stimulus on the auditory component in the perception of auditory-visual (AV) consonant-vowel syllables has been demonstrated in different languages. Inherent properties of unimodal stimuli are known to modulate AV integration. The present study investigated how the amount of McGurk effect (an outcome of AV integration) varies across three different consonant combinations in Kannada language. The importance of unimodal syllable identification on the amount of McGurk effect was also seen. Subjects and Methods: Twenty-eight individuals performed an AV identification task with ba/ga, pa/ka and ma/ṇa consonant combinations in AV congruent, AV incongruent (McGurk combination), audio alone and visual alone condition. Cluster analysis was performed using the identification scores for the incongruent stimuli, to classify the individuals into two groups; one with high and the other with low McGurk scores. The differences in the audio alone and visual alone scores between these groups were compared. Results: The results showed significantly higher McGurk scores for ma/ṇa compared to ba/ga and pa/ka combinations in both high and low McGurk score groups. No significant difference was noted between ba/ga and pa/ka combinations in either group. Identification of /ṇa/ presented in the visual alone condition correlated negatively with the higher McGurk scores. Conclusions: The results suggest that the final percept following the AV integration is not exclusively explained by the unimodal identification of the syllables. But there are other factors which may also contribute to making inferences about the final percept.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.149-151
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• 1999

It has been suggested that the bush warbler (Cettia diphone borealis) uses different song types in various situations. We analyzed song features and conducted playback experiments in order to reveal the function of songs of the bush warbler. Two song types were identified. The short song type has a shorter song duration than that of normal song types and consists of only one or two syllables. Due to its short syllable and low amplitude of the whistle portion, we were able to discriminate the short song type (S song type). from the normal song type (N song Type). In the playback experiments, bush warblers sang high rates of short song type for the first three minutes after playback. After 6 minutes of playback, males changed to singing normal songs. These results suggest that the short song of the bush warbler may function to threaten or drive off intruding males.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.30B no.10
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• pp.42-49
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• 1993

In this paper, we evaluate the quality of synthesized speech by rule using the LPC CD as a objective measure, and then compare the test result with the subjective one. Speech used for the test consists of 108 words which are selected by word construction method using Korean attribute and frequency distribution, synthesized by demi-syllable rule. By evaluating the quality of synthesized speech by reule objectively, we have tried to resolve the problems such as lots of evaluation time, expansion of test scale, and variables of analysis result arised by subjective measure. We have, also, proved the validity of the objective test using the LPC CD, by comparing intelligibility which is the index for the subjective quality evaluation of synthesized speech by rule with MOS. From this results, we can provide a guide for quality assessment that would be useful in the R&D of synthesis method and the commercial products using synthesized speech.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.141-144
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• 2002

The relations between words intelligibility and sentences intelligibility were tested on adults with cerebral palsy(athetoid type). Intelligibility is used as an important evaluation value in the field of diagnosis and therapy of dysarthric patients. In order to develop one syllable phonetic contrast intelligibility test using specific phonetic contrasts, the correlation with sentences intelligibility was tested to find out the validity. Pearson's simple correlation coefficient was .83 that shows a high correlation. Also, comparing the range and standard deviation given by seven evaluators on each subject, it was shown that when evaluating patients of moderate intelligibility, words intelligibility was more reliable than sentences intelligibility.