• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.117-127
• /
• 2012

This research reports the prosodic characteristics (including articulation speech rate, pause characteristics, duration) of children with cochlear implants with reference to those of children with normal hearing. Subjects are 8-to 10-year-old children, balancing each number of gender as 24. Dialogue speech data are comprised of four types of sentence patterns. Results show that 1) there's a statistically meaningful difference on articulation speech rate between the two groups. 2) On pauses, they are not observed in exclamatory and declarative sentences in normal children. While imperative sentences show no statistical difference on the number of pauses between the two groups, interrogative sentences do. 3) Declarative, exclamatory, and interrogative sentences reveal statistical difference between the two groups in terms of the sentence's final two-syllable word duration, showing no difference on imperative sentences. 4) When it comes to the RFP (duration ratio of sentence final syllable to penultimate syllable), we no statistically meaningful difference between the two groups in all types of sentences exists. 5) Lastly, RWS (the ratio of sentence final two syllable word duration to that of whole sentence duration) shows statistical difference between two groups in imperative sentences, but not in all the rest types.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.99-107
• /
• 1989

24-hour ambulatory ECG monitoring has been examined for the evaluation of heart rate and longest pause in 34 patients with chronic atrial fibrillation(20 patients treated with digoxin and 14 patients without treatment). Following results were obtained : 1. In 34 patients, the mean of average heart rates was $75.7{\pm}13.8$/minute, fastest heart rates $148.0{\pm}32.4$/minute, slowest heart rates $48.1{\pm}8.4$/minute, difference between fastest and slowest heart rates in individual patients $99.9{\pm}29.0$/minute and longest pauses $2.95{\pm}1.06$seconds. The longest pauses of more than 4.0 seconds occurred in 4 of the 34 patients and made an exeption of comparison groups. 2. In 27 of the 34 patients, ventricular premature contractures were developed and in 11 of 27, mainly occured less than 100/24 hours and aberrant conduction occurred in all patients. 3. In 20 patients treated with digoxin(0.25mg/day), the mean of average heart rates was $78.4{\pm}13.7$/minute, fastest heart rates $152.5{\pm}33.1$/minute, slowest heart rates $48.9{\pm}8.5$/minute, difference between fastest and slowest heart rates in individual patients $103.6{\pm}31.7$/minute and longest pauses $2.55{\pm}0.50$seconds. 4. In 10 patients without treatment, the mean of average heart rates was $78.0{\pm}10.7$/minute, fastest heart rates $154.5{\pm}26.8$/minute, slowest heart rates $50.6{\pm}7.1$/minute, difference between fastest and slowest heart rates in individual patients $103.9{\pm}22.2$/minute and longest pauses $2.66{\pm}0.39$seconds. 5. The difference of heart rates and longest pauses between patients with treatment and without treatment were statistically not significant(P>0.05). In summary, authors seemed to consider that 24-hour ambulatory ECG was useful and safe method for clinical evaluation of patients with chronic atrial fibrillation.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2002.11a
• /
• pp.169-172
• /
• 2002

English is one of the stress-timed languages and has much more dynamic rhythm, stress and the tendency toward the isochronism of stressed syllables. It goes with various English utterance restructuring, irrespective of the pauses by syntactic boundaries, and post-lexically phonological phenomena. Specifically in the real speech acts, the natural utterances of fluent speakers or the broadcasting speech cause much more various English restructuring and phonological phenomena. This has been an obstacle for students in speaking fluent English and understanding normal speech. Therefore, this study tried to focus the most problematic factor in English speaking and listening difficulty on English restructuring and post-lexically phonological phenomena caused by stress-timed rhythm and, second, to point out the importance of teaching English rhythm bearing that in mind.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2008.06a
• /
• pp.983-984
• /
• 2008

This paper proposes a variable break that can offset prediction error as well as a pre-selection methods, based on the variable break, for enhanced unit selection. In Japanese, a sentence consists of several APs (Accentual phrases) and MPs (Major phrases), and the breaks between these phrases must predicted to realize text-to-speech systems. An MP also consists of several APs and plays a decisive role in making synthetic speech natural and understandable because short pauses appear at its boundary. The variable break is defined as a break that is able to change easily from an AP to an MP boundary, or from an MP to an AP boundary. Using CART (Classification and Regression Trees), the variable break is modeled stochastically, and then we pre-select candidate units in the unit-selection process. As the experimental results show, it was possible to complement a break prediction error and improve the naturalness of synthetic speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.17-23
• /
• 2017

The present study investigates the effect of Accentual Phrase on F0 using a subset of large-scale corpus of Seoul Korean. Four syllable words which were neither preceded nor followed by silent pauses were presumed to be canonical exemplars of Accentual Phrases in Korean. These four syllable words were extracted from female speakers' speech samples. Growth curve analyses, combination of regression and polynomial curve fitting, were applied to the four syllable words. Four syllable words were divided into four groups depending on the categorical status of the initial segment: voiceless obstruents, voiced obstruents, sonorants, and vowels. Results of growth curve analyses indicate that initial segment types have an effect on the F0 (in semitone) in the nucleus of the initial syllable, and the cubic polynomial term revealed that some of the medial low tones in the 4 syllable words may be guided by the principle of contrast maximization, while others may be governed by the principle of ease of articulation.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.47
• /
• pp.15-29
• /
• 2003

When intonation in French is analysed in terms of a multi-dimentional and hierarchical structure, each of the prosodic units such as accent phrases(having different combinations of the basic tonemes L and H), pre-sentencial and post-sentencial long pauses, intonation phrases(containing boundary intonation), as well as intermediate phrases can be considered being realized on a separate tier. Unlike on the tiers where accent phrases and intonation phrases occur, an intonation rhythm consisting of plateaus is realised on that of intermediate phrases. This intonation rhythm consisting of plateaus is one of the significant factors that lead a basic French metrical rhythm. This paper first shows the types of combinations of the basic tonemes L and H found in French accent phrases. Secondly, this paper examines the roles intermediate phrases and plateaus play in French. Finally, this paper argues that intermediate phrases are the metrical units actually adopted as real utterance units in French.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
• /
• v.44 no.4
• /
• pp.205-209
• /
• 2012

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is the most common type of sleep apnea and is caused by obstruction of the upper airway. It is characterized by repetitive pauses in breathing during sleep despite the effort to breathe. Apnea is closely related to clinical findings and respiratory disturbance index (RDI). The total subjects were 42 (male 26, female 16) and examined by polysomography (PSG) in terms of RDI above 5 and below 5 at Mok-Dong Hospital in Ewha Womans University from January to June, 2012. The study revealed the followings: The comparison of clinical findings and RDI above 5 showed significant increase in age, BMI, and snoring sound although lowest $SpO_2$ level decreased. The correlation coefficient analysis between clinical findings and RDI showed statistically significant correlation in age, BMI, lowest $SpO_2$ although snoring sound and average $SpO_2$ showed statistically insignificant correlation.

• Proceedings of the Ginseng society Conference
• /
• 1980.09a
• /
• pp.223-228
• /
• 1980

Four monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were allowed to press a lever in their cages in order to earn access to one gram pieces of Panax ginseng root. Self-administration performance on an operant schedule (mult FR20 F11) was characterized by frequent pauses and increased intertrial interval responding. When given 23 hour unlimited access to ginseng root, as well as to food and water, all animals titrated their daily intake to approximately 1.5 g/kg. Gross behavioral changes included increases in vocalization, activity, stereotyped movements, and weight loss. These patterns of behavior are typical of those seen when monkeys self-administer psychomotor stimulants. Further studies on ginseng's reward value can be conducted using this animal model.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.139-155
• /
• 2007

Old Korean regulated poems have a typical prosodic structure characterized by a pitch contour. This work applies Jun's finding in Seoul Korean(Jun 1993, 2000, 2005) to old Korean regulated poems, and reports some other significant phonetic characteristics, arguing that old Korean regulated poems have a regular rhythm based on the pitch contour implementing the typically hierarchical prosodic structure. The major prosodic units defined are a foot, a phrase, and a line. Next, this work proposes pitch contour characterizing prominence in a unit, boundary tones, and pauses at the boundary position, as the basic and significant cues of rhythm of a Korean poem. Specifically, some significant characteristics are discussed as follows: first, the tonal pattern of a foot is HL, starting high and ending low; second, the lowering boundary tones of HL% and L% are perceived at the end of a phrase and a line; and finally, a gradient degree of pause is observed at each unit-final position.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.69-75
• /
• 2010

We propose an automatic pronunciation diagnosis system to evaluate the pronunciation of a foreign language without the uttered text. We recorded English utterances spoken by native and Korean speakers, and utterances spoken by Koreans are evaluated by native speakers based on three criteria: fluency, accuracy of phones and intonation. The system evaluates the utterances of test Korean speakers based on the differences of log-likelihood given two models: one is trained by English speech uttered by native speakers, and the other is trained by English speech uttered by Korean speakers. We also applied purification algorithm to increase class differentiability. The purification can detect and eliminate the non-speech frames such as short pauses, occlusive silences that do not help to discriminate between utterances. As the results, our proposed system has higher correlation with the human scores than the baseline system.