• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.59-77
• /
• 2005

The aim of the present study is to investigate how the phonemic characteristics influence on the disfluencies of children and adults who stutter. The participants were 10 children(9 boys and 1 girl) and 10 male adults. After having the participants to read out the Paradise-Fluency Assessment(Sim, Shin & Lee, 2004) passages, each of the productions were divided into syllables and words, and then the frequencies and the ratios of their disfluenceis were analyzed according to the specified phonemic features. In terms of the frequency of the disfluency, the participants stuttered more in the words which start with consonant than vowel. But they showed more disfluencies in the words initiated with vowel than consonant when the ratio of each phoneme's presences were considered. There found different tendencies among the phonemic features related with their disfluencies occuring with ralatively high frequency or ratio. It was difficult to find out the exact relationships among the order of the sound acquisition, phonemic complexity, and the disfluencies. To study the exact influence of the phonemic features upon the disfluencies, it comes important to consider the frequency of the stuttering itself together with the ratio of the disfluencies in which the opportunity of the specific sound's presence was considered. To compare the results of the different studies which has similar purposes, it seems important to consider the tasks and the methodologies in depth.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.59-75
• /
• 2002

Aerodynamic analysis study was performed on 14 normal subjects (2 males, 12 females) with nonsense syllables composed of Korean bilabial stops (/p, p', $p^{h}$) and their preceding and/or following vowels, /i, a, u/. That is, [pi, p'i, $p^{h}i$, pa, p'a, $p^{h}a$, pu, p'u, $p^{h}u$, ipi, apa, upu, $ip^{h}i$, $ap^{h}a$, $up^{h}u$, ip'i, ap'a, up'u]. All measures were taken and analysed using Aerophone II voice function analyzer and included peak air pressure, mean air pressure, maximum flow rate, volume, mean SPL and phonatory SPL. A t-test and one-way ANOVA were employed for analysis. A post-hoc analysis was performed with Scheffe and Bonferroni. The results were as follows: First, MSPL. and MAP of /p, p', $p^{h}$/ were significantly different in different positions (initial and medial position). In addition, different vowel environment also produced significantly different aerodynamic characteristics those consonants. Especially the lax consonant /p/ was significantly different /i, a, u/ vowel environments. The tense consonant /p'/ was significantly different only /i/ vowel environment.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.5-15
• /
• 1998

This paper proposes a speech state-dependent spectral subtraction method to regulate the blind spectral subtraction for improved enhancement. In the proposed method, a modified subtraction rule is applied over the speech selectively contingent to the speech state being voiced or unvoiced, in an effort to incorporate the acoustic characteristics of phonemes. In particular, the objective of the proposed method is to remedy the subtraction induced signal distortion attained by two state-dependent procedures, spectrum sharpening and minimum spectral bound. In order to remove the residual noise, the proposed method employs a procedure utilizing the masking effect. Proposed spectral subtraction including state-dependent subtraction and residual noise reduction using the masking threshold shows effectiveness in compensation of spectral distortion in the unvoiced region and residual noise reduction.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.85-94
• /
• 2003

In this paper an algorithm to reduce the size of Text-to-Speech database is proposed. The algorithm is based on the characteristics of Korean phonemic units. From the initial database, a reduced phoneme unit set is induced by articulatory similarity of concatenating phonemes. Speech data is read by one female announcer for 1000 phonetically balanced sentences. All the recorded speech is then segmented by phoneticians. Total size of the original speech data is about 640 MB including laryngograph signal. To synthesize wave, RE-PSOLA (Residual-Excited Pitch Synchronous Overlap and Add Method) was used. The voice quality of synthesized speech was compared with original speech in terms of spectrographic informations and objective tests. The quality of the synthesized speech is not much degraded when the size of synthesis DB was reduced from 320 MB to 82 MB.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.93-105
• /
• 2000

The English schwa sound has special characteristics which are distinct from other vowels. It is non-phonemic and occurs only in an unstressed syllable. Compared with the English schwa, the Korean /e/ is a full vowel which has phonemic contrast. This paper had three aims. One was to see whether there is any relationship between English full vowels and their reduced vowel schwas. Second was to see whether there is any possible target in the English schwa sounds which are derived from different full vowels. The third was to compare the English non-phoneme vowel schwa and the Korean full vowel /e/ in terms of articulatory positions and duration. The study results showed that there is no relationship between each of the full vowels and its schwa. The schwa tended to converge into a possible target which was F1 456 and F2 1560. The Korean vowel /e/ seemed to have its distinct position speaker-individual which is different from the neutral tongue position. The evidence that the Korean /e/ is a back vowel was supported by the Seoul dialect speaker. In duration, the English schwa was much shorter than the full vowels, but there was no significant difference in length between the Korean /e/ and other Korean vowels.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.295-302
• /
• 2011

The purpose of this study was to develop Korean Consonant Perception Test (KCPT), that is a phonemic level including elementary data to evaluate speech and consonant perception ability of the normal and the hearing impaired qualitatively and quantitatively. KCPT was completed with meaningful monosyllabic words out of possible all Korean monosyllabic words, considering articulation characteristics, the degree of difficulty, and the frequency of the phonemic appearance, after assembling a tentative initial and final consonants testing items using four multiple-choice method which were applied to the seven final consonant regulation and controlled with the familiarity of the target words. Conclusively, the final three hundred items were developed including two- and one-hundred items for initial and final testing items, respectively, with the evaluation of the 20 normal hearing adults. Through this process, the final KCPT was composed upon the colloquial frequency following identification of no speakers' variances statistically and elimination of the highly difficult items. The 30 hearing impaired were tested with KCPT and found that the half lists, A and B, were not different statistically and the initial and final testing items were appropriate for evaluating initial and final consonants, respectively.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.24 no.1E
• /
• pp.28-33
• /
• 2005

This study was designed to suggest an assessment tool for analyzing the characteristics of Korean phonetic contrast intelligibility among dysarthric individuals. The intelligibility deficit factors of phonetic contrast in Korean dysarthric patients were analyzed through stepwise regression analysis. The 19 acoustic-phonetic contrasts proposed by Kent et al. (1999) have been claimed to be useful for clinical assessment and research on dysarthria. However, the test cannot be directly applied to Korean patients due to linguistic differences between English and Korean. Thus, it is necessary to devise a Korean word intelligibility test that reflects the distinct characteristics of the Korean language. To identify the speech error characteristics of a Korean dysarthric group, a Korean word list was audio-recorded by 3 spastic, 4 flaccid, and 5 mixed type of dysarthric patients. The word list consisted of monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) real word pairs. Stimulus words included 41 phonemic contrast pairs and six triplets. The results showed that the percentage of errors in final position contrast was higher than in any other position. Unlike the results of previous studies, the initial-position contrasts were crucial in predicting the overall intelligibility among Korean patients.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.8 no.5
• /
• pp.86-94
• /
• 1989

In this paper the method using a sign pattern( +,- ) of Mel-cepstrum coefficients as a new speech representation is proposed. Relatively stable patterns can be obtained for speech signals which has strong stationarity like vowels and nasals, and the phonemic difference according to the individuality of speakers can be absorbed without affecting characteristics of the phoneme. In this paper we show that the reduction of recognition procedure of phonemes and training procedure of phoneme models can be achieved through the representation of Korean phonemes using such a sign pattern.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.169-172
• /
• 2003

The purpose of this study was to provide preliminary data on the acoustical differences of one syllable words spoken by speakers with different language backgrounds. 20 native speakers of Korean and English were asked to read 7 one-syllable words written in their native language. The phonetic and phonemic characteristics of 7 words were similar between two languages. The ratio of duration of the body (onset+nucleus) and the rhyme(nucleus+coda) relative to the duration of each syllable were calculated using CSL (Computerized Speech Laboratory). The results corresponds to the body-coda structure of the Korean syllable which is supported by the recent experimental psychological studies. More acoustic studies on the Korean syllable structure are required to establish clinical foundation for the phonological awareness and the reading intervention programs.

• Sijohaknonchong
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.85-106
• /
• 2003

Recently, the sonnet and the shijo, each representing French and Korean formal poetries, are tend to be read with the eyes only, as were more accustomed to written literature. But even after almost three millennia of written literature and increased use of digitalized poems, poetry retains its appeal to the ear as well as to the eye. To read a poem only by eyes might be wrong because it is designed to be read aloud by mouth and understood by ear, and will decrease the aesthetic sense otherwise. It is essential to find the right way to recite a poem in this dramatically changed society, and is especially important when many shijos are changing into digitalized forms to adapt the new wave of our society. The sonnet and the shijo emphasize the importance of the harmony of sounds and rhythms with certain structure, and have their own prosodies. The emotions of the speaker in poems are expressed with words. When they are pronounced. each phoneme has its own phonemic characteristics. When comparing the The Broken Bell(Baudelaire) and Chopoong ga (Jong Seo Kim) in terms of prosody and phonetics. the speakers emotions are closely related with the phonetic structure of each word. In The Broken Bell, the phonetic value of rhymes, repeated phonemes, concentration of front and back vowels. rhythms of onesyllable words shape the overall image of this poem describing the productivity of bells as appose to the sterility of the soul. Chopoong ga also shows the determined and strong will of the speaker by frequent glottalized sounds. distribution and concentration of certain vowels. and frequent use of plosives. As you see in these examples, phones, beats, and rhythms are not the mere transmitter of meaning but possess their expressive values of their own and should be the first to be considered when reciting a poem.