• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference of vowel duration due to the voicing of word-final consonants in English and its relation to the types of word-final consonants (stops vs. fricatives), (partial) devoicing, and stop releasing. Addtionally, this study attempts to interpret the findings from the functional view that the vowels before voiced consonants are produced with a longer duration in order to enhance the salience of the voicing of word-final consonants. This study conducted a recording experiment with English native speakers, and measured the vowel duration, the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants and the release of word-final stops. First, the results showed that the ratio of the duration difference was not influenced by the types of word-final consonants. Second, it was revealed that the higher the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants, the longer vowel duration before word-final voiced consonants, which was compatible with the prediction based on the functional view. Lastly, the ratio of the duration difference was greater when the word-final stops were uttered with the release compared to when uttered without the release, which was not consistent with the functional view. These results suggest that it is not sufficient enough to explain the voicing effect by its function of distinguishing the voicing of word-final consonants.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.215-226
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• 2005

This study is an attempt to investigate effect of pitch treatment program using visual feedback for profound deaf adults. Dr. Speech program was applied as a training tool. The subjects of this study were 3 profound deaf adults. Speech samples for evaluation were vowel prolongations and connected speech. Analysis was performed under the principle of single subject research design. As results of this study, all subjects showed the treatment effects which were represented by lowering fundamental frequency and speaking fundamental frequency.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.55-60
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• 2001

Background and Objectives : Syllable Maximum Repetition Rate(MRR) is ability to repeat rapidly the articulators and is assessed for oromechanism function as one of the MPT. MRR is measured by rate(counts/sec), also simultaneously considered accuracy and consistency. The objective of the present was to examine stimuli effects and age and sex differences for MRR. Materials and Method : This study was participated 60 normal males and females(1 : 1) who were divided into two groups young(<40 years old) and old($\geq$40 years old). Stimuli were $/{P^=}a/,/{t^=}a/,/{k^=}a/,/{P^h}a/,/{t^h}a/,/{k^h}a/,/{P^=}{at^=}{ak^=}a/$ for, manner(tense and aspirated) of articulation, $/{p^h}{at^h}{ak^h}a/,/{t^h}{ap^h}{ak^h}a/$ for the effect of the order of syllable, glide /u-i/ for coordination of lip and tongue, interrupted vowel /i/ for laryngeal function. Results : There were little differences in two age groups and sex and manner of articulation for MRR tasks. The fastest average MRR of the single syllable included in this study was $/{t^=}a/$. significant differences existed between MRR for ${p^h}{at^h}{ak^h}a/ and /{t^h}{ap^h}{ak^h}a/$, which suggested that MRR was affected by the order of the syllables. MRR for interrupted vowel /i/ was about 2 counts/sec slower than average rate of 1 syllables. Conclusion : From these results, the order of the syllables was a crucial variable in MRR. rather than age or sex. There were no difference age, sex and manner of rate. The interrupted vowel repetition rate was slightly slow used and can provide basic information to assess the speech mechanism and can be useful to develop effective stimuli to differentiate the disordered group from normal.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.33-41
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• 2013

This is a follow-up study on Han and Kang (2013) which argued that the Euclidean distances between /o/ and /u/ in Seoul Korean decreased in the first syllable position as speakers were among younger female speakers but not for male speakers, whereas in the second syllable position both gender groups showed a cross-generational decreasing effect of the Euclidean distance between /o/ and /u/. This study normalized the same data in Han and Kang (2013) which measured 12 speakers (six males and six females) for each Age group and investigated the spectral changes vowels /o/ and /u/ between age and gender, using the log-mean normalized statistical results. This study also examined overlap fraction values generated in SOAM 2D ($F1{\times}F2$) (cf. Wassink, 2006), which may also indicate the proximity of two vowels in question. The results showed that /o/ and /u/ vowels were making closer with /o/ raising for female speakers in $V_1$ and $V_2$ positions but only in the $V_2$ position for male speakers. That is, females led the upward movement of peripheral /o/ vowel, just like the raising of 'e' and 'o' in New York City (Labov, 1991). The results also showed that younger speakers used a rather narrow vowel space for the vowels. This also contributed to the proximity of the vowels /o/ and /u/, resulting in rather large overlap fraction values for younger speakers between these two vowels.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.131-141
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to find out the acoustic variation on the pre-and post respiration and oral motor for children with cerebral palsy. Five children with spastic CP at the age of 6 in average were practiced by a caregiver at home each for 25 minutes, in total, 45 times. The sustained of vowel /a/ and vowels /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/ were recorded on CSL and MDVP and analyzed by acoustic parameters. As a result, the maximum phonation time(MPT) was increased from 2.06 to 6.31 and the formant of vowels(F1, F2, F3) had significant differences in F1(/a, i/), F2(/i.u.o/), and F3(/a/) between the controls and the children with CP in pre-treatment. The total average value of vowels had significant differences between the pre-and post-treatment (p< .05). The energy of vowels had significant differences in the vowels /i, u, e, o/ and the total average value between the pre-and post-treatment(p< .001). The jitter percent, shimmer percent, and noise to harmonic ratio had significant differences between the pre-and post-treatment(p< .05). As the respiration and the oral motor improved MPT, voice quality, and articulation of vowel, and the variation of the formant(F1, F2, F3) showed the changes in the shape of lips, the place and the height of the tongue, the various development of therapy programs and the consistent intervention of treatment is needed for the children with cerebral palsy.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.333-342
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• 2012

This paper presents a vowel onset point (VOP) detection method based on the human auditory system. This method maps the "perceptual" frequency scale, i.e. Mel scale onto a linear acoustic frequency, and then establishes a series of Triangular Mel-weighted Filter Bank simulate the function of band pass filtering in human ear. This nonlinear critical-band filter bank helps greatly reduce the data dimensionality, and eliminate the effect of harmonic waves to make the formants more prominent in the nonlinear spaced Mel spectrum. The sum of mel spectrum peaks energy is extracted as feature for each frame, and the instinct at which the energy amplitude starts rising sharply is detected as VOP, by convolving with Gabor window. For the single-word database which contains 12 vowels articulated with different kinds of consonants, the experimental results showed a good average detection rate of 72.73%, higher than other vowel detection methods based on short-time energy and zero-crossing rate.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.3046-3050
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• 2014

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of 7-point interval scale(EAI) and visual analogue scale(VAS) on perceptual judgement and the reliability of severity on voice problems by dysphonic speakers. 30 undergraduate students studying communication disorder were enrolled in the perceptual evaluation. Those listeners judged overall voice severity within the anchored(condition 1) and non-anchored scales(condition 2) for vowel prolongation and reading tasks by 25 speakers with voice disorder. The results of this study showed that the scores by VAS was significantly higher than EAI in both condition 1 and condition 2 for vowel prolongation and reading task. However, the scores by EAI method was higher than by VAS method on voice severity of vowel prolongation (condition 1) and reading task(condition 2). These results suggest auditory-perceptual scaling procedures must be more studied in the aspects of clinical application of voice disorder.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.63-69
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• 2016

Twenty five English native speakers with two different L2 experienced groups and nineteen native Koreans heard both Korean word-initial nasals (/m/ and /n/) in three vowel contexts (low, mid, and high) produced by a native Korean speaker. The experiment examined the hypothesis that Korean nasals are more likely to be judged or perceived correctly by the L2-experienced English learners of Korean than the unexperienced counterparts. The result showed that L2 experienced group was more sensitive to effects of vowel height in judging the Korean nasals in which the perception of nasals before the high vowels was more subject to it. In addition, place of nasal articulation causes asymmetry relations - bilabial nasal /m/ is more likely to be perceived as plosives rather than alveolar nasal /n/. The study found that the L2 experience has a somewhat limited role in perceiving the nasals correctly in the word-initial position, especially before the high vowels, in that even the L2 experienced English subjects have difficulty in identifying the Korean nasals correctly in this environment. Nevertheless, low L2 proficiency might be accounted for the difficulty in the bilabial nasal identification observed by the L2 experienced group.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.138-140
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• 2018

This case study examined the effect of Korean Medicine on a 72-year old male with a habitual history of smoking and drinking, and a family history of hypertension who had suffered an acute stroke. A couple of months later he complained of upper extremity weakness and was diagnosed with dysarthria. The patient received Korean Medicine treatment of acupuncture and herbal medicine for 39 days at the Samse Oriental Hospital, in conjunction with physiotherapy and Western medicine. Articulation accuracy, vowel accuracy, alternation and speed of reading sentences were evaluated every 7days. The results showed that the patient had improvement of articulation (10%) and vowel (37%) accuracy, alternation (12%) and speed of reading sentences (28%) suggesting that Korean Medicine treatment contributed to this progress.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.6
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• pp.197-217
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• 1999

In a noisy class, the acoustic-phonetic features of the teacher and the perceptual features of learners are changed comparison with a quiet environment. Acoustical analyses were carried out on a set of French monosyllables consisting of 17 consonants and three vowel /a, e, i/, produced by 1 male speaker talking in quiet and in 50, 60 and 70 dB SPL of masking noise on headphone. The results of the acoustic analyses showed consistent differences in energy and formant center frequency amplitude of consonants and vowels, $F_1$ frequency of vowel and duration of voiceless stops suggesting the increase of vocal effort. The perceptual experiments in which 18 undergraduate female students learning French served as the subjects, were conducted in quiet and in 50, 60 dB of masking noise. The identification scores on consonants were higher in Lombard speech than in normal speech, suggesting that the speaker's vocal effort is useful to overcome the masking effect of noise. And, with increased noise level, the perceptual response to the French consonants given had a tendency to be complex and the subjective reaction score on the noise using the vocabulary representative of 'unpleasant' sensation to be higher. And, in the point of view on the L2(second language) acquisition, the influence of L1 (first language) on L2 examined in the perceptual result supports the interference theory.