• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to extract the vowel formants of the ten adult male speakers in their twenties and thirties from the Korean Corpus of Spontaneous Speech [4], also known as the Seoul corpus, and to analyze them by comparing to earlier works on the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech [1] in terms of the various linguistic factors that are expected to affect the formant distribution. The vowels extracted from the Korean corpus were also compared to those of the read Korean. The results showed that the distribution of the vowel formants from the Korean corpus was very different from that of read Korean speech. The comparison with English corpus and read English speech showed similar patterns. The factors affecting the Korean vowel formants were the interviewer sex, the location of the target vowel or the syllable containing it with respect to the phrasal word or utterance and the speech rate of the surrounding words.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.65-72
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to extract the first two vowel formant frequencies of the forty speakers from the Seoul corpus[8] and to compare them by the age and sex. The results showed that the vowel formants showed similar patterns between male and female speakers. All the vowels in each age group and all the age groups in each vowel had main effects on either of the formant frequencies. Whereas in English, the vowel space of the older age group moved slightly to the upper right side relative to the younger group, the location of the vowel spaces of the Korean vowels were not as consistent.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.131-138
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• 2015

The aim of this work is to compare the vowel formants of the ten adult female speakers in their twenties and thirties from the Seoul corpus[7] with those of corresponding Korean male speakers from the same corpus and of American female speakers from the Buckeye corpus[4]. In addition, various linguistic factors that are expected affect the formant frequencies were examined to account for the distribution of the vowel formants. Formant frequencies extracted from the Seoul corpus were also compared to those from read speech. The results showed that the formant distribution of the spontaneous speech was very different from that of the read speech, while the comparison between the female and male speakers was similar in both languages. To a greater or lesser degree, the potential linguistic factors influenced the formant frequencies of the vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.29-35
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to measure the first two vowel formants of the forty male and female speakers (twenty young vs. old male speakers and twenty young vs. old female speakers) from the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech and to examine the vowel formant changes across two generations (younger vs. older). The results indicated that the vowel space of the younger generation (in their thirties or less) shifted to the lower left position compared to those of the older generation (in their forties or more) in both male and female speakers. When the results were compared to those of Peterson & Barney (1952), it appears that differences can be found in the size of the vowel spaces through time.

• MALSORI
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• no.51
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• pp.1-16
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• 2004

The aim of this paper is to analyze vowels in voice imitation and disguised voice, and to find the invariable phonetic features of the speaker. In this paper we examined the formants of monophthongs /a, u, i, o, {$\omega},{\;}{\varepsilon},{\;}{\Lambda}$/. The results of the present are as follows : $\circled1$ Speakers change their vocal tract features. $\circled2$ Vowels /a, ${\varepsilon}$, i/ appear to be proper for speaker recognition since they show invariable acoustic feature during voice modulation. $\circled3$ F1 does not change easily compared to higher formants. $\circled4$ F3-F2 appears to be constituent for a speaker identification in vowel /a/ and /$\varepsilon$/, and F4-F2 in vowel /i/. $\circled5$ Resulting of F-ratio, differences of each formants were more useful than individual formant of a vowel to speaker recognition.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.45-52
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to measure the first two vowel formants of the ten young female speakers from the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech [1] automatically and then to analyze various potential factors that may affect the formant distribution of the eight peripheral vowels of English. The factors that were analyzed included the place of articulation, the content versus function word information, the syllabic stress information, the location in a word, the location in an utterance, the speech rate of the three consecutive words, and the word frequency in the corpus. The results indicate that the overall formant patterns of the female speakers were similar to those of earlier works. The effects of the factors on the realization of the two formants were also similar to those from the male speakers with minor differences.

• MALSORI
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• no.52
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• pp.1-14
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• 2004

In this study, we investigated acoustic characteristics of imitated utterances by a professional voice imitator, focusing on prosodic properties such as vowel formants and f0 distribution. To see the patterns of a voice imitation by a professional voice imitator, we compared the imitator's voice data with target speakers' voice data. The professional imitator, Mr. Bae produced utterances imitating the former President Kim's, the comedian Choi's, and the singer Bae's voices. Auditorily, the imitator was judged to imitate all the target speakers' voices successfully. However, acoustic examination showed that the imitator was better at imitating the singer Bae's voice in that the imitator's and the singer Bae's voices are more alike with respect to vowel formants and f0 distribution. We infer this is because the imitator's normal voice is very similar to the singer Bae's voice. On the other hand, the imitator's voice data showed that the patterns of vowel formants and f0 distribution found in the imitator's imitation voices of the other two target speakers were different from those of target speakers' voices.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.41-49
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to extract the vowel formants of the ten young male speakers from the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech [1] and to analyze them in comparison to earlier works in terms of various phonetic factors that are expected to affect the realization of the formant distribution. The first two formant frequency values were automatically extracted with a Praat script along with such factors as the place of articulation, the content versus function word information, syllabic stress information, the location in a word, location in utterance, speech rate of three consecutive words, and the word frequency in the corpus. The results indicated that the formant patterns from the corpus were very different from those of earlier works although the overall pattern was similar and that the factors were strongly responsible for the realization of the two formants. The purpose of this paper is to extract the vowel formants of the ten young male speakers from the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech [1] and to analyze them in comparison to earlier works in terms of various phonetic factors that are expected to affect the realization of the formant distribution. The first two formant frequency values were automatically extracted with a Praat script along with such factors as the place of articulation, the content versus function word information, the syllabic stress information, the location in a word, the location in an utterance, the speech rate of the three consecutive words, and the word frequency in the corpus. The result indicated that the formant patterns from the corpus were very different from those of earlier works although the overall pattern was similar and that the factors were strongly responsible for the realization of the two formants.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.81-90
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• 2013

The purposes of this study are to: (1) Compare the vowel production of English front vowels produced by Korean speakers using regional dialects and; (2) Investigate and compare the effectiveness of pronunciation training for each regional dialect group. To test these objectives, the English front vowels produced by five Youngnam dialect male speakers, five Youngnam dialect female speakers, five Kangwon dialect male speakers, and five Kangwon dialect female speakers were scrutinized. These dialect groups' vowel formants and length of English front vowels were evaluated, and the post-pronunciation training values were compared with those of pre-training values. The results indicate that pronunciation training is more effective for Youngnam dialect speakers, whilst both dialect groups have more success mastering the pronunciation of /${\varepsilon}$/ over /${\ae}$/.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.53-58
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to compare the first two vowel formants of the stressed and unstressed English vowels produced by ten young males (in their twenties and thirties) and ten old males (in their forties or fifties) from the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech. The results indicate that the stressed and unstressed vowels, /i/ and $/{\ae}/$ in particular, from the two groups are different in their formant frequencies. In addition, the vowel space of the unstressed vowels is somewhat smaller than that of the stressed vowels. Specifically, the range of the second formant of the unstressed vowels and that of the first formant of the unstressed front vowels were compressed. The findings from this study can be applied to the pronunciation training for the Korean learners of English vowels. We propose that teachers of English pay attention to the stress patterns of English vowels as well as their formant frequencies.