• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.77-82
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• 2022

Hunminjeongeum was made by the Great King Sejong, and composed of 17 consonant and 11 vowel letters. All the 28 letters were made according to the shape of vocal organ or space at the point of articulation for each letters. This review article focused on phonetic and phoniatric consideration for explanation of the designs of the middle vowel letters, especially three main vowel letters [ • (天, heaven), ㅡ (地, earth), ㅣ (人, human)] using video-fluoroscopic evaluation as well as computed tomography scanning, etc. During articulating / • / sound, a ball-like space at frontal portion of the oral cavity was found, tongue was contracted, and sound was deep (舌縮而聲深). During /ㅡ/ sound, a flat air space between oral tongue and hard palate was created. Tongue was slightly contacted neither deep nor shallow (舌小縮而聲不深不淺). During /ㅣ/ sound, tongue was not contacted and Sound is light (舌不縮而聲淺). Tongue was moved forward making longitudinal oro-pharyngeal air space. So, I'd like to suggest that we had better change the explanation drawing from a philosophical modeling to a more scientific modeling from real vocal tract space modeling during articulating middle vowels of Hunminjeongeum.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.37-44
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• 2016

The goal of the current study is to investigate how the sound change is reflected in production or in perception, and what the effect of lexical frequency is on the loss of sound contrasts. Specifically, the current study examined whether the vowel length contrasts are retained in Korean speakers' productions, and whether Korean listeners can distinguish vowel length minimal pairs in their perception. Two production experiments and two perception experiments investigated this. For production tests, twelve Korean native speakers in their 20s and 40s completed a read-aloud task as well as a map-task. The results showed that, regardless of their age group, all Korean speakers produced vowel length contrasts with a small but significant differences in the read-aloud test. Interestingly, the difference between long and short vowels has disappeared in the map task, indicating that the speech mode affects producing vowel length contrasts. For perception tests, thirty-three Korean listeners completed a discrimination and a forced-choice identification test. The results showed that Korean listeners still have a perceptual sensitivity to distinguish lexical meaning of the vowel length minimal pair. We also found that the identification accuracy was affected by the word frequency, showing a higher identification accuracy in high- and mid- frequency words than low frequency words. Taken together, the current study demonstrated that the speech mode (read-aloud vs. spontaneous) affects the production of the sound undergoing a language change; and word frequency affects the sound change in speech perception.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.39-47
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• 2016

While acoustic studies in the past decade documented a raised /o/ by showing their lowered first formants (F1) almost overlapped with those of high back vowel /u/, no consensus has been made in terms of how this /o/-raising affects the vowels as a system in Seoul Korean. The current study aimed to investigate the age- and gender-related differences of the relative distance among the vowels to better understand the influence of this on-going sound change on the vowel system. We measured the static and dynamic spectral characteristics (F1 and F2) of the seven Korean monophthong vowels /e a ʌ o u ɨ i/ in the spontaneous speech of Seoul Corpus, and depicted the patterns of 30 individual speakers (10 speakers in each group of teens, 20s and 40s) as a function of age and gender. The static spectral examination showed low F1 values of /o/ in the spontaneous speech corpus confirming the vowel /o/ raising, and also revealed greater F2 values of /u, ɨ/ suggesting their anterior articulations. The tendencies were stronger when the speakers were younger and female. The spectral trajectories further showed that the F1 and F2 between /o/ and /u/ were differentiated throughout the vowel mid-point although the trajectories gradually merged near the vowel mid point in the older male speakers' productions. The acoustic evidence of contrast among /o, u, ɨ/ supports that the raised /o/ is not indicative of a merger with /u/ but rather implying a chain-like vowel shift in the Seoul Korean.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.191-206
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• 2018

Purpose : This study investigated the correlation between speech intelligibility and acoustic measurements of speech sounds produced by the children with speech sound disorders and children without any diagnosed speech sound disorder. Methods : A total of 60 children with and without speech sound disorders were the subjects of this study. Speech samples were obtained by having the subjects? speak meaningful words. Acoustic measurements were analyzed on a spectrogram using the Multi-speech 3700 program. Speech intelligibility was determined according to a listener's perceptual judgment. Results : Children with speech sound disorders had significantly lower speech intelligibility than those without speech sound disorders. The intensity of the vowel /u/, the duration of the vowel /${\omega}$/, and the second formant of the vowel /${\omega}$/ were significantly different between both groups. There was no difference in voice onset time between the groups. There was a correlation between acoustic measurements and speech intelligibility. Conclusion : The results of this study showed that the speech intelligibility of children with speech sound disorders was affected by intensity, word duration, and formant frequency. It is necessary to complement clinical setting results using acoustic measurements in addition to evaluation of speech intelligibility.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.71-73
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• 2007

The Purpose of the study is to give Korean-English leaners better knowledge on vowel sounds in their learning English. The traditional description of the cardinal vowel system developed by Daniel Johns in 1917 is not enough to provide English learners with clear ideas in producing native like vowel sounds. For the reason, three Korean-native subjects, one male, one female and one child are chosen to produce 7 cardinal vowels and compare them with native English and American speaker's vowel sounds. The difference of produced vowels sounds is quantified and visualized by employing Sona-match program. The results have been fairly remarkable. Firstly, Korean-English learner's vowel sounds are articulated differently from their intention of vowel production. Secondly, the tongue positions of Koreans are placed slightly more down and forward to the lips than those of English and Americans. However, the front vowel /i/ sound is quite close to English and Americans. Lastly the mid-vowel /${\partial}$/ sound is not produced in any articulations of Korean-native speakers. It is thought that the mid vowel, /${\partial}$/ is a type of a weak sound regarded as 'schwa' which needs a great deal of exposure to the language to acquire a physical skill of articulation.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.169-186
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• 2000

This paper aims to confirm the mispronunciation of native Korean students due to the phonetic and phonological system differences between English and Korean, and to find the works-to-do by experiment. Many Korean students tend to differentiate the sounds of word-final stop consonants not by vowel duration or the allophones but by the phoneme of the consonant itself. In English, Stop sounds change through the conditions of the aspirated, unaspirated, or unreleased sounds. But in Korean they are not allophones of phonemes but distinct phonemes. Therefore, many Korean students are apt to add an extra vowel sound /i/ after the final stop consonant in the eve form due to both the unperception of the differences between the phonemes and the allophones of stop consonants, and the influence of the Korean sound-sequence relationship. Since the replacement of the allophones and extra vowel addition does not change the meaning, the importance was almost lost. Nevertheless, this kind of study is essential for the precise learning and the use of the English language.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.215-221
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• 2016

This paper describes an automatic vowel sequence reproduction system for a talking robot built to reproduce the human voice based on the working behavior of the human articulatory system. A sound analysis system is developed to record a sentence spoken by a human (mainly vowel sequences in the Japanese language) and to then analyze that sentence to give the correct command packet so the talking robot can repeat it. An algorithm based on a short-time energy method is developed to separate and count sound phonemes. A matching template using partial correlation coefficients (PARCOR) is applied to detect a voice in the talking robot's database similar to the spoken voice. Combining the sound separation and counting the result with the detection of vowels in human speech, the talking robot can reproduce a vowel sequence similar to the one spoken by the human. Two tests to verify the working behavior of the robot are performed. The results of the tests indicate that the robot can repeat a sequence of vowels spoken by a human with an average success rate of more than 60%.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.223-228
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• 2010

This study investigated the closed quotient and other voice quality parameters using electroglottography (EGG) in sustaining the vowel /a/ and reading a sentence at the comfortable pitch and loudness in healthy Korean adults. Seventy two healthy adults (36 men, 36 women) aged 20~40 years were included in the study. The tasks were recorded and analyzed using Lx Speech Studio. In vowel sustaining task, closed quotient (Qx), fundamental frequency (Fx), sound pressure level (SPL), Jitter, and Shimmer were measured. In sentence reading task, closed quotient (DQx), fundamental frequency (DFx), and sound pressure level (DAx) were measured. The sex effects were observed on Qx, Fx, Shimmer, DQx, and DFx. Men had significantly higher Qx and DQx than women, but had significantly lower Shimmer than women. However, there was no sex effect on Jitter. The task effects on Qx and SPL as well as DQx and DAx were also assessed. Qx and SPL were significantly higher than DQx and DAx in both gender. This study showed that the closed quotients in both vowel sustaining and sentence reading tasks were significantly related to other voice quality parameters. Therefore, clinicians and researchers should describe the voice quality parameters like fundamental frequency, sound pressure level, Jitter, Shimmer, and so on when reporting closed quotients using EGG.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.117-121
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• 2015

Background : Cepstral analysis which is obtained from Fourier transformation of spectrum has been known to be effective indicator to analyze the voice disorder. To evaluate the voice disorder, phonation of sustained vowel /a/ sound or continuous speech have been used but the former was limited to capture hoarseness properly. This study is aimed to compare the effectiveness in analysis of cepstrum between the sustained vowel /a/ sound and continuous speech. Methods : From March 2012 to December 2014, total 72 patients was enrolled in this study, including 24 unilateral vocal cord palsy, vocal nodule and vocal polyp patients, respectively. The entire patient evaluated their voice quality by VHI (Voice Handicap Index) before and after treatment. Phonation of sustained vowel /a/ sample and continuous speech using the first sentence of autumn paragraph was subjected by cepstral analysis and compare the pre-treatment group and post-treatment group. Results : The measured values of pre and post treatment in CPP-a (cepstral peak prominence in /a/ vowel sound) was 13.80, 13.91 in vocal cord palsy, 16.62, 17.99 in vocal cord nodule, 14.19, 18.50 in vocal cord polyp respectively. Values of CPP-s (cepstral peak prominence in text-based speech) in pre and post treatment was 11.11, 12.09 in vocal cord palsy, 12.11, 14.09 in vocal cord nodule, 12.63, 14.17 in vocal cord polyp. All 72 patients showed subjective improvement in VHI after treatment. CPP-a showed statistical improvement only in vocal polyp group, but CPP-s showed statistical improvement in all three groups (p<0.05). Conclusion : In analysis of cepstrum, text-based analysis is more representative in voice disorder than vowel sound speech. So when the acoustic analysis of voice by cepstrum, both phonation of sustained vowel /a/ sound and text based speech should be performed to obtain more accurate result.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.53-62
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to examine the English l sound in an English short story produced by 16 Korean students in order to determine various allophones of the sound using acoustic visual displays and perceptual judgments. The subjects read the story in a quiet office at normal speed. Each word included the lateral sound in onset or coda positions and before a vowel of the following word. Results showed as follows: Firstly, there was a durational difference between the two major groups. Also the majority of the subjects produced the clear l regardless of the contexts. Some students produced the sound as the Korean flap or the English glide [r]. A few missing cases were also seen. The dark l was mostly produced by the subjects of English majors in coda position with a few cases before a vowel in a phrase. Visual displays using the computer analysis were very helpful in distinguishing lateral variants but sometimes perceptual process would be necessary to judge them in fast and weak production of the target word. Further studies would be desirable to test the discrepancies between the acoustical and perceptual decisions.