• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.31-46
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• 2007

This study attempts to investigate that the training of pitch manipulation would help Korean speakers reduce the intonation errors based on the review of many previous studies on Korean speakers' phonetic realization of intonation. The previous studies have indicated that Korean speakers have problems with pitch manipulation in their production of English word stress, sentence stress, and eventually intonation. To train Korean speakers phonetically realize English pitch patterns, a blended learning module was operated for two weeks: face-to-face instruction for six hours and e-learning instruction for three hours in total. This module was designed to help Korean speakers realize pitch as a distinctive phoneme. An acoustic assessment on five Korean female English speakers shows that the training of pitch manipulation helps Korean English speakers reduce the intonation errors indicated in the previous studies reviewed.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.119-146
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to find the integrated educational programs for the female marital immigrant families in Korea. For this purpose, 21 immigrated female informants and 33 visiting teachers who provide teaching services to female informants were focus-group interviewed. The Major findings were as follows: Through the content analysis of informant's responses, both married female immigrants and visiting teachers expressed the needs of Korean language programs interpreted by immigrants' native speakers as well as programs to support their children. Married female immigrants expressed the needs for her husbands joining educational programs not much, on the other hand visiting teachers insisted to join their husbands as well as other family members to diverse family-related programs. Married female immigrants wanted programs to support their working skills, however visiting teachers emphasized their responsibilities and active attitudes before they get a job. Married female immigrants were not conscious any counselling programs to cope with husband's violence or maladjusted children, on the other hand visiting teachers insisted counselling programs to help female immigrants. Above all the programs, most of female marital immigrants wanted Korean language programs interpreted by their native speakers and programs to support their working skills, on the other hand visiting teachers emphasized the importance of family-related programs and counselling programs.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.201-207
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• 2013

This study is a follow-up study of Han and Kang (2013) and Kang and Han (2013) which examined cross-generational changes in the Korean vowels /o/ and /u/ using acoustic analyses of the vowel formants of these two vowels, their Euclidean distances and the overlap fraction values generated in SOAM 2D (Wassink, 2006). Their results showed an on-going approximation of /o/ and /u/, more evident in female speakers and non-initial vowels. However, these studies employed non-words in a frame sentence. To see the extent to which these two vowels are merged in real words in spontaneous speech, we conducted an acoustic analysis of the formants of /o/ and /u/ produced by two age groups of female speakers while reading a letter sample. The results demonstrate that 1) the younger speakers employed mostly F2 but not F1 differences in the production of /o/ and /u/; 2) the Euclidean distance of these two vowels was shorter in non-initial than initial position, but there was no difference in Euclidean distance between the two age groups (20's vs. 40-50's); 3) overall, /o/ and /u/ were more overlapped in non-initial than initial position, but in non-initial position, younger speakers showed more congested distribution of the vowels than in older speakers.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.23-29
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• 2016

The present study tested if individual speakers showing great sound change in segments (i.e., vowels and fricatives) also had innovative changing patterns in suprasegmental properties (i.e., lexical pitch accents) in Kyungsang Korean. The acoustic analysis at a group level first confirmed the presence of group level differences in distinguishing /ɨ-ʌ/ and /s-s'/ both of which had different phonemic distinction from Seoul Korean. Younger speakers had more innovative segmental change than older speakers, and even within the younger generation, female speakers produced more innovative phonetic variants than male speakers. Regarding the individual observation within the younger group, the younger speakers with large acoustic distinction in vowels and fricatives also showed acoustically less distinct accent patterns, indicating the innovative sound change pattern consistent across segment and suprasegmental properties. The group and individual observations suggested that linguistic innovators introduced new phonetic variants with consistent degree of changing pattern between segment and suprasegmental properties.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.29-41
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• 2005

This paper is to show the diphthong system of Jeju dialect speakers in their 70s or more on the basis of the acoustic analysis of their phonetic data. It is revealed through the analysis of their phonetic data that they clearly distinguish such diphthongs as [we], [w$\epsilon$], [yc] and [yo]. However, this paper shows that they are phonetically insensitive to the separation between [ye] and [y$\epsilon$] and they seldom make a precise pronunciation of diphthong [iy], which male speakers tend to pronounce to be [i] and female speakers to be [i].

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.125-131
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• 2015

The current study explores whether speaker variability in the fronted articulations of Seoul Korean affricates can be explained by cognitive differences measured by individual autistic traits. The goal was to explore Yu's (2010; 2013) proposal that individual differences in cognitive style can be an important factor in speakers' use of sound variants. The spectral peak frequencies (SPF) of affricates relative to those of fricatives, reported in Kong et al. (2014), were used to acoustically represent the relative degree of anterior place of constriction. When these individual SPFs were related to the scores of Autistic-Spectrum Quotients (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), a correlation was found for the male speakers, but not for the female speakers, such that speakers of more anterior affricate productions scored low in AQs. Discussion is made with respect to how these findings are in line with Yu's proposal.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.25-31
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• 2013

This study examined cross-generational changes in the vowel system of Seoul Korean. Acoustic analyses of the vowel formants of /o/ and /u/, and their Euclidean distances in the vowel space were undertaken to explore an on-going merger of these two vowels as proposed in previous acoustic studies and a phonological analysis by Chae (1999). A robust cross-generational change of /o/ and /u/ was found, more evident for female speakers than for male speakers. For female speakers, with each successive generation, /o/ became increasingly approximated with /u/, regardless of the syllable positions that the target vowels were posited, whereas the cross-generational differences in the Euclidean distances were only shown in the second syllable position for the male speakers. These results demonstrate that 1) women are more advanced than men in the on-going approximation of /o/ and /u/; 2) the approximation of /o/ and /u/ is common in the non-initial position. Taken together, the merger of /o/ and /u/ appears to be in progress in Seoul Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

The current study investigated the productions of /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/ in Kyungsang Korean, which is known for undergoing a dispersion for the younger generation. Specifically, to identify the nature of /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/ in Kyungsang Korean, this study examined the linguistic and social factors affecting directions and degrees of the /ɨ/-/${\Lambda}$/ dispersion. Sixteen young speakers of Kyungsang Korean repeated 112 (near) minimal pairs containing the two target vowels. The formant values of each production as well as the Euclidean distance between the two vowels were analyzed for four manipulated factors: gender (male vs. female), the existence of carrier phrases (words in isolation vs. words with a carrier phrase), the lexical status of stimulus words (real-word pairs vs. nonsense-word pairs), and the vowel position within a word (word-initial positions vs. word-final positions). The results indicated that the female speakers produced the two target vowels more distinctively than the male speakers, and so did when the words were produced in isolation. The results also revealed that the Euclidean distances were greater for the real-word pairs and in word-initial positions. Overall, the results suggested that the Kyungsang Korean speakers in their 20s could distinctively produce the two vowels /ɨ/ and /${\Lambda}$/, but this vowel dispersion is not a completed process, but an ongoing one.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.9-22
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• 2017

The purpose of this paper is to report the whole process of developing Korean Standard Speech Database (KSS DB). This project is supported by SPO (Supreme Prosecutors' Office) research grant for three years from 2014 to 2016. KSS DB is designed to provide speech data for acoustic-phonetic and phonological studies and speaker recognition system. For the samples to represent the spoken Korean, sociolinguistic factors, such as region (9 regional dialects), age (5 age groups over 20) and gender (male and female) were considered. The goal of the project is to collect over 3,000 male and female speakers of nine regional dialects and five age groups employing direct and indirect methods. Speech samples of 3,191 speakers (2,829 speakers and 362 speakers using direct and indirect methods, respectively) are collected and databased. KSS DB designs to collect read and spontaneous speech samples from each speaker carrying out 5 speech tasks: three (pseudo-)spontaneous speech tasks (producing prolonged simple vowels, 28 blanked sentences and spontaneous talk) and two read speech tasks (reading 55 phonetically and phonologically rich sentences and reading three short passages). KSS DB includes a 16-bit, 44.1kHz speech waveform file and a orthographic file for each speech task.