• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.7-27
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• 2006

This study explored the discrimination of synthesized English vowel pairs by twenty-seven American and Korean, male and female listeners. The average formant values of nine monophthongs produced by ten American English male speakers were employed to synthesize the vowels. Then, subjects were instructed explicitly to respond to AX discrimination tasks in which the standard vowel was followed by another one with the increment or decrement of the original formant values. The highest and lowest formant values of the same vowel quality were collected and compared to examine patterns of vowel discrimination. Results showed that the American and Korean groups discriminated the vowel pairs almost identically and their center formant frequency values of the high and low boundary fell almost exactly on those of the standards. In addition, the acceptable range of the same vowel quality was similar among the language and gender groups. The acceptable thresholds of each vowel formed oval to maintain perceptual contrast from adjacent vowels. The results suggested that nonnative speakers with high English proficiency could match native speakers' performance in discriminating vowel pairs with a shorter inter-stimulus interval. Pedagogical implications of those findings are discussed.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.21-24
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• 2005

This paper presents durational characteristics of Korean Lombard speech using data, which consist of 500 Lombard utterances and 500 normal utterances of 10 speakers (5 males and 5 females). Each file was segmented and labeled manually and the duration of each segment and each word was extracted. The durational change of Lombard effect in comparison with normal speech was analyzed using a statistical method. The results show that the duration of words with Lombard effect is increased in comparison with normal style, and that the average unvoiced consonantal duration is reduced while the average vocalic duration is increased. Female speakers show a stronger tendency towards lengthening the duration in Lombard speech, but without statistical significance. Finally, this study also shows that the speakers of Lombard speech could be classified according to their different duration rate.

• MALSORI
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• no.54
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• pp.1-14
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• 2005

This paper presents durational characteristics of Korean distant-talking speech using speech data, which consist of 500 distant-talking utterances and 500 normal utterances of 10 speakers (5 males and 5 females). Each file was segmented and labeled manually and the duration of each segment and each word was extracted. Using a statistical method, the durational change of distant-talking speech in comparison with normal speech was analyzed. The results show that the duration of words with distant-talking speech is increased in comparison with normal style, and that the average unvoiced consonantal duration is reduced while the average vocalic duration is increased. Female speakers show a stronger tendency towards lengthening the duration in distant-talking speech. Finally, this study also shows that the speakers of distant-talking speech could be classified according to their different duration rate.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.775-780
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• 2013

This paper proposes a speaker-dependent speech recognition algorithm which can classify the gender for male and female speakers in white noise and car noise, using a neural network. The proposed speech recognition algorithm is trained by the neural network to recognize the gender for male and female speakers, using LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) cepstrum coefficients. In the experiment results, the maximal improvement of total speech recognition rate is 96% for white noise and 88% for car noise, respectively, after trained a total of six neural networks. Finally, the proposed speech recognition algorithm is compared with the results of a conventional speech recognition algorithm in the background noisy environment.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.75-83
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• 2012

The aims of this study were three. First, to examine the degree of deviation from dictionary prescribed symbols and actual speech made by American English speakers. Second, to measure the frequency of vowel and consonant production of American English speakers. And third, to investigate gender differences in the segmental sounds in a speech corpus. The Buckeye Speech Corpus was recorded by forty American male and female subjects for one hour per subject. The vowels and consonants in both the phonemic and phonetic transcriptions were extracted from the original files of the corpus and their frequencies were obtained using codes of a free software R. Results were as follows: Firstly, the American English speakers produced a reduced number of vowels and consonants in daily conversation. The reduction rate from the dictionary transcriptions to the actual transcriptions was around 38.2%. Secondly, the American English speakers used more front high and back low vowels while three-fourths of the consonants accounted for stops, fricatives, and nasals. This indicates that the segmental inventory has nonlinear frequency distribution in the speech corpus. Thirdly, the two gender groups produced vowels and consonants similarly even though there were a few noticeable differences in their speech. From these results we propose that English teachers consider pronunciation education reflecting the actual speech sounds and that linguists find a way to establish unmarked segmentals from speech corpora.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.109-119
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• 2014

This article represents a first step in a large study aimed at elucidating the relationship between production and perception involved in sound change of /o/ in (Seoul) Korean. In this paper we present the results of a production study and a perception experiment. For the production study we examined vowel production data of 20 young adult speakers, measuring the first and second formants, then conducted a discriminant analysis based on those values. In terms of their F1-F2 values, the distribution of /o/ and /u/ were close, and even overlapping in some circumstances, which is consistent with the literature. This tendency was more apparent among the female speakers than the males. Moreover, with the females' distributions, /o/ was frequently categorized as /u/, suggesting that the direction of the sound change is indeed increasing from /o/ to /u/. Next, to investigate the effects of this proximity on perception, we used the production data of five randomly selected speakers from the production study as stimuli for a perception experiment in which 21 young adult native speakers of (Seoul) Korean performed a vowel identification task and provided a Goodness rating on a 5-point scale. We found that while rates of correctness were high, when these correctness scores were weighted by the Goodness rating, these "weighted correctness" scores were lower in some cases, indicating a degree of confusion in distinguishing between the two vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.11-16
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• 2024

The fundamental frequency (f0), representing an acoustic measure of vocal fold vibration, serves as an indicator of the speaker's emotional state and language-specific pattern in daily conversations. This study aimed to examine the f0 distribution in an English corpus of spontaneous speech, establishing normative data for American speakers. The corpus involved 40 participants engaging in free discussions on daily activities and personal viewpoints. Using Praat, f0 values were collected filtering outliers after removing nonspeech sounds and interviewer voices. Statistical analyses were performed with R. Results indicated a median f0 value of 145 Hz for all the speakers. The f0 values for all speakers exhibited a right-skewed, pointy distribution within a frequency range of 216 Hz from 75 Hz to 339 Hz. The female f0 range was wider than that of males, with a median of 113 Hz for males and 181 Hz for females. This spontaneous speech corpus provides valuable insights for linguists into f0 variation among individuals or groups in a language. Further research is encouraged to develop analytical and statistical measures for establishing reliable f0 standards for the general population.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.31-37
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• 2021

The fundamental frequency, or f0, is an important acoustic measure in the prosody of human speech. The current study examined the f0 distribution of a corpus of spontaneous speech in order to provide normative data for Korean speakers. The corpus consists of 40 speakers talking freely about their daily activities and their personal views. Praat scripts were created to collect f0 values, and a majority of obvious errors were corrected manually by watching and listening to the f0 contour on a narrow-band spectrogram. Statistical analyses of the f0 distribution were conducted using R. The results showed that the f0 values of all the Korean speakers were right-skewed, with a pointy distribution. The speakers produced spontaneous speech within a frequency range of 274 Hz (from 65 Hz to 339 Hz), excluding statistical outliers. The mode of the total f0 data was 102 Hz. The female f0 range, with a bimodal distribution, appeared wider than that of the male group. Regression analyses based on age and f0 values yielded negligible R-squared values. As the mode of an individual speaker could be predicted from the median, either the median or mode could serve as a good reference for the individual f0 range. Finally, an analysis of the continuous f0 points of intonational phrases revealed that the initial and final segments of the phrases yielded several f0 measurement errors. From these results, we conclude that an examination of a spontaneous speech corpus can provide linguists with useful measures to generalize acoustic properties of f0 variability in a language by an individual or groups. Further studies would be desirable of the use of statistical measures to secure reliable f0 values of individual speakers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.5-11
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• 1997

To set up an objective basis for the evaluation of the stroboscopic findings, video-strobolaryngoscopic images of vocal fold vibration in 5 female and 5 male normal speakers were analyzed using an image analysis computer program called KSIP(Kay Storoboscopy Image Processing, Kay Elemetrics Corp., NJ, USA). Four consecutive vibratory cycles were compared in comfortable, louder, high-pitched /ee/ phonation for every subject. findings mostly replicated earlier studies including glottal chinks which were observed in most female speakers throughout the cycles and clear distinction between female and male speakers in their vibratory patterns as well as intensity and frequency-re-lated differences. However, there were some findings incompatible with those from previous studies which may be attributable to technical problems. This study may provide an objective basis of the stroboscopic findings such as image shape, amplitude, area, and their changes according to frequency and intensity variations. We anticipate that funker study with larger samples ran provide an objective criteria for normal vibratory characteristics of the laryngostro-boscopic findings.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.91-99
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• 2018

Korean stops are currently undergoing a tonogenetic sound change, as found in the Seoul dialect in which a merged VOT of aspirated and lax stops induces F0 to be the primary cue for distinguishing the two stops and the lax stops have lower F0 than the aspirated stops. In tonal languages, low tone is produced with a breathy voice. This study investigated whether there are changes in voice quality with respect to the tonogenetic sound change of Korean stops. Two age groups speaking the Seoul dialect participated in this study: five females and six males born in the 1940s and 1950s and nine females and eight males born in the 1980s and 1990s. This study replicated previous findings of VOT and F0 and further examined H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A2 to see how they correlate with the sound change. In the older and younger generations, H1-H2, H1-A1, and H1-A2 were significantly lower after the tense stops than after the aspirated and lax stops, but they were not significantly different after the aspirated and lax stops. However, the younger females exhibited some different results for H1-H2 and H1-A2 than the older generation. In the younger females, the H1-H2 mean was higher after the aspirated stops than it was after the lax stops at the vowel onset, and the H1-H2 difference increased at the vowel midpoint. Although there was an inter-speaker variation in the results of H1-H2 and H1-A1, analyses of individual speakers showed that the H1-H2 and H1-A1 were higher after the lax stops than after the aspirated stops in the younger female speakers. These results indicate that lax stops tend to be breathier than aspirated stops in the younger female speakers. They also indicate that changes in voice quality are on Korean stops with tonal sound change, but are still developing.