• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.101-113
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• 2020

This study aimed to explore how effective explicit form-focused instruction (FFI) is in teaching the schwa vowel /ə/ to EFL students in a classroom setting. The participants were 25 female high school students, who were divided into the experimental group (n=13) and the control group (n=12). One female American also participated in the study for a speech sample as a reference. The treatment, which involves shadowing model pronunciation by the researcher and a free text-to-speech software and the researcher's feedback in a private session, was given to the control group over a month and a half. The speech samples, for which the participants read the 14 polysyllabic stimulus words followed by the sentences containing the words, were collected before and after the treatment. The paired-samples t test and non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used for analysis. The results showed that the participants of the experimental group in the post-test reduced the duration of the schwa by around 40 percent compared to the pre-test. However, little effect was found in approximating the participants' distribution patterns of /ə/ measured by the F1/F2 formant frequencies to the reference point, which was 539 Hz (F1) by 1797 Hz (F2). The findings of this study suggest that explicit FFI with multiple repetitions and corrective feedback is partly effective in teaching pronunciation.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.13-20
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• 2008

Although digital hearing aid algorithms have been developed to compensate hearing loss and to help hearing impaired people to communicate with others, digital hearing aid user still complain about difficulty of hearing the speech. The reason could be the quality of speech through digital hearing aid is insufficient to understand the speech caused by feedback, residual noise and etc. And another thing is masking effect among formants that makes sound quality low. In this study, we measured the masking characteristics of normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners having presbyacusis to confirm masking effect in speech itself. The experiment is composed of 5 tests; pure tone test, speech reception threshold (SRT) test, word recognition score (WRS) test, puretone masking test and speech masking test. In speech masking test, there are 25 speeches in each speech set. And log likelihood ratio (LLR) is introduced to evaluate the distortion of each speech objectively. As a result, the speech perception became lower by increasing the quantity of formant enhancement. And each enhanced speech in a speech set has statistically similar LLR, however speech perception is not. It means that acoustic masking effect rather than distortion influences speech perception. In actuality, according to the result of frequency analysis of the speech that people can not answer correctly, level difference between first formant and second formant is about 35dB, and it is similar to result of pure tone masking test(normal hearing subject:36.36dB, hearing impaired subject:32.86dB). Characteristics of masking effect is not similar between normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners. So it is required to check the characteristics of masking effect before wearing a hearing aid and to apply this characteristics to fitting.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.338-360
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• 1992

This study was performed to investigate the phonetic alterations with upper anterior teeth were missing. To compare the changes of the phonations, before and after insertion of the temporary prosthesis, six subjects who lost their upper anterior teeth were selected (2-male, 4-female). Tested sounds (/ga(가), na(나), da(다), ra(라), sa(사), ja(자), cha(차), ta(타), pa(파), ha(하), gi(기), ni(니), di(디), ri(리), si(시), jl(지), chi(치), ti(티), pi(피), hi(히), seu(스), se(세), so(소), su(수)/were programmed into an IBM AT with and without temporary prosthesis. These experiments were analyzed by formants, consonants durations, and energy level changes with an LSI speech work station program. During the pronunciation of the tested sounds (with and without temporary prosthesis), mandibular movements were recorded to a Mandibular Kinesiogram and analyzed . The findings led to the following conclusions: 1. Objective differences could not be found. However, in every informant, subjective improvement could be noticed. 2. There were no persistant correlations of the formant's changes. And in every informant, phonetic changes were variable. 3. There were various changes of the consonant durations in every informant. By and large, those of /si(시), jl(지), chi(치), Pi(피), hi(히)/ were longer than other tested sounds. After insertion of the prosthesis, durations were shorter. Consonants with /i(ㅣ)/ were longer than with /a(ㅏ)/, with or without prosthesis. 4. With and without temporary prosthesis, mandibular movements were various in the frontal view. Mandibular movements showed lateral deviations, and mandibular positions with /si(시), ji(지), ti(티), seu(스), hi(히)/ were nearer to the mandibular rest position. 5. The kinds of temporary prosthesis and conditions of the missing teeth influenced every informant variously, so there were no correlation between informants. 6. Energy levels increased in all tested sounds with a fixed temporary prosthesis. And, there were no differences between before and after insertion of a removable temporary prosthesis. However, sibilant sounds, and consonants with /i(ㅣ)/ showed a little increased energy level.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.1263-1269
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• 2016

Stress has become one of the largest health risk to shorten the life time of health. Accordingly, in order to increase the life time of health, stress relief can be very important. Many social expenses and economic commitment have been inputted for this purpose, but their effectiveness compared to the current situation is not very high. In this paper, we carried out an identification work of rain sound which is similar to the white noise that can stabilize the body and mind of the person by analyzing the variations of 3rd formant frequency bandwidth. Also, for relieving stress, the sounds of rain that is easily accessible at a relatively among the sounds of nature instead of consuming a lot of money and time were selected for solving these problems. In addition, we identified the effectiveness of the stress relief about the sound of rain and research on whether there is a difference between men and women in their 20's or not was performed. Finally, we discussed the personal - adjusted rain making to maximize the effectiveness of stress relief.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.512-520
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• 2019

It is quite useful to represent speeches visually for learners who study foreign languages as well as the hearing impaired who cannot directly hear speeches, and a number of researches have been presented in the literature. They remain, however, at the level of representing the characteristics of speeches using colors or showing the changing shape of lips and mouth using the animation-based representation. As a result of such approaches, those methods cannot tell the users how far their pronunciations are away from the standard ones, and moreover they make it technically difficult to develop such a system in which users can correct their pronunciation in an interactive manner. In order to address these kind of drawbacks, this paper proposes a speech visualization model based on the relative distance between the user's speech and the standard one, furthermore suggests actual implementation directions by applying the proposed model to the visualization of Korean vowels. The method extract three formants F1, F2, and F3 from speech signals and feed them into the Kohonen's SOM to map the results into 2-D screen and represent each speech as a pint on the screen. We have presented a real system implemented using the open source formant analysis software on the speech of a Korean instructor and several foreign students studying Korean language, in which the user interface was built using the Javascript for the screen display.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 2021

The aim of this study is to prepare basic data that can be used for evaluation and intervention by investigating the characteristics of diphthongs produced by children with speech sound disorders. To confirm this, two groups of 10 children each, with and without speech sound disorders were asked to imitate the meaningless two-syllable 'diphthongs + da'. The slope of F1 and F2, amount of change of formant, and duration of glide were analyzed by Praat (version 6.1.16). As a result, the difference between the two groups was found in the slope of F1 of /ju/. Children with speech sound disorders had smaller changes in formants and shorter duration time values compared to normal children, and there were statistically significant differences. The amount of change in formant in the glide was found in F1 of /ju, jɛ/, F2 of /jɑ, jɛ/, and there were significant differences in the duration of glide in /ju, jɛ/. The results of this study showed that the range of articulation of diphthongs in children with speech sound disorders is relatively smaller than that of normal children, thus the time it takes to articulate was reduced. These results suggest that the range of articulation and acoustic analysis should be further investigated for evaluation and intervention regarding diphthongs of children with speech sound disorders.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

This study aims to enhance English pronunciation education for Korean students by examining the impact of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect on the articulation of English vowels. Data were obtained through the Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC). Seven Korean words and ten English mono-syllabic words were uttered by adult, male speakers of standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect, in particular, speakers with little to no experience living abroad were selected. Formant frequencies of the recorded corpus data were measured using spectrograms, provided by the speech analysis program, Praat. The recorded data were analyzed using the articulatory graph for formants. The results show that in comparison with speakers using standard Korean, those using the Gyeongsang regional dialect articulated both Korean and English vowels in the back. Moreover, the contrast between standard Korean and Gyeongsang regional dialect in the pronunciation of Korean vowels (/으/, /어/) affected how the corresponding English vowels (/ə/, /ʊ/) were articulated. Regardless of the use of regional dialect, a general feature of vowel pronunciation among Korean people is that they show more narrow articulatory movements, compared with that of native English speakers. Korean people generally experience difficulties with discriminating tense and lax vowels, whereas native English speakers have clear distinctions in vowel articulation.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.246-246
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• 1996

Purpose: Some of the properties of the prosodic phrasing and some acoustic and phonological effects of contrastive focus on the tonal pattern of Seoul Korean is explored based on a brief experiment of analyzing the fundamental frequency(=FO) contour of the speech of the author. Data Base and Analysis Procedures: The examples were chosen to contain mostly nasal and liquid consonants, since it is difficult to track down the formants in stops and fricatives during their corresponding consonantal intervals and stops may yield an effect of unwanted increase in the FO value due to their burst into the following vowel. All examples were recorded three times and the spectrum of the most stable repetition was generated, from which the FO contour of each sentence was obtained, the peaks with a value higher than 250Hz being interpreted as a high tone (=H). The result is then discussed within the prosodic hierarchy framework of Selkirk (1986) and compared with the tonal pattern of the Northern Kyungsang dialect of Korean reported in Kenstowicz & Sohn (1996). Prosodic Phrasing: In N.K. Korean, H never appears both on the object and on the verb in a neutral sentence, which indicates the object and the verb form a single Phonological Phrase ($={\phi}$), given that there is only one pitch peak for each $={\phi}$. However, Seoul Korean shows that both the object and the verb have H of their own, indicating that they are not contained in one $={\phi}$. This violates the Optimality constraint of Wrap-XP (=Enclose a lexical head and its arguments in one $={\phi}$), while N.K. Korean obeys the constraint by grouping a VP in a single $={\phi}$. This asymmetry can be resolved through a constraint that favors the separate grouping of each lexical category and is ranked higher than Wrap-XP in Seoul Korean but vice versa in N.K. Korean; $Align-x^{lex}$ (=Align the left edge of a lexical category with that of a $={\phi}$). (1) nuna-ka manll-ll mEk-nIn-ta ('sister-NOM garlic-ACC eat-PRES-DECL') a. (LLH) (LLH) (HLL) ----Seoul Korean b. (LLH) (LLL LHL) ----N.K. Korean Focus and Phrasing: Two major effects of contrastive focus on phonological phrasing are found in Seoul Korean: (a) the peak of an Intonatioanl Phrase (=IP) falls on the focused element; and (b) focus has the effect of deleting all the following prosodic structures. A focused element always attracts the peak of IP, showing an increase of approximately 30Hz compared with the peak of a non-focused IP. When a subject is focused, no H appears either on the object or on the verb and a focused object is never followed by a verb with H. The post-focus deletion of prosodic boundaries is forced through the interaction of StressFocus (=If F is a focus and DF is its semantic domain, the highest prominence in DF will be within F) and Rightmost-IP (=The peak of an IP projects from the rightmost $={\phi}$). First Stress-F requires the peak of IP to fall on the focused element. Then to avoid violating Rightmost-IP, all the boundaries after the focused element should delete, minimizing the number of $={\phi}$'s intervening from the right edge of IP. (2) (omitted) Conclusion: In general, there seems to be no direct alignment constraints between the syntactically focused element and the edge of $={\phi}$ determined in phonology; all the alignment effects come from a single requirement that the peak of IP projects from the rightmost $={\phi}$ as proposed in Truckenbrodt (1995).