• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2019

Formant trajectories reflect the continuous variation of speakers' articulatory movements over time. This study examined formant trajectories of English vowels produced by ninety-three American men and women; the values were normalized using the scale function in R and compared using generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs). Praat was used to read the sound data of Hillenbrand et al. (1995). A formant analysis script was prepared, and six formant values at the corresponding time points within each vowel segment were collected. The results indicate that women yielded proportionately higher formant values than men. The standard deviations of each group showed similar patterns at the first formant (F1) and the second formant (F2) axes and at the measurement points. R was used to scale the first two formant data sets of men and women separately. GAMMs of all the scaled formant data produced various patterns of deviation along the measurement points. Generally, more group difference exists in F1 than in F2. Also, women's trajectories appear more dynamic along the vertical and horizontal axes than those of men. The trajectories are related acoustically to F1 and F2 and anatomically to jaw opening and tongue position. We conclude that scaling and nonlinear testing are useful tools for pinpointing differences between speaker group's formant trajectories. This research could be useful as a foundation for future studies comparing curvilinear data sets.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2005

Background and Objectives : Vowels are characterized on the basis of formant patterns. The first formant(F1) is determined by high-low placement of the tongue, and the second formant (F2) by front-back placement of the tongue. The fundamental frequency(F0) of a soprano often exceed the normal frequency of the first formant. And the vocal intensity is boosted when F0 is high and a harmonic coincides with a formant. This is called a formant tuning. Experienced singers thus learned how to tune their formants over a resonable range by lowering the tongue to maximize their vocal intensity. So, the current study aimed to identify the formant tuning in one experienced soprano by comparing the first formants of vowel [i] in three different voice production : speech, ascending scale, and vocalize. Materials and Method : All voices recordings of vowel [i] in speech, ascending scale (from F4 note to A4 note), and vocalize(:Ridente la calam") were made with digital audio tape-corder in a sound treated room. And the captured data were analyzed by the long term average(LTA) power spectrum using the FFT algorithm of the Computerized Speech Lab(CSL, Kay elementrics, Model, 4300B). Results : Although the first formant of vowel [i] in speech was 238Hz, those of ascending scale [i] were 377Hz, 405Hz, 453Hz respectively in F4(349z), G4(392Hz), A4(440Hz) note, and 722Hz, 820Hz, 918Hz respectively in F5 (698Hz), G5(784Hz), A5(880Hz) note. In vocalize, first formants of [i] were 380Hz, 398Hz, 453Hz respectively in F4, G4, A4 note, and 720Hz, 821Hz, 890Hz respectively in F5, G5, A5 note. Conclusion : These results showed that the first formant of ascending scale and vocalize sustained higher frequency than fundamental frequency in high pitch. This finding implicates that the formant tuning of vowel [i] in ascending scale was also noted in vocalize.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.55-58
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• 2003

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the effects of nasalization on vowels. Ten males and 7 females produced 5 vowels (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/) in conditions: normal and nasalized. In this study we compared normal vowels' formant with nasalized vowels' and examined nasal-formant in the nasalized vowels. The results was as follows: First, there was a significant difference between normal vowels and nasalized in terms of F1 and F2. Second, the nasal formants were observed in nasalized vowels more frequently in females than males. Third, N1 appeared to influence F1 of vowels whereas N2 seemed to have an impact on F2 and/or F3.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.65-72
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• 2009

Formant values are the most important acoustic correlates of English vowels. Classical studies on English vowels reported the first three formant values measured at a single timepoint on a sustained vowel segment. However, many recent studies revealed that partial onset or offset segments with information of dynamic spectral changes may contribute to the exact identification of English vowels with an accuracy almost comparable to that by the whole vowel segment or word. The purpose of this study was to examine formant trajectories of nine English vowels collected by Hillenbrand et al.(1995). Acoustic analysis was systematically made by a Praat script at six equidistant timepoints over the vowel segment. Results showed that the first formant trajectories played an important role in distinguishing each vowel within the front- or back-vowel groups. The second formant trajectories of the back vowels varied more drastically than those of the front vowels. The third formant value was similar except the high vowel /i/. From the vowel space on F1 by F2 axes, the formant trajectories of each vowel clearly showed a transition toward the locus of the following consonant /d/. Other acoustic data revealed that there were some vowel inherent duration or pitch values. From this study we can conclude that the dynamic spectral changes are very important in specifying acoustic characteristics of the English vowels. Further studies on vowels and diphthongs in different contexts are desirable.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.121-128
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• 2005

This study was an attempt to determine acoustic characteristics in myna bird's notes. Two myna birds' sounds imitating a normal male voice in his late 20's were sampled and analyzed. The analyses included the mean values of F1, F2, F3 and pitch contours. The results were as follows; First, there was a significan difference in the mean values of F1, F2, and F3 in isolatd vowel /a/ and /i/ between the myna birds' sounds and the human voice. However, there was no apparent difference in pitch contour of their formants. Second, there was a difference in pitch contour of their formants in their sentence ('hn-nyung-ha-se-yo?' meaning 'How are you?') production. Namely, the myna birds' pitch contour was located higher than that of the human's.

• Korean Linguistics
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• v.80
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• pp.211-234
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• 2018

This study aims to research the acoustic properties of Korean and Vietnamese monophthongs by Vietnamese advanced Korean learners, and to discuss the realization of Korean monophthongs compared to Koreans. The Vietnamese advanced Korean learners do not distinguish between /e/ and /${\varepsilon}$/, which are the same as Korean. They pronounce Korean /e(${\varepsilon}$)/ close to /e/ in their native language. In the case of /ʌ/, it is reported that many errors are observed in previous studies. However, /ʌ/ of Vietnamese advanced learners is realized similar to /ʌ/ spoken by Koreans. /ɯ/ of Vietnamese advanced Korean learners is pronounced in the back of the tongue, whereas in the central by Koreans. In the case of /o/ and /u/, there is no significant difference by the Vietnamese advanced Korean learners. /ɯ/ and /u/ are pronounced in relatively front side of the tongue in Korean, but it is not observed in the Vietnamese advanced Korean learners.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.59-64
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• 2017

There are three sorts of voices of female vocalists: soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto according to the transliteration. Among them, the soprano has the highest vocal range. Since the voice is generated through the human vocal tract based on the voice generation model, it is greatly influenced by the vocal tract. The structure of vocal organs differs from person to person, and the formants characteristic of vocalization differ accordingly. The formant characteristic refers to a characteristic in which a specific frequency band appears distinctly due to resonance occurring in each vocal tract in the vocal process. Formant characteristics include personality that occurs in the throat, jaw, lips, and teeth, as well as phonological properties of phonemes. The first formant is the throat, the second formant is the jaw, the third formant and the fourth formant are caused by the resonance phenomenon in the lips and the teeth. Among them, pronunciation is influenced not only by phonological information but also by jaws, lips and teeth. When the mouth is small or the jaw is stiff when pronouncing, pronunciation becomes unclear. Therefore, the higher the accuracy of the pronunciation characteristics, the more clearly the formant characteristics appear in the grammar spectrum. However, many soprano singers can not open their mouths because their jaws, lips, teeth, and facial muscles are rigid to maintain high tones when singing, which makes the pronunciation unclear and thus the formant characteristics become unclear. In this paper, in order to confirm the accuracy of the pronunciation characteristics of soprano singers, the experimental group was selected as the soprano singers A, B, C, D, E of Korea and analyzed the grammar spectrum and conducted the MOS test for pronunciation recognition. As a result, soprano singer B showed a clear recognition from F1 to F5 and MOS test result showed the highest recognition rate with 4.6 points. Soprano singers A, C, and D appear from F1 to F3, but it was difficult to find formants above 2kHz. Finally, the soprano singer E had difficulty in finding the formant as a whole, and MOS test showed the lowest recognition rate at 2.1 points. Therefore, we confirmed that the soprano singer B, which exhibits the most distinct formant characteristics in the grammar spectrum, has the best pronunciation accuracy.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.181-191
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• 2001

The acoustic quality of a vowel is known to be mostly determined by the frequencies of the first formant(Fl) and the second formant(F2). The perceptual(or psychological) dimensions of vowel perception were examined in this study. Also the relationships among perceptual dimensions, acoustical dimensions(Fl & F2), and articulatory gestures of vowel were discussed. Using multi-dimensional scaling(MDS) technique, the experiment was performed in order to identify the perceptual dimensions of the perception of Korean vowel. In the experiment 8 Seoul standard speakers performed the similarity rating task of 10 synthesized Korean vowels. Two-dimensional MDS solution based. on the similarity rating scores was obtained. The results showed that two perceptual dimensions, D1 and D2 were correlated strongly with F2 and F1(r = -.895 and .878 respectively), and were so interpreted as 'vowel advancement' and 'vowel height' respectively. The relationship between the perceptual dimensions of vowel and the articulatory positions of tongue suggested that perception may be directly linked to production. Further research problems were discussed in the .final section.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.133-135
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• 2008

Background and Objectives: The voice changes can occur in peritonsillar abscess and the labeling of this changes as a "muffled voice". The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in acoustic feature of voice before and after treatment in patients with peritonsillar abscess. Materials and Method: 12 patients with peritonsillar abscess were enrolled in the study. Acoustic analysis on sustained Korean vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ were performed before and after treatment. Results: In patients with peritonsillar abscess, the first formant frequency (F1) and second formant frequency (F2) of /a/ were decreased. There was tendency of articulation of back-low vowel /a/ as back-high vowel /u/. F1 of /i/ and /u/ were increased, while F2 were decreased. There was tendency of articulation of front-high vowel /i/ as back-low vowel /a/. The third, forth, fifth formant frequency (F3, F4, F5) of /a/, /i/ and /u/ were decreased although statistically not significant. Conclusion: The anatomical and functional changes of oropharynx by peritonsillar abscess can cause changes in resonance and speech quality. We suggest that these changes could be the cause of 'muffled voice' in patients of peritonsillar abscess.