• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.33-40
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the voice onset time (VOT) of the English voiceless stops [p, t, k] found in the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech [1]. Three young female speakers were chosen for this study and their VOT values were semi-automatically extracted along with other factors. The factors used for the analysis were place of articulation, location in word, syllabic stress, content word or not, word frequency calculated from the corpus, and the speech rate expressed in syllables per second. Results showed that, for the three places of articulation of each speaker, all the factors had a statistically significant effect on the VOT values. This paper has significance in that the materials used for the analysis were from a corpus of spontaneous natural English speech.

• MALSORI
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• no.56
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• pp.1-13
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• 2005

This study examined the speech intelligibility of one-syllable words with phonetic contrasts and analyzed segmental factors that can predict the overall speech intelligibility in hearing-impaired adults. To identify the speech error characteristics, a Korean word list was audio-recorded by 7 hearing-impaired adults, and 35 listeners selected the heard word out of 5 choices. Based in part on previous studies of speech of the hearing impaired, the word list consisted of monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) real word pairs. Stimulus words included 77 phonetic contrast pairs. The results showed that the percentage of errors in final position (coda) contrast was higher than in any other position in syllable. And the intelligibility deficit factors of phonetic contrast in the hearing-impaired were analyzed through stepwise regression analysis. The overall intelligibility was predicted by the error rate of manner contrast at coda, voicing contrast (homorganic triplets) at onset and high-low contrast at nucleus.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.131-138
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• 2015

The aim of this work is to compare the vowel formants of the ten adult female speakers in their twenties and thirties from the Seoul corpus[7] with those of corresponding Korean male speakers from the same corpus and of American female speakers from the Buckeye corpus[4]. In addition, various linguistic factors that are expected affect the formant frequencies were examined to account for the distribution of the vowel formants. Formant frequencies extracted from the Seoul corpus were also compared to those from read speech. The results showed that the formant distribution of the spontaneous speech was very different from that of the read speech, while the comparison between the female and male speakers was similar in both languages. To a greater or lesser degree, the potential linguistic factors influenced the formant frequencies of the vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.141-148
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• 2011

There are many factors that affect speech intelligibility and speech acceptability. Structural anomalies and neuromotor pathologies are known for the reasons of abnormal speech sounds. And there are minor variations related to oral mechanism. Speaking with restricted mouth opening related to therapeutic procedure or habitual speech pattern might affect the quality of speech sounds. So this study compared speech intelligibility and speech acceptability of recorded 24 words in two conditions (restricted mouth opening condition and normal mouth opening condition) by 30 normal hearing adults. The results showed that speech intelligibility and speech acceptability were significantly lower in restricted mouth opening condition. And speech acceptability was significantly lower than speech intelligibility in restricted mouth opening condition. Speech acceptability in restricted mouth opening condition was significantly lower especially in open vowel. These findings indicated that the mouth opening condition could affect vowel shape and could be an adverse effect on speech intelligibility and speech acceptability.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.334-337
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• 2005

The speech intelligibility is one of the most important factors in communication system. The speech intelligibility is related with speech to noise ratio. To enhance the speech to noise ratio, background noise reduction techniques are being developed. As a part of solution to noise reduction, this paper introduces directional microphone using beamforming method and speech filtering method. The directional microphone narrows the spatial range of processing signal into the direction of the target speech signal. The noise signal located in the same direction with speech still remains in the processing signal. To sort this mixed signal into speech and noise, as a following step, a speech-filtering method is applied to pick up only the speech signal from the processed signal. The speech filtering method is based on the characteristics of speech signal itself. The combined directional microphone and speech filtering method gives enhanced performance to speech intelligibility in communication system.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.187-192
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: Clear speech is an effective communication strategy used in difficult listening situations that draws on techniques such as accurate articulation, a slow speech rate, and the inclusion of pauses. Although too slow speech and improperly amplified spectral information can deteriorate overall speech intelligibility, certain amplitude of increments of the mid-frequency bands (1 to 3 dB) and around 50% slower speech rates of clear speech, when compared to those in conversational speech, were reported as factors that can improve speech intelligibility positively. The purpose of this study was to identify whether amplitude increments of mid-frequency areas and slower speech rates were evident in Korean clear speech as they were in English clear speech. Subjects and Methods: To compare the acoustic characteristics of the two methods of speech production, the voices of 60 participants were recorded during conversational speech and then again during clear speech using a standardized sentence material. Results: The speech rate and longterm average speech spectrum (LTASS) were analyzed and compared. Speech rates for clear speech were slower than those for conversational speech. Increased amplitudes in the mid-frequency bands were evident for the LTASS of clear speech. Conclusions:The observed differences in the acoustic characteristics between the two types of speech production suggest that Korean clear speech can be an effective communication strategy to improve speech intelligibility.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.27-39
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• 2017

This paper deals with how speech rate in Korean is affected by the sociolinguistic factors such as region, gender and generation. Speech rate was quantified as articulation rate (excluding physical pauses) and speaking rate (including physical pauses), both expressed as the number of syllables per second (sps). Other acoustic measures such as pause frequency and duration were also examined. Four hundred twelve subjects were chosen from Korean Standard Speech Database considering their age, gender and region. The result shows that generation has a significant effect on both speaking rate and articulation rate. Younger speakers produce their speech with significantly faster speaking rate and articulation rate than older speakers. Mean duration of total pause interval and the total number of pause of older speakers are also significantly different to those of younger speakers. Gender has a significant effect only on articulation rate, which means male speakers' speech rate is characterized by faster articulation rate, longer and more frequent pauses. Finally, region has no effect both on speaking and articulation rates.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.59-67
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• 2017

Regardless of their intention, listeners tend to assess speakers' personalities based on the sounds of the speech they hear. Assessment criteria, however, have not been fully investigated to indicate whether there is any relationship between the acoustic cue of produced speech sounds and perceived personality impression. If properly investigated, the potential relationship between these two will provide crucial insights on the aspects of human communications and further on human-computer interaction. Since human communications have distinctive characteristics of simultaneity and complexity, this investigation would be the identification of minimum essential factors among the sounds of speech and perceived personality impression. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to identify significant associations between the speech sounds and perceived personality impression of speaker by the listeners. Twenty eight subjects participated in the experiment and eight acoustic parameters were extracted by using Praat from the recorded sounds of the speech. The subjects also completed the Neo-five Factor Inventory test so that their personality traits could be measured. The results of the experiment show that four major factors(duration average, pitch difference value, pitch average and intensity average) play crucial roles in defining the significant relationship.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics C
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• v.35C no.7
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• pp.59-68
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• 1998

This paper is to develop an algorithm for the unlimited korean speech synthesis. We present the results controlled of prosodic factors with isolated words as aynthesis basis unit int he time domain. With a new pitch-synchronous and parametric speech synthesis mehtod in the time domain here we mainly present the results of controlled prosody factors such a spitch periods, energy envelops and durations and the evaluaton of synthetic speech qualities. In the case of synthesis, it is possible ot synthesize connected words by controlling of a continuous unified prosody that makes to improve the naturalities. In the results of experiment, it also has been to be improved uncontinuities of pitch and zeroing of energy in the junction parts of speech waveforms. Specially it has been to be possible to synthesize speeches with unlimitted durations and tones. So on it makes the noisiness and the clearness better by improving the degradation effects from the phase distortion due to the discontinuities in the waveform connection parts.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.55-64
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• 2023

This study investigated the factors influencing the perceptions that military officers can harbor regarding persons who stutter in terms of how well they can adapt to the army. In total, 89 participants were randomly assigned to each of the three different conditions ("fluent speech"=23, "mildly stuttered speech"=34, and "severely stuttered speech"=32). Subsequently, the participants were asked to listen and rate each sample in terms of "the speaker's communicative functioning (i.e., speech fluency, intelligibility, naturalness, speech rate), personal traits (i.e., likeability, anxiety level, intellectual level, and sociability), and the perceived degree of the adaptability to the army." The results showed that significant differences were found between "fluent speech" and "severely stuttered speech" in the perceived communicative functionings and the perceived adaptability to the army. Moreover, there were significant differences in the same variables between "mildly stuttered speech" and "severely stuttered speech." However, there were no significant differences between "mildly stuttered speech" and "fluent speech." Following the conducting of the Pearson correlation test, strong correlations were also found between the perceived communicative functionings, in particular "speech fluency," and the perceived adaptability to the army. Those results can be employed to argue that the communicative functionings can serve as factors which influence the perceptions of persons who stutter in terms of how well they can adapt to the army. Further discussion has taken place regarding the relationship between the perceived communicative functionings and the perceived adaptability to the army.