• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.213-221
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• 2010

The number of North Korean refugees entering South Korea is continuously increasing. North Korean speakers show significant differences in vowel and consonant phonetics, length of vowels, and the rhythm and intonation of sentences. The object of this research was to examine the effectiveness of a speech intervention program for North Korean refugees using visual feedback through acoustical analysis for intonation. The subjects were three adults with no speech disabilities who had been in South Korea for less than five years. They had not received any prior treatment for inflection change. The program was set in a discourse situation and used Praat to evaluate intonation and provide visual feedback as demonstrating proper intonation changes through pitch contour. The results after intervention are as follows. First, intonation was significantly improved according to a 5-point subjective evaluation scale. Second, the pitch contour was similar to the contour of standard South Korean pronunciation. The subjects were very satisfied with this initial treatment and showed a high level of motivation. In subsequent study, the development of intervention and the comparison of interventions will be needed as well.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.51-57
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• 2018

In this paper, we studied about the extraction of the parameter and implementation of speechreading system to recognize the Korean 8 vowel. Face features are detected by amplifying, reducing the image value and making a comparison between the image value which is represented for various value in various color space. The eyes position, the nose position, the inner boundary of lip, the outer boundary of upper lip and the outer line of the tooth is found to the feature and using the analysis the area of inner lip, the hight and width of inner lip, the outer line length of the tooth rate about a inner mouth area and the distance between the nose and outer boundary of upper lip are used for the parameter. 2400 data are gathered and analyzed. Based on this analysis, the neural net is constructed and the recognition experiments are performed. In the experiment, 5 normal persons were sampled. The observational error between samples was corrected using normalization method. The experiment show very encouraging result about the usefulness of the parameter.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.125-131
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• 2012

The patients with incomplete glottic closure have an important feature decreasing the maximum phonation time (MPT) because airflow rate or air leakage is greater than people without voice disorders. Also they can appear a problem in the intensity regulation. This study analyzed MPT difference based on the comfortable intensity and louder intensity and the correlation between MPT and respiration volume of unilateral vocal fold palsy (UVFP) and sulcus vocalis (SV) group. The twenty with UVFP, the 21 with SV, the 21 normal subjects measured MPT in /a/ vowel prolongation task with comfortable intensity and louder intensity and compared analysis by measuring FVC, $FEV_1$, $FEV_1/FVC$ to analyze the correlation between MPT and respiration volume. First, a comparison of MPT according to the intensity between groups is that MPT of the normal group was statistically significant long compared to the patient group in comfortable intensity, but MPT between groups was not statistically significant difference in the louder intensity. Second, an analysis of the correlation between MPT and respiration volume is that this was statistically significant correlation between MPT in comfortable intensity and MPT in louder intensity. But this did not show statistically significant correlation between intensity and respiration volume. This study can be supported the preceding study results deduced that shorting MPT of the patient group compared to the normal group was originated in the problem of laryngeal valving mechanism at the level of vocal folds rather than a problem of respiratory function. Also at the phonation by varying the intensity, the result can deduce that in the case of patient group, the length of MPT had been improved by increasing the glottal closure ratio in the louder intensity. These results can support the theoretical basis that should be applied to the clinicians by varying the intensity at the voice evaluation and voice therapy for the patients with the glottis incompetence.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.40-45
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• 2015

Objectives:This study aims to investigate the correlation between the measurements of Praat as an acoustic evaluation and those of GRBAS and CAPE-V as perceptual rating tool respectively. Through this, it also tries to find out parameters to which attention should be paid when an evaluator, who is untrained in auditory-perceptual voice evaluation, conducts voice evaluation with objective tool. Materials and Methods:Voice samples of this study were 33 vocal polyp patients(23 males and 10 females) who visited our Department of Otorhinolaryngology. They sustained vowel voices of 'e' were recorded and acoustically analyzed. Results:As the results of correlation analysis between GRBAS and Praat measurements, G scale and R scale showed statistically significant correlation with Jitt, Shim and NHR. And it is found that B scale represented significant correlation with Jitt, S scale with Shim. As the results of analysis on correlation with CAPE-V and Praat measurements, OS scale and R scale showed statistically significant correlation with Jitt, Shim and NHR. B scale represented significant correlation with Jitt, S scale with Shim. Conclusion:Although, both GRBAS and CAPE-V were highly reliable, in comparison between CAPE-V and Pratt, more parameters that showed statistically significant correlation are observed, which implies that VAS has more potential to make detailed evaluation than ORD.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.1
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• pp.237-259
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• 1997

Cleft Palate speech appears to have hyper/hyponasality with velopharyngeal insufficiency and articulation disorders. Previous studies on Cleft Palate speech have shown that speech tends to have lower airflow and air pressure. To examine the aerodynamic characteristics of Cleft Palate speech, Aerophone II Voice function Analyzer was used. We measured sound pressure level, airflow, air pressure and glottal power. Three Cleft Palate adults and five normal adults participated in this experiment. The test words are composed of: (1) the sustained vowel /o/ (2) /CiCi/, where C is one of three different stop consonants in Korean (3) /bimi/. Subjects were asked to produce /bimi/ five times without opening their lips. All the data was statistically tested by t-test for Cleft Palate patients before operation groups and control groups and paired t-test for Cleft Palate patients before and after operation groups. The results were as follow: (1) Cleft Palate patients generally speak with incomplete oral closure and lower oral air pressure. As a result, the SPL of Cleft Palate before operation is 3 dB lower than control groups. (2) Airflow of Cleft Palate in phonation and articulation is lower than that of control groups. However, it increased after operation. Lung volume and mean airflow in phonation are significantly increased (p<0.05). (3) Although velopharyngeal function (velar opening rate) of Cleft Palate is poor in comparison with control groups, it was recovered after operation. In this event maximum flow rate and mean airflow rate are significantly increased (p<0.05). (4) Air pressure of Cleft Palate in speech is lower than that of control groups. In general, the air pressure of Cleft Palate increased after operation. In this event air pressure of glottalized consonant is significantly increased (p<0.04). (5) Glottal Power(mean power, mean efficient and mean resistant) of Cleft Palate patients is lower than that of control groups. But mean efficient and mean resistant of Cleft Palate patients increased significantly (p<0.05) after operation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2013

Background and Objectives:This study is to objectively compare and analyze the acoustic changes in the patients with total thyroidectomy before and after RI therapy. Subjects and Methods:For this study, a total of 50 patients with total thyroidectomy were participated as subjects. Voice samples were obtained at the time of post-operation (Post-OP), before high-dose radioactive iodine therapy (Pre-RIT), and after high-dose radioactive iodine therapy (Post-RIT). Acoustic analysis, the maximum phonation time and K-VHI (Korea-Voice handicap index) were used for subjective evaluation. Results:According to the comparison analysis of the three periods, mFo (Hz) was significantly reduced in all of the vowels /a/ and /i/ as the hormone was discontinued. This can be related to the reduction in vocal range. As thyroid hormone was discontinued, Shim (%) and APQ (%) values, which are the parameters related to the degree of aggressiveness, showed a significant increase in the middle vowel /a/. As thyroid hormone was discontinued, emotional index was significantly decreased in VHI (voice handicap index). Conclusion:These results can be assumed that thyroid hormone suspension is related to the increased changes in the vocal intensity, the increase in noise and the reduction in vocal range. Emotionally, these data can be assumed that the responsive factors of one's own voice disorders were significantly decreased in the patients with vocal handicap.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.9-16
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• 2020

Pronunciation recognition systems that use only video information and ignore voice information can be applied to various customized services. In this paper, we develop a system that applies a Bayesian classifier to distinguish Korean vowels via lip shapes in images. We extract feature vectors from the lip shapes of facial images and apply them to the designed machine learning model. Our experiments show that the system's recognition rate is 94% for the pronunciation of 'A', and the system's average recognition rate is approximately 84%, which is higher than that of the CNN tested for comparison. Our results show that our Bayesian classification method with feature values from lip region landmarks is efficient on a small training set. Therefore, it can be used for application development on limited hardware such as mobile devices.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.173-182
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• 2009

In this paper, we studied about the extraction of the parameter and implementation of speechreading system to recognize the Korean 8 vowel. Face features are detected by amplifying, reducing the image value and making a comparison between the image value which is represented for various value in various color space. The eyes position, the nose position, the inner boundary of lip, the outer boundary of upper lip and the outer line of the tooth is found to the feature and using the analysis the area of inner lip, the hight and width of inner lip, the outer line length of the tooth rate about a inner mouth area and the distance between the nose and outer boundary of upper lip are used for the parameter. 2400 data are gathered and analyzed. Based on this analysis, the neural net is constructed and the recognition experiments are performed. In the experiment, 5 normal persons were sampled. The observational error between samples was corrected using normalization method. The experiment show very encouraging result about the usefulness of the parameter.