• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제3권4호
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• pp.71-81
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• 2011

This paper investigated how prosodic position and word type affect the phonetic structure of Korean coronal stops. Initial segments of prosodic domains were known to be more strongly articulated and longer relative to prosodic domain-medial segments. However, there are few studies examining whether the properties of prosodic domain-initial segments are affected by the information content of words (real vs. nonsense words). In addition, since the scope of domain-initial effect was known to be local to the initial consonant and the effects on the following vowel have been found to be limited, it is thus worth examining whether the prosodic domain-initial effect extends into the vowel after the initial consonant in a systematic way across different prosodic domains. The acoustic properties of Korean coronal stops (lenis /t/, aspirated /$t^h$/, and tense /t'/) were compared across Intonational Phrase, Phonological Phrase and Word-initial positions both in real and nonsense words. The durational intervals such as VOT and CV duration were cumulatively lengthened for /t/ and /$t^h$/ in the higher prosodic domain-initial positions. However, tense stop /t'/ did not show any variation as a function of prosodic position and word type. The domain-initial lenis stop showed significantly longer duration in nonsense words than in real words. But the prosodic domain-initial effect was not found in the properties of F0 and [H1-H2] of the vowel after initial stops. The present study provided evidence that speakers tend to enhance speech clarity when there is less contextual information as in prosodic domain-initial position and in nonsense words.

• 대한후두음성언어의학회지
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.12-17
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• 1997

Measuring phonatory stability using MDVP(Multi-dimensional voice program, Kay Elemetrics Corp., NJ, USA) are becoming popular in many Korean clinics and laboratories, yet questions about standardization and reference values have remained. The purpose of present study was to examine the effects of frequency and intensity variation on the results of acoustic analysis related to phonatory stability. Twenty young adults(ten females and ten males) were asked to sustain vowel /a/ for more than 3 seconds under 9 different pitch and loudness conditions. Using MDVP, nine voice samples were analyzed, and jitter percent, fundamental frequency variation, shimmer percent, peak amplitude variation, noise to harmonic ratio, amplitude tremor intensity index, and degree of subharmonics were compared. The results showed that intensity changes can significantly affect various phonatory stability measures, and the lowest perturbation values can be obtained from slightly louder(10dB) phonatory condition than comfortable level phonation.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

The current study investigated whether Korean learners' English-learning environments, especially target English accent (General American English (GAE) vs. Southern British English (SBE)) and English-language experience affected their production of English vowels. Thirty six EFL learners, 27 ESL-US learners, and 33 ESL-UK learners produced 8 English vowels with a bVt frame (beat, bit, bet, bat, bought, bot, boat, boot). The learners' productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of F1 and F2 frequencies. The overall results revealed that the learners' target accent had an effect on their production of some English vowels. The EFL and ESL-US learners' (especially, female learners') production of bought, bot, boat, and boot, which show characteristic differences between the GAE and SBE accents, was closer to that of the native American English (AE) speakers than the native British English (BE) speakers. In contrast, the ESL-UK learners' production of bought and bot demonstrated the opposite pattern. Thus, the impact of target accent was not demonstrated across the board. The effect of the learners' different English-language experience was also rather limited. This was because the EFL learners' production was not much different from the ESL-US learners' production, in spite of the ESL-US learners' residence in the US for more than 9 years. Furthermore, the Korean learners, irrespective of their different English-language experience, tended to produce bit and bat with lower F1 than the native AE and BE speakers, thus resulting in bit and bat to be produced similarly to beat and bet, respectively. This demonstrates the learners' persistent L1 effects on their English vowel production despite the learners' residence in the English speaking countries or their high English proficiency.

• 인터넷정보학회논문지
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• 제6권6호
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• pp.179-186
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• 2005

음성학에서 음성이 가지고 있는 주파수 특성을 이용하여 스펙트럼을 추출할 수 있고 이를 이용하여 음성을 분석할 수 있다. 그러나 음성의 스펙트럼은 단모음의 경우 어느 정도 일정한 형태를 유지하지만 음절. 단어 등과 같이 자음과 모음이 서로 결합되었을 때는 상당한 변화가 발생된다. 이는 음소단위 음성인식에 있어서 가장 큰 장애가 되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 주파수 영역과 청각적 인상을 고려한 멜 대역 그리고 멜 켑스트럼을 이용하여 각 자음과 모음이 가지고 있는 스펙트럼을 분석하고, 청각적 특성을 반영한 음성의 변화를 체계화하여 음성을 음소단위로 분할할 수 있는 기반을 제공한다.

• 음성과학
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.53-70
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• 2005

A Vowel of speech signals are multicomponent signals composed of AM-FM components whose instantaneous frequency and instantaneous amplitude are time-varying. The changes of emotion states cause the variation of the instantaneous frequencies and the instantaneous amplitudes of AM-FM components. Therefore, it is important to estimate exactly the instantaneous frequencies and the instantaneous amplitudes of AM-FM components for the extraction of key information representing emotion states and changes in speech signals. In tills paper, firstly a method decomposing speech signals into AM - FM components is addressed. Secondly, the fundamental frequency of vowel sound is estimated by the simple method based on the spectrogram. The estimate of the fundamental frequency is used for decomposing speech signals into AM-FM components. Thirdly, an estimation method is suggested for separation of the instantaneous frequencies and the instantaneous amplitudes of the decomposed AM - FM components, based on Hilbert transform and the demodulation property of the extended Fourier transform. The estimates of the instantaneous frequencies and the instantaneous amplitudes can be used for modification of the spectral distribution and smooth connection of two words in the speech synthesis systems based on a corpus.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.31-37
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• 2018

Pitch trajectories reflect a continuous variation of vocal fold movements over time. This study examined the pitch trajectories of English vowels produced by 139 American English speakers, statistically analyzing their trajectories using the Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs). First, Praat was used to read the sound data of Hillenbrand et al. (1995). A pitch analysis script was then prepared, and six pitch values at the corresponding time points within each vowel segment were collected and checked. The results showed that the group of men produced the lowest pitch trajectories, followed by the groups of women, boys, then girls. The density line showed a bimodal distribution. The pitch values at the six corresponding time points formed a single dip, which changed gradually across the vowel segment from 204 to 193 to 196 Hz. The normality tests performed on the pitch data rejected the null hypothesis. Nonparametric tests were therefore conducted to discover the significant differences in the values among the four groups. The GAMMs, which analyzed all the pitch data, produced significant results among the pitch values at the six corresponding time points but not between the two groups of boys and girls. The GAMMs also revealed that the two groups were significantly different only at the first and second time points. Accordingly, the methodology of this study and its findings may be applicable to future studies comparing curvilinear data sets elicited by experimental conditions.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제20권8호
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• pp.24-30
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• 2001

본 논문에서는 발음표기가 주어진 상황에서 음성 신호의 자동 음소 분할에 관한 것이며 음소의 경계를 음소 음향학적인 변화특성에 따라 3가지 형태로 분류하여 각각에 적합한 분할 알고리즘을 개발하였다. 형태 1은 묵음·유성음·무성음간의 분할이며 히스토그램분석으로 구한 문턱 값으로 초기 분할 후, 웨이블릿 계수의 SVF (Spectral Variation Function)를 이용하여 분할하였다. 형태 2는 연속적인 모음의 분할이며 각 모음변화특성을 템플릿으로 구성하여 분할에 활용하였다. 형태 3은 모음과 유성자음 혹은 유성화 자음의 분할이며 특성주파수대역의 진폭변화를 이용하여 후보구간을 정한 후, 캡스트럼 계수의 SVF를 이용하여 최종적인 분할을 수행하였다. 본 실험에서는 분할 성능을 테스트하기 위하여 한국어 PBWSpeech DB에서 342개의 단어를 자동으로 분할한 후, 수작업으로 분할한 결과와 비교하였다. 전체적인 자동 분할 성능은 20 msec내에서 81.5%의 분할성능을 보였다.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.19-28
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to increase the current understanding of the acoustic characteristics of voices with advancing age. The relationship between age-related changes in body physiology and certain acoustic characteristics of voice was studied in a sample of 80 men representing four chronological age groupings (20-29, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79) who were all of good physical condition. Each subject was asked to phonate the vowel /a/, /i/, and /u/ for as long as possible at comfortable frequency and intensity level and read the sentence. A promising voice analysis program (Multi-Dimensional Voice $Program^{TM}$) was used to measure the fundamental frequency ($f_0$), jitter, shimmer, $f_0$ variation, peak-amplitude variation, smoothed pitch perturbation quotient, smoothed amplitude perturbation quotient, soft phonation index, $f_0$-tremor intensity index, amplitude tremor intensity index, and noise-to-harmonics ratio from the samples.

• 음성과학
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• 제11권3호
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• pp.23-36
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• 2004

Many languages show reverse durational variation between preceding vowel and following voiced/voiceless (lax/tense) consonants. This study investigated the likely effects of phoneme type (tense vs. lax) on the timing structure (duration of syllable, word, phrase and sentence) of Korean. Three rates of speech (fast, normal, slow) applied to stimuli with the target word /a-Ca/ where /C/ is one of /p, p', $p^h$/. The type (tense/lax) of /C/ caused marked inverse durational variations in the two syllables /a/ and /Ca/ and highly different durational ratios between them. Words with /p', $p^h$/ were significantly longer than that with /p/, which contrasts with many other languages where such pairs of words have a similar duration. The differentials between words remained up to the phrase and sentence level, but in general the higher linguistic units did not statistically differ within each level. Thus, the phrase is suggested as a compensatory unit of phoneme type effects in Korean. Different rates did not affect the general tendency. Distribution of time variations (from normal to fast and slow) to each syllable (/a/ and /Ca/) was also observed.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제38호
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• pp.113-124
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• 1999

It is well known that Japanese prosodic structure assumes mora below the syllable tier. Syllables with V or CV structure are counted as having one morn whereas those with coda consonants /-pp, -tt, -kk, -ss, -N/ or long vowels are counted as having two morns in Japanese. This study measured the acoustic duration of these special moras ('tokusyuhaku') produced by Tokyo dialect speakers to see if they are isochronic with V or CV. It also examined the production of Korean(Seoul/Kyungsang dialect) and Chinese native speakers loaming Japanese as a second language to examine how the learners' first language influence their second language. Finally, it examined how speakers of the Akita dialect, which is blown as a syllabeme dialect in Japanese, produced them. The results showed that intra-speaker variation as well as inter-speaker variation was observed in the production by Akita dialect speakers. Production of native speakers of Chinese and Kyungsang dialect of Korean -- which have vowel length contrast in their phonological systems -- showed a similar result to Tokyo dialect speakers, which implies the influence of the learners' first language on the acquisition of the second language.