• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.13-21
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• 2011

The present study investigated the effects of two different sources of prosodic strengthening, i.e., boundary and accent, in the articulation of English high front vowels, /i/ and /I/. The vowels were investigated in vowel-initial ('eat' vs. 'it'), /h/-initial ('heat' vs. 'hit') and /p/-initial words ('Pete' vs. 'pit'), which were placed in varying prosodic conditions. Using Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA), the tongue dorsum positions in the x and y dimensions, the lip opening and the jaw opening (lowering) were measured. With respect to the boundary-induced strengthening, results showed that /i/ and /I/ in vowel-initial words ('eat' - 'it') are produced with a higher tongue position in the domain-intial than domain-medial positions. The fact that the vowels only in the vowel-initial condition showed the domain-intial strengthening (DIS) effect suggests that the DIS effect is localized mainly to the initial position (the locality account). As for the accent-induced strengthening, vowels were produced with a more fronted tongue position and larger lip opening in accented than unaccented positions. This suggests that the presence of accent increases overall sonority of the vowels in various prosodic contexts, and enhances primarily the frontedness of the front high vowels. Taken together, the results indicate that the two types of prosodic strengthening are articulatorily realized differently, supporting the view that they are encoded separately in the speech planning process. The present study also showed the distinction between the two high front vowels in the tongue position (in both the frontedness and the height dimensions), while the jaw did not seem to contribute to the distinction robustly, suggesting that the tongue contributes more in distinguishing the two vowels than the jaw does.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.721-727
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• 2013

This study sought to compare the difference of Phonation Threshold Pressure and Nasalance according to vowels. We tested 28 normal females(20~30age) who be in attendance at a school from May to August 2012. We measured Phonation Threshold Pressure through PAS(Phonatory aerodynamic system, model 6600, KAY electronics, Inc) that aero-mechanical instrument called. Phonation Threshold Pressure was measured by using the consonant /p/ and the three vowels /a, i, u/ and was analyzed the three times of Phonation the five times. Also We measured Nasalance through the Nasometer${\Pi}$(model 6450, KAY electronics, Inc). The vowel's phonation was recored by using the three vowels /a, i, u/. the nasalance score was measured via Nasometer. As a Result, Phonation Threshold Pressure according to three vowels show significantly difference. Also, Nasalance according to three vowels show significantly difference. Finally, Correlation coefficient of Phonation Threshold Pressure and Nasalance according to three vowels show positive relation ship. Therefore Phonation Threshold Pressure and Nasalance according to three vowels have closely relationship.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.81-98
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• 2007

This study aims to investigate whether shortened vowel duration conditioned by a following voiceless stop induces phonetic reduction of vowel space in English, and whether the reduction appears more in the height dimension than in the backness dimension (Lindblom, 1963; Flemming, 2005). Fifteen native speakers of American English read minimal pairs containing ten American English vowels in [bVd] and [bVt] syllables in a carrier phrase. All the subjects produced shorter vowels in the voiceless than in the voiced context. However, a reduction in vowel space and a raising of low vowels due to the shortened vowel duration were generally not found. To the contrary, the speakers tended to exhibit even more lowering of low vowels in the voiceless context, and vowel space was more commonly compressed in the backness dimension than in the height dimension. Many speakers, in particular, demonstrated fronting of the high back vowel [u] in the voiceless context. It was interpreted that due to a relatively large number of English vowels in the narrower low vowel space, the raising of low vowels may give rise to confusion in vowel contrasts, and therefore the degree of phonetic vowel reduction is restricted in that region. On the other hand, the high vowel region, being relatively spacious in English, allows a certain degree of phonetic vowel reduction in the F2 dimension. It is possible that heavy requirements for maintaining vowel contrasts may cause speakers to overachieve vowel target values, especially when faced with vowels which are difficult to distinguish due to shortened vowel duration, leading to an over-lowering of the low vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.99-107
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine the relative distances among English front vowels in a message produced by 47 Korean and American speakers in order to better instruct pronunciation skills of English vowels for Korean English learners. A Praat script was developed to collect the first and second formant values(F1 and F2) of eight words in each sound file which was recorded from an internet speech archive. Then, the Euclidean distances were measured between the three vowel pairs: [i-ɛ], [i-ɪ], and [ɛ-æ]. The first vowel pair [i-ɛ] was set as the reference from which the relative distances of the other two vowel pairs were measured in percent in order to compare the vowel sounds among speakers of different vocal tract lengths. Results show that F1 values of the front vowels produced by the Korean and American speakers increased from the high front vowel to the low front vowel wih differences among the groups. The Korean speakers generally produced the front vowels with smaller jaw openings than the American speakers did. Secondly, the relative distance of the high front vowel pair [i-ɪ] showed a significant difference between the Korean and American speakers while that of the low front vowel pair [ɛ-æ] showed a non-significant difference. Finally, the Korean speakers in the higher proficiency level produced front vowels with higher F1 values than those in the lower proficiency level. The author concluded that Korean speakers should produce the front high vowels distinctively by securing sufficient relative distance of the formant values. Further studies would be desirable to examine how strong the Korean speakers' English proficiency correlate with the relative distance of target words of comparable productions.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.201-210
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• 2002

This paper explores whether there is correlation between consonants' place and duration of adjacent vowels in English and Korean. The results showed that in English the vowels preceding alveolar stops were in general longer than the vowels before bilabial or velar stops. Consonants appeared to have their inherent length due to their place and to exhibit some compensatory effects on the duration of preceding vowels. This effect can be explained in a physiological term that the tongue tip is the organ which might be more agile in articulatory movement than the tongue body for the velars or the lower lip (and the jaw) for the bilabials is and the shorter production time of the alveolars caused the lengthening of the adjacent vowels. However, this physiological account did not hold in the case of Korean, which exhibited less consistent patterns across speakers for the consonants' place and the vowel duration. The segmental duration seemed to be timed quite consistently within a language but the pattern was not universal across languages.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.93-103
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• 2007

The aims of this study were to examine the acoustic features of Korean and Japanese vowels, and to determine whether new phones that do not have counterparts in Japanese or similar phones that have counterparts improve more from learning. This study consisted of three parts. In Experiment I, a speech production test was performed to observe the acoustic features of Korean and Japanese vowels. In Experiment II, the speech production of Korean vowels produced by Koreans, advanced Japanese learners of Korean, and beginning Japanese learners of Korean was investigated. In Experiment III, a speech perception study of Korean vowels produced by the two Japanese learner groups was conducted to observe the effect of learning on acquiring L2 phones. The conclusion drawn from the study was that the similar phones produced by Japanese show more similarity with those of Koreans than new phones in terms of F1 and F2, but Japanese learners of Korean displayed more improvement in new phones from learning.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.45-53
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• 2011

Flemming and Johnson (2007) claim that there is a fundamental distinction between the mid central vowel [ə] and the high central vowel [?] in that [ə] occurs in an unstressed word-final position while [?] appears elsewhere. Compared to English counterparts, Korean [ə] and [?] are full vowels and they have phonemic contrast. The purpose of this paper is to explore the acoustic quality of two English reduced vowels produced by Korean learners and native speakers of English in terms of their two formant frequencies. Sixteen Korean learners of English and six native speakers of English produced four types of English words and two types of Korean words with different phonological and morphological patterns. The results show that Korean learners of English produced the two reduced vowels of English and their Korean counterparts differently in Korean and English words.

• MALSORI
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• no.64
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• pp.53-76
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• 2007

This study investigates phonation types of Korean obstruents associated with the vowels immediately following singletons or geminates in intervocalic positions. F0, H1-H2, and spectral tilt were measured from the 20 ms segment at the onset of the vowels for the tokens of /paCa/ and /paCCa/, where Cs are of the same manner and place of articulation. The results showed a remarkable change in the values of F0, H1-H2, and spectral tilt as the preceding obstruents shifts from the lenis singletons to the lenis geminates, which suggests that the spectral characteristics of the vowels following the lenis geminates are not different from those of the vowels following fortis singletons or geminates. Significantly enough, this study adds data about the spectral characteristics of Korean phonation types.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.311-329
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• 2001

This paper wanted to test the reality of English schwa by phonetic and phonological methods. Phonetically it wanted to see acoustic evidence of the relationship between the full vowels and their reduced vowels in the unstressed positions. Phonologically it wanted to prove how systematic the schwa sound is by the constraint-based grammar. As a result, the schwa phenomenon in English was supported both phonetically and phonologically. In the phonetic analysis no relationship Was found in the distribution of the F1 and F2 of the full vowels and their reduced vowels in the unstressed syllables of the derived words. The reduced vowels tended to converge into a target of F1 516 and F2 1815. The view that the schwa sounds have a target was supported. On the phonological side the constraint-based tableau produced the successful output by using FAITH (V), (equation omitted)V, FAITH V[-BACK+HiC], V[-Low, -TNS]#, REDUCE V[-STR, -TNS] as constraints. No ranking was found. Any violation of the constraints ousted the candidates.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.7-17
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• 1998

The purpose of this preliminary study on Korean vowel duration was to find how different syllable types and kinds of plosives influence vowel duration. The vowel duration of the Front Mid and Low vowels (/$\varepsilon$/(에), /e/(어), /${\ae}$/(애), /a/(아)) was found to be longer than that of High and Back vowels (/i/(이), /i/(으), /u/(우), /o/(오)). Compared with single vowels (V), Vowels followed by a consonant (CV) were shortened by 79.3% and vowels between consonants (CVC) were shortened by 38.5%, respectively. These results suggest that the influence of consonants upon Korean vowel duration depend on syllble types and the manner or place of articulation.