• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.291-305
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• 2020

Purpose : The duration of speech segments reflects children's speech motor development. The purpose of this study was to determine whether segmental sound and word duration varies by age among preschool children. Methods : A total of 60 children aged 4~5 years participated in this study. Participants took the picture-naming test to produce single-word speech data. The duration of the consonant at the initial position of the word and the final position of the word, the voice onset time of plosive, the duration of the vowel following the initial consonant, and the duration of the word were measured. Results : As age increased, the duration of the initial consonant, the duration of the word, and the voice onset time decreased significantly. The main effects of age, manner of articulation, and place of articulation on the duration of the initial consonant were significant. The duration of consonants in the nasal sound and plosives and the duration of bilabial and alveolar sound differed significantly between groups. The main effects of age and vocal type on voice onset time were significant. The main effect of age on the duration of the consonant in the final position of word and on the duration of the vowel were not statistically significant. Conclusion : The results of this study showed that the duration of segmental sound and the word were associated with speech development between 4 and 5 years old. Accordingly, duration of the segmental sound and the word may serve as an acoustic cue as they reflect speech development and speech motor control maturity.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.19-25
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• 2017

The current study focused on the production of geminate nasal consonants across different word boundary types in Korean as a function of speech style to investigate whether temporal properties are preserved across varying speaking rates. Assimilated geminates in Korean, known as true geminates, are produced with distinctively longer consonant duration compared to singletons. Despite a large body of literature for geminates across different languages, geminates in Korean have been relatively less investigated with respect to the durational patterns in relative terms and temporal variabilities. In this study, singletons, word-internal geminates and word-boundary (fake) geminates produced by ten native Seoul Korean speakers were compared in terms of absolute consonant closure duration, preceding vowel duration, the relative ratios (consonant-to-preceding vowel duration) as well as the temporal variabilities in speech production. The results showed that word-internal geminates were produced with longer consonant duration and greater temporal variabilities than singletons and word-boundary geminates in absolute duration, indicating relatively greater flexibility in timing. However, only word-internal geminates were produced with distinctively longer consonant duration with significantly lower variability in relative duration regardless of speech styles. The results provide some insight into the representation of temporal information in the production of Korean geminate consonants.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1994.06c
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• pp.323-327
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• 1994

There have been three contrastive claims over the classification of Korean. To answer the classification question, timing variables which would determine the durations of syllable, word and foot were investigated with various words either in isolation or in sentence contexts using Soundcoup/16 on Macintosh P.C., and a total of 284 utterances, obtained from six Korean speakers, were used. It was found 1) that the durational pattern for words tended to maintain in utterances, regardless of position , subjects and dialects 2) that the syllable duration was determined both by the types of phoneme and by the number of phonemes, the word duration both by the syllable complexity and by the number of syllables, and the foot duration by the word complexity, 3) that there was a constractive relationship between foot length in syllables and foot duration and 4) that the foot duration varied generally with word complexity if the same word did not occur both in the first foot and in the second foot. On the basis of these, it was concluded that Korean is a word timed language where, all else being equal, including tempo, emphasis, etc., the inherent durational pattern for words tends to maintain in utterances. The main difference between stress timing, syllable timing and word timing were also discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2011

The purposes of this study are (1) to investigate the correlation between English word-final stop and the duration of vowels before word-final stop and (2) to suggest a way to detect pronunciation errors and teach the pronunciation of English word-final stops. For these purposes, 18 Korean speakers' production was recorded and analysed using Speech Analyzer and their production was compared with that of native English speakers. In addition, two native English speakers evaluated the subjects' pronunciation. The major findings are the voicing dependent effect of the English vowels produced by native Korean speakers is lower than that of native English speakers; Korean speakers release English word-final stops less than native English speakers; and the pronunciation of English word-final stops and the duration of adjacent vowels are closely related in that the pronunciation score of final stops and the ratio of vowels between the vowels before voiced stops and voiceless stops are correlated. In addition, this study concludes with pedagogical suggestions that may be useful for English pronunciation teaching.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.115-128
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• 2007

The purposes of this paper were to develop an automatic script to collect such acoustic parameters as duration, intensity, pitch and the first two formant values of English words produced by two native Canadian speakers either alone or in a two-word phrase at a normal speed and to compare those values by the position in the phrases. A Praat script was proposed to obtain the comparable parameters at evenly divided time point of the target word. Results showed that the total duration of the word in the phrase was shorter than that of the word produced alone. That was attributed to the pronunciation style of the native speakers generally placing the primary word stress in the first word position. Also, the reduction ratio of the male speaker depended on the word position in the phrase while the female speaker didn't. Moreover, there were different contours of intensity and pitch by the position of the target word in the phrase while almost the same formant patterns were observed. Further studies would be desirable to examine those parameters of the words in the authentic speech materials.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.69-75
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• 2011

This paper investigates phrase positional effects on the timing of F0 (pitch) peaks in Tokyo Japanese disyllabic words with varying accent type (HL or LH) and phrase position (final or non final). The F0 peak timing was normalized by the total word duration ('normalized H timing'). The normalized H timing was significantly affected by accent type and phrase position. The H timing was later in the LH accent type than in the HL accent type, and in non final positions than in final positions. In addition, to examine the validity of the quantitative results, different models of phrase position effects were compared by measuring H timing in two approaches: normalization versus relative distance measures. For the normalization measures, the H timing was measured as the time of the F0 peak divided by the total word duration or by the duration of the tone bearing syllable. For the relative distance measures, the H timing was measured as the distance in milliseconds from the end of the word or from the end of the associated syllable. The best model was the normalization by the total word duration, rather than by the duration of the tone bearing syllable. This means that phrase positional effects on the timing of F0 peaks in Japanese disyllabic words are best modeled in terms of proportion of the total word duration.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difference of vowel duration due to the voicing of word-final consonants in English and its relation to the types of word-final consonants (stops vs. fricatives), (partial) devoicing, and stop releasing. Addtionally, this study attempts to interpret the findings from the functional view that the vowels before voiced consonants are produced with a longer duration in order to enhance the salience of the voicing of word-final consonants. This study conducted a recording experiment with English native speakers, and measured the vowel duration, the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants and the release of word-final stops. First, the results showed that the ratio of the duration difference was not influenced by the types of word-final consonants. Second, it was revealed that the higher the degree of (partial) devoicing of word-final voiced consonants, the longer vowel duration before word-final voiced consonants, which was compatible with the prediction based on the functional view. Lastly, the ratio of the duration difference was greater when the word-final stops were uttered with the release compared to when uttered without the release, which was not consistent with the functional view. These results suggest that it is not sufficient enough to explain the voicing effect by its function of distinguishing the voicing of word-final consonants.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.89-105
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• 2006

This study examines the phonetic realizations of English word stress to identify the influence of experiment method on experiment results. Stimuli uttered by native and Korean ESL beginners in authentic conversations are extracted to be shuffled according to their positions in utterances and information structure. Results indicate that the acoustic characteristics of English word stress are realized depending on its position in utterances. The native speakers correlate the stressed syllables in shorter duration with higher pitch and stronger intensity at sentence-final positions unlike the previous experiments and the traditional definition that stressed syllables are uttered in longer duration with higher pitch and stronger intensity; at sentence-medial positions, the native speakers correlate the stressed syllables in longer duration with higher pitch and no regularity in intensity or in shorter duration with lower pitch and intensity depending on their conversational intention. Korean ESL beginners correlate the stressed syllables in shorter duration regardless of positions in sentences with no regularity in pitch and intensity. This study, thus, shows that a different experiment method may result in different results on the phonetic realizations of English word stress.

• MALSORI
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• no.35_36
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• pp.13-24
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• 1998

This study aims at examining the relationship between tonal events and their related vowel and syllable duration in Korean. Two things were investigated: one is to see if there is a hierarchical relationship in prosodic unit-final-lengthening and the other is to see if accentual phrase initial high tone syllable gets lengthened. Generally, higher prosodic units show larger degree of lengthening of the final vowel and also final syllable duration than the lower ones except for accentual phrase: Mean duration of utterance-final or intonational-phrase-final syllable(and its vowels) was longer than that of accentual-phrase-final or word-final syllable(and its vowels). However, mean duration of accentual phrase final syllable was shorter than that of word final syllable. Mean vowel duration of accentual phrase initial high tone syllable was shorter than that of any other prosodic unit. Its mean syllable duration, however, was longer than that of accentual-phrase-final or word-final syllable, indicating that strong consonants(fortis and aspirated) frequently appear in the accentual phrase initial position and this position is a prosodically strong position showing longer duration as well as high tone.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2008

Language transfer means that the speaker's first language or previously acquired language influences on the production of the target language. This study aims at examining if there is native language influence on the production of English intonation by Korean speakers. The pitch accent patterns and the values of duration, F0, and intensity of the stressed vowel of the word with emphatic accent in the sentence produced by Korean speakers are compared to those of American English speakers. The results show that when the word receives emphatic accent in the sentence, American English speakers put H* accent on the stressed syllable of the word, but Korean speakers mostly assign high pitch on the last syllable of the word and have LH tonal pattern despite the fact that primary stress does not come on the last syllable within a word. In addition, comparison of the values of duration, F0, and intensity of the stressed vowel of the word with emphatic accent to those of the word with unmarked neutral accent shows that Korean speakers do not realize the intonation of the accented word appropriately because the values decrease even though the word has emphatic accent. This study finds out that there are differences in the production of English intonation of the word with emphatic accent between native speakers of English and Korean speakers, and that there is negative transfer of Korean intonation pattern to the production of English intonation by Korean speakers.