Dialect and Gender Variations in the Place and Manner of Articulation of the Korean Fricatives

Authors: Kyung-Im Han

Abstract:

This study examines dialect and gender variations in the place and manner of articulation between the two Korean fricatives, /s/ and /s’/, as produced by speakers of the Daegu and Jeju dialects. The acoustic parameters of center of gravity and skewness for the place of articulation, and the rise time and the amplitude rise slope for the manner of articulation were measured. The study results revealed a gender effect, but no dialect effect, for the center of gravity and the skewness. No main effect for either the gender or dialect was found for the rise time and the amplitude rise slope. These findings indicated that, with regard to the place of articulation, Korean fricative sound differences are a gender distinction, not a dialectal one.

Keywords: Dialect, gender, Korean fricative, manner of articulation, place of articulation, spectral moments.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1315645

References:

[1] K. N. Stevens, Acoustic Phonetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
[2] H. Chen., and K. N. Stevens, “An Acoustical Study of the Fricative /s/ in the Speech of Individuals With Dysarthria,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 44, pp. 1300-1314, 2001.
[3] S. Behrens and S-E. Blumstein, “On the role of the amplitude of the fricative noise in the perception of place of articulation in voiceless fricative consonants,” Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 84, no. 3, pp. 861-867, Sept. 1988.
[4] K. Forrest, G. Weismer, P. Milenkovic, and R. N. Dougall, “Statistical analysis of word-initial voiceless obstruents: preliminary data,” Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 84, pp. 115-123, 1988.
[5] A. Jongman, R. Wayland., and S. Wong, “Acoustic characteristics of English fricatives,” Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 108, pp. 1252-1263, 2000.
[6] L.H. Jesus, and C. H. Shadle, “A parametric study of the spectral characteristics of European Portuguese fricatives,” Journal of Phonetics, vol. 30, pp. 437-464, 2002.
[7] F. M. Dorman., J. L. Raphael., and D. Isenberg, “Acoustic cues for a fricative-affricate contrast in word final position,” Journal of Phonetics, vol. 8, pp. 397-405, 1980.
[8] B. H. Repp, A.M. Liberman, T. Eccardt, and D. Pesesky, “Perceptual integration of acoustic cues for stop, fricative, and affricate manner,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 4, pp. 621-637, 1978.
[9] W. A. Castleman, Integrated perceptual properties of the +/-continuant distinction in fricatives and affricates. MA thesis: University of Texas at Austin, 1997.
[10] P. Howell., and S. Rosen, “Production and perception of rise tie in the voiceless affricate/fricative distinction,” Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 73, pp. 976-984, 1983.
[11] S. Mitani, T. Kitama, and Y. Sato, “Voiceless affricate/fricative distinction by frication duration and amplitude rise slope,” Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 120, pp. 1600-1607, 2006.
[12] L. F. Weigelt, S. J. Sadoff, and J. D. Miller, “Plosive/fricative distinction: The voiceless case,” Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 87, pp. 2729-2737, 1990.
[13] L. J. Gerstman, “Noise duration as a cue for distinguishing among fricative, affricate, and stop consonants,” Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 28, p. 160, 1956.
[14] P. Boersma, and D. Weenink, “Praat Doing Phonetics by Computer,” version 5.3, http://praat.org. 2013.
[15] K. I. Han. “Speaker and Vowel Variability in Manner of Fricatives and Affricates in Korean,” Studies in British and American Language and Literature, vol. 124, pp. 155-175, 2017
[16] A. Simpson, “Phonetic Differences Between Male and Female Speech,” Language and Linguistic Compass, vol. 3, pp. 621-640, 1999.
[17] S. Strand, “Ethnic group, sex and economic disadvantage: Associations with pupils’ educational progress from Baseline to the end of Key Stage 1,” British Educational Research Journal, vol. 23, pp. 179-202, 1999.
[18] G. J. Docherty, “Speaker, Community, Identity: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Sociophonetic Variation,” 15th ICPhS Barcelona, pp. 11-16, 2003.
[19] C. Shadle, and S. J. Mair, “Quantifying spectral characteristics of fricatives,” Proc. Interspeech, Philadelphia, pp, 1521-1524, 1996.
[20] H.-K. Hwang, “Spectral Characteristics of Frication Noise in Korean Sibilants,” Journal of the Korean Society of Speech Sciences, vol. 49, 2004.
[21] S. Nittrouer, “Children Learn Separate Aspects of Speech Production at Different Rates: Evidence from Spectral Moments. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, vol. 97, pp. 520-530, 1995.
[22] Y.-J. Kang, S-W. Han, and A. Kochetov, and E-J. Kong, “Dialectal variation in affricate place of articulation in Korean,” The 168th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Indianapolis, 2014.