Effects on Gender and Age Variations of Korean Fricatives

This study explores the effects of gender and age on the spectral properties of Korean fricatives produced by speakers of the Daegu dialect by employing the spectral moments analysis. Findings indicated that the Daegu fricatives differed in center of gravity, variance, and skewness depending on gender and age, but for kurtosis, only a weak main effect was obtained for age. The study results implied that these spectral parameters are used to distinguish between different groups in terms of a speaker s gender and age. Of particular interest was that the female, young-adult speakers’ fricatives showed distinctive acoustic features, specifically that their spectra had a more fronted position, a narrow diffuseness of energy distribution, a concentration of energy towards higher frequencies, and clearer peaks compared to the other groups. It was suggested that these peculiar spectral properties that appeared in the female, young-adult group could be explained as social-indexical markers that represent their gender identify and their distinctive socio-cultural group and not explained solely as the result of physiology.