Kanae Nishi | Father Flanagan's Boys' Home (original) (raw)

Papers by Kanae Nishi

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 2008

trained Japanese listeners to perceive nine American English monophthongs and showed that a proto... more trained Japanese listeners to perceive nine American English monophthongs and showed that a protocol using all nine vowels (fullset) produced better results than the one using only the three more difficult vowels (subset). The present study extended the target population to Koreans and examined whether protocols combining the two stimulus sets would provide more effective training.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2004

Current theories of cross-language speech perception claim that patterns of perceptual assimilati... more Current theories of cross-language speech perception claim that patterns of perceptual assimilation of non-native segments to native categories predict relative difficulties in learning to perceive ͑and produce͒ non-native phones. Cross-language spectral similarity of North German ͑NG͒ and American English ͑AE͒ vowels produced in isolated hVC͑a͒ ͑di͒syllables ͑study 1͒ and in hVC syllables embedded in a short sentence ͑study 2͒ was determined by discriminant analyses, to examine the extent to which acoustic similarity was predictive of perceptual similarity patterns. The perceptual assimilation of NG vowels to native AE vowel categories by AE listeners with no German language experience was then assessed directly. Both studies showed that acoustic similarity of AE and NG vowels did not always predict perceptual similarity, especially for ''new'' NG front rounded vowels and for ''similar'' NG front and back mid and mid-low vowels. Both acoustic and perceptual similarity of NG and AE vowels varied as a function of the prosodic context, although vowel duration differences did not affect perceptual assimilation patterns. When duration and spectral similarity were in conflict, AE listeners assimilated vowels on the basis of spectral similarity in both prosodic contexts.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2005

The ability to identify the vowel sounds of a language reliably is dependent on the ability to di... more The ability to identify the vowel sounds of a language reliably is dependent on the ability to discriminate between vowels at a more sensory level. This study examined how the complexity of the vowel systems of three native languages (L1) influenced listeners perception of American English (AE) vowels. AE has a fairly complex vowel system with 11 monophthongs. In contrast, Japanese has only 5 spectrally different vowels, while Swedish has 9 and Danish has 12. Six listeners, with exposure of less than 4 months in English speaking environments, participated from each L1. Their performance in two tasks was compared to 6 AE listeners. As expected, there were large differences in a linguistic identification task using 4 confusable AE low vowels. Japanese listeners performed quite poorly compared to listeners with more complex L1 vowel systems. Thresholds for formantdiscrimination for the 3 groups were very similar to those of native AE listeners. Thus it appears that sensory abilities for discriminating vowels are only slightly affected by native vowel systems, and that vowel confusions occur at a more central, linguistic level.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2010

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2005

ABSTRACT Perception training of phonemes by second language (L2) learners has been studied primar... more ABSTRACT Perception training of phonemes by second language (L2) learners has been studied primarily using consonant contrasts, where the number of contrasting sounds rarely exceeds five. In order to investigate the effects of stimulus sets, this training study used two conditions: 9 American English vowels covering the entire vowel space (9V), and 3 difficult vowels for problem-focused training (3V). Native speakers of Japanese were trained for nine days. To assess changes in performance due to training, a battery of perception and production tests were given pre- and post-training, as well as 3 months following training. The 9V trainees improved vowel perception on all vowels after training, on average by 23%. Their performance at the 3-month test was slightly worse than the posttest, but still better than the pretest. Transfer of training effect to stimuli spoken by new speakers was observed. Strong response bias observed in the pretest disappeared after the training. The preliminary results of the 3V trainees showed substantial improvement only on the trained vowels. The implications of this research for improved training of L2 learners to understand speech will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH-NIDCD DC-006313 & DC-02229.]

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2001

This study investigated the extent to which adult Japanese listeners' perceived phonetic similari... more This study investigated the extent to which adult Japanese listeners' perceived phonetic similarity of American English ͑AE͒ and Japanese ͑J͒ vowels varied with consonantal context. Four AE speakers produced multiple instances of the 11 AE vowels in six syllabic contexts /b-b, b-p, d-d, d-t, g-g, g-k/ embedded in a short carrier sentence. Twenty-four native speakers of Japanese were asked to categorize each vowel utterance as most similar to one of 18 Japanese categories ͓five one-mora vowels, five two-mora vowels, plus/ei, ou/ and one-mora and two-mora vowels in palatalized consonant CV syllables, C j a͑a͒, C j u͑u͒, C j o͑o͔͒. They then rated the ''category goodness'' of the AE vowel to the selected Japanese category on a seven-point scale. None of the 11 AE vowels was assimilated unanimously to a single J response category in all context/speaker conditions; consistency in selecting a single response category ranged from 77% for /e(/ to only 32% for /,/. Median ratings of category goodness for modal response categories were somewhat restricted overall, ranging from 5 to 3. Results indicated that temporal assimilation patterns ͑judged similarity to one-mora versus two-mora Japanese categories͒ differed as a function of the voicing of the final consonant, especially for the AE vowels, /i, u, (, }, #, */. Patterns of spectral assimilation ͑judged similarity to the five J vowel qualities͒ of /(, }, ,, #/ also varied systematically with consonantal context and speakers. On the basis of these results, it was predicted that relative difficulty in the identification and discrimination of AE vowels by Japanese speakers would vary significantly as a function of the contexts in which they were produced and presented.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2008

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1998

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2003

This study explored acoustic similarities/differences between Japanese (J) and American English (... more This study explored acoustic similarities/differences between Japanese (J) and American English (AE) vowels produced by native J speakers and compared production patterns to their perceptual assimilation of AE vowels [Strange et al., J. Phonetics 26, 311-344 (1998)]. Eight male native J speakers who had served as listeners in Strange et al. produced 18 Japanese (J) vowels (5 long-short pairs, 2 double vowels, and 3 long-short palatalized pairs) and 11 American English (AE) vowels in /hVbopena/ disyllables embedded in a carrier sentence. Acoustical parameters included formant frequencies at syllable midpoint (F1/F2/F3), formant change from 25% to 75% points in syllable (formant change), and vocalic duration. Results of linear discriminant analyses showed rather poor acoustic differentiation of J vowel categories when F1/F2/F3 served as input variables (60% correct classification), which greatly improved when duration and formant change were added. In contrast, correct classification of J speakers' AE vowels using F1/F2/F3 was very poor (66%) and did not improve much when duration and dynamic information were added. J speakers used duration to differentiate long/short AE vowel contrasts except for mid-to-low back vowels; these vowels were perceptually assimilated to a single Japanese vowel, and are very difficult for Japanese listeners to identify.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2007

Cross-language perception studies report influences of speech style and consonantal context on pe... more Cross-language perception studies report influences of speech style and consonantal context on perceived similarity and discrimination of non-native vowels by inexperienced and experienced listeners. Detailed acoustic comparisons of distributions of vowels produced by native speakers of North German ͑NG͒, Parisian French ͑PF͒ and New York English ͑AE͒ in citation ͑di͒syllables and in sentences ͑surrounded by labial and alveolar stops͒ are reported here. Results of within-and cross-language discriminant analyses reveal striking dissimilarities across languages in the spectral/ temporal variation of coarticulated vowels. As expected, vocalic duration was most important in differentiating NG vowels; it did not contribute to PF vowel classification. Spectrally, NG long vowels showed little coarticulatory change, but back/low short vowels were fronted/raised in alveolar context. PF vowels showed greater coarticulatory effects overall; back and front rounded vowels were fronted, low and mid-low vowels were raised in both sentence contexts. AE mid to high back vowels were extremely fronted in alveolar contexts, with little change in mid-low and low long vowels. Cross-language discriminant analyses revealed varying patterns of spectral ͑dis͒similarity across speech styles and consonantal contexts that could, in part, account for AE listeners' perception of German and French front rounded vowels, and "similar" mid-high to mid-low vowels.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1997

Acoustic comparison of the effects of coarticulation on the production of Japanese and American E... more Acoustic comparison of the effects of coarticulation on the production of Japanese and American English vowels. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102, 3134 (1997)]. James J. Jenkins, Winifred Strange, Kanae ...

search has documented large differences in the phonetic realization of American English (AE) vowe... more search has documented large differences in the phonetic realization of American English (AE) vowels as a function of phonetic context and prosodic context Strange et al., submitted). Less research has been published on the allophonic and prosodic variation of Japanese (J) vowels. Thus, the goal of the present study was to compare the allophonic and prosodic variation in spectral and temporal structure of J and AE vowels, using acoustical analysis of corpora in which the phonetic and prosodic context was varied systematically. To the extent that the type and amount of phonetic variation differs across the two languages, we would expect that cross-language perceptual similarity might also vary with contextual variables.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1998

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 2008

trained Japanese listeners to perceive nine American English monophthongs and showed that a proto... more trained Japanese listeners to perceive nine American English monophthongs and showed that a protocol using all nine vowels (fullset) produced better results than the one using only the three more difficult vowels (subset). The present study extended the target population to Koreans and examined whether protocols combining the two stimulus sets would provide more effective training.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2004

Current theories of cross-language speech perception claim that patterns of perceptual assimilati... more Current theories of cross-language speech perception claim that patterns of perceptual assimilation of non-native segments to native categories predict relative difficulties in learning to perceive ͑and produce͒ non-native phones. Cross-language spectral similarity of North German ͑NG͒ and American English ͑AE͒ vowels produced in isolated hVC͑a͒ ͑di͒syllables ͑study 1͒ and in hVC syllables embedded in a short sentence ͑study 2͒ was determined by discriminant analyses, to examine the extent to which acoustic similarity was predictive of perceptual similarity patterns. The perceptual assimilation of NG vowels to native AE vowel categories by AE listeners with no German language experience was then assessed directly. Both studies showed that acoustic similarity of AE and NG vowels did not always predict perceptual similarity, especially for ''new'' NG front rounded vowels and for ''similar'' NG front and back mid and mid-low vowels. Both acoustic and perceptual similarity of NG and AE vowels varied as a function of the prosodic context, although vowel duration differences did not affect perceptual assimilation patterns. When duration and spectral similarity were in conflict, AE listeners assimilated vowels on the basis of spectral similarity in both prosodic contexts.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2005

The ability to identify the vowel sounds of a language reliably is dependent on the ability to di... more The ability to identify the vowel sounds of a language reliably is dependent on the ability to discriminate between vowels at a more sensory level. This study examined how the complexity of the vowel systems of three native languages (L1) influenced listeners perception of American English (AE) vowels. AE has a fairly complex vowel system with 11 monophthongs. In contrast, Japanese has only 5 spectrally different vowels, while Swedish has 9 and Danish has 12. Six listeners, with exposure of less than 4 months in English speaking environments, participated from each L1. Their performance in two tasks was compared to 6 AE listeners. As expected, there were large differences in a linguistic identification task using 4 confusable AE low vowels. Japanese listeners performed quite poorly compared to listeners with more complex L1 vowel systems. Thresholds for formantdiscrimination for the 3 groups were very similar to those of native AE listeners. Thus it appears that sensory abilities for discriminating vowels are only slightly affected by native vowel systems, and that vowel confusions occur at a more central, linguistic level.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2010

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2005

ABSTRACT Perception training of phonemes by second language (L2) learners has been studied primar... more ABSTRACT Perception training of phonemes by second language (L2) learners has been studied primarily using consonant contrasts, where the number of contrasting sounds rarely exceeds five. In order to investigate the effects of stimulus sets, this training study used two conditions: 9 American English vowels covering the entire vowel space (9V), and 3 difficult vowels for problem-focused training (3V). Native speakers of Japanese were trained for nine days. To assess changes in performance due to training, a battery of perception and production tests were given pre- and post-training, as well as 3 months following training. The 9V trainees improved vowel perception on all vowels after training, on average by 23%. Their performance at the 3-month test was slightly worse than the posttest, but still better than the pretest. Transfer of training effect to stimuli spoken by new speakers was observed. Strong response bias observed in the pretest disappeared after the training. The preliminary results of the 3V trainees showed substantial improvement only on the trained vowels. The implications of this research for improved training of L2 learners to understand speech will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH-NIDCD DC-006313 & DC-02229.]

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2001

This study investigated the extent to which adult Japanese listeners' perceived phonetic similari... more This study investigated the extent to which adult Japanese listeners' perceived phonetic similarity of American English ͑AE͒ and Japanese ͑J͒ vowels varied with consonantal context. Four AE speakers produced multiple instances of the 11 AE vowels in six syllabic contexts /b-b, b-p, d-d, d-t, g-g, g-k/ embedded in a short carrier sentence. Twenty-four native speakers of Japanese were asked to categorize each vowel utterance as most similar to one of 18 Japanese categories ͓five one-mora vowels, five two-mora vowels, plus/ei, ou/ and one-mora and two-mora vowels in palatalized consonant CV syllables, C j a͑a͒, C j u͑u͒, C j o͑o͔͒. They then rated the ''category goodness'' of the AE vowel to the selected Japanese category on a seven-point scale. None of the 11 AE vowels was assimilated unanimously to a single J response category in all context/speaker conditions; consistency in selecting a single response category ranged from 77% for /e(/ to only 32% for /,/. Median ratings of category goodness for modal response categories were somewhat restricted overall, ranging from 5 to 3. Results indicated that temporal assimilation patterns ͑judged similarity to one-mora versus two-mora Japanese categories͒ differed as a function of the voicing of the final consonant, especially for the AE vowels, /i, u, (, }, #, */. Patterns of spectral assimilation ͑judged similarity to the five J vowel qualities͒ of /(, }, ,, #/ also varied systematically with consonantal context and speakers. On the basis of these results, it was predicted that relative difficulty in the identification and discrimination of AE vowels by Japanese speakers would vary significantly as a function of the contexts in which they were produced and presented.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2008

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1998

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2003

This study explored acoustic similarities/differences between Japanese (J) and American English (... more This study explored acoustic similarities/differences between Japanese (J) and American English (AE) vowels produced by native J speakers and compared production patterns to their perceptual assimilation of AE vowels [Strange et al., J. Phonetics 26, 311-344 (1998)]. Eight male native J speakers who had served as listeners in Strange et al. produced 18 Japanese (J) vowels (5 long-short pairs, 2 double vowels, and 3 long-short palatalized pairs) and 11 American English (AE) vowels in /hVbopena/ disyllables embedded in a carrier sentence. Acoustical parameters included formant frequencies at syllable midpoint (F1/F2/F3), formant change from 25% to 75% points in syllable (formant change), and vocalic duration. Results of linear discriminant analyses showed rather poor acoustic differentiation of J vowel categories when F1/F2/F3 served as input variables (60% correct classification), which greatly improved when duration and formant change were added. In contrast, correct classification of J speakers' AE vowels using F1/F2/F3 was very poor (66%) and did not improve much when duration and dynamic information were added. J speakers used duration to differentiate long/short AE vowel contrasts except for mid-to-low back vowels; these vowels were perceptually assimilated to a single Japanese vowel, and are very difficult for Japanese listeners to identify.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2007

Cross-language perception studies report influences of speech style and consonantal context on pe... more Cross-language perception studies report influences of speech style and consonantal context on perceived similarity and discrimination of non-native vowels by inexperienced and experienced listeners. Detailed acoustic comparisons of distributions of vowels produced by native speakers of North German ͑NG͒, Parisian French ͑PF͒ and New York English ͑AE͒ in citation ͑di͒syllables and in sentences ͑surrounded by labial and alveolar stops͒ are reported here. Results of within-and cross-language discriminant analyses reveal striking dissimilarities across languages in the spectral/ temporal variation of coarticulated vowels. As expected, vocalic duration was most important in differentiating NG vowels; it did not contribute to PF vowel classification. Spectrally, NG long vowels showed little coarticulatory change, but back/low short vowels were fronted/raised in alveolar context. PF vowels showed greater coarticulatory effects overall; back and front rounded vowels were fronted, low and mid-low vowels were raised in both sentence contexts. AE mid to high back vowels were extremely fronted in alveolar contexts, with little change in mid-low and low long vowels. Cross-language discriminant analyses revealed varying patterns of spectral ͑dis͒similarity across speech styles and consonantal contexts that could, in part, account for AE listeners' perception of German and French front rounded vowels, and "similar" mid-high to mid-low vowels.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1997

Acoustic comparison of the effects of coarticulation on the production of Japanese and American E... more Acoustic comparison of the effects of coarticulation on the production of Japanese and American English vowels. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102, 3134 (1997)]. James J. Jenkins, Winifred Strange, Kanae ...

search has documented large differences in the phonetic realization of American English (AE) vowe... more search has documented large differences in the phonetic realization of American English (AE) vowels as a function of phonetic context and prosodic context Strange et al., submitted). Less research has been published on the allophonic and prosodic variation of Japanese (J) vowels. Thus, the goal of the present study was to compare the allophonic and prosodic variation in spectral and temporal structure of J and AE vowels, using acoustical analysis of corpora in which the phonetic and prosodic context was varied systematically. To the extent that the type and amount of phonetic variation differs across the two languages, we would expect that cross-language perceptual similarity might also vary with contextual variables.

Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1998