How Listeners' L1 Affects Perceived Similarity of American English, Japanese and Korean Vowels (original) (raw)
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Acoustic and perceptual similarity of Japanese and American English vowels
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2008
Acoustic and perceptual similarities between Japanese and American English (AE) vowels were investigated in two studies. In study 1, a series of discriminant analyses were performed to determine acoustic similarities between Japanese and AE vowels, each spoken by four native male speakers using F1, F2, and vocalic duration as input parameters. In study 2, the Japanese vowels were presented to native AE listeners in a perceptual assimilation task, in which the listeners categorized each Japanese vowel token as most similar to an AE category and rated its goodness as an exemplar of the chosen AE category. Results showed that the majority of AE listeners assimilated all Japanese vowels into long AE categories, apparently ignoring temporal differences between 1- and 2-mora Japanese vowels. In addition, not all perceptual assimilation patterns reflected context-specific spectral similarity patterns established by discriminant analysis. It was hypothesized that this incongruity between ac...
Cross-language vowel perception and production by Japanese and Korean learners of English
Journal of Phonetics, 1997
This paper investigates the roles of language-specific phonological learning and inherent phonetic contrastiveness in the perception of non-native vowels . Native speakers of Korean and Japanese , at two levels of English language experience , were assessed on the perception and production of Australian English monophthongal non-back vowels : / i : I e ( a : / . Prototypicality ratings , or perceived similarities of the foreign vowels to their nearest native (L1) phonemic targets , were also examined , to assess models of cross-language vowel perception . Korean is of interest because of a recent phonological merger of two front vowels ( / e / and / E / ) , which has produced a generation split among speakers of Seoul dialect above and below 45 -50 years of age (Hong , 1991) . The present study is the first reported case of how a phonemic merger , resulting in cross-generation dif ferences within a speech community , can influence speakers' perception and production of non-native vowels . The ef fects of L1 phonological learning on vowel perception were also observed in the tendency of the Japanese , but not the Korean listeners , to normalize tokens of non-native vowels for speaker-dependent durational variation , consistent with the respective phonological roles of vowel length in Japanese and Korean .
Discrimination of synthesized English vowels by American and Korean listeners
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America - J ACOUST SOC AMER, 2001
This study explored the discrimination of synthesized English vowel pairs by 27 American and Korean, male and female listeners. The average formant values of nine monophthongs produced by ten American English male speakers were employed to synthesize the vowels. Then, subjects were instructed explicitly to respond to AX discrimination tasks in which the standard vowel was followed by another one with the increment or decrement of the original formant values. The highest and lowest formant values of the same vowel quality were collected and compared to examine patterns of vowel discrimination. Results showed that the American and Korean groups discriminated the vowel pairs almost identically and their center formant frequency values of the high and low boundary fell almost exactly on those of the standards. In addition, the acceptable range of the same vowel quality was similar among the language and gender groups. The acceptable thresholds of each vowel formed an oval to maintain pe...
Acoustic and perceptual similarity of North German and American English vowels
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2004
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.
Acoustic and Perceptual Similarities Between English and Korean Sibilants
Korean Linguistics, 2008
Foreign accent has been assumed to be closely related to the degree of articulatory, acoustic and perceptual similarity between L1 and L2 sounds. This study examined cross-language acoustic and perceptual similarities between Korean and English sibilant fricatives: Korean [−tense] /s/ and [+tense] /s*/ vs. English alveolar /s/ and palato-alveolar /ʃ/. To determine acoustic similarity, two parameters were measured: duration and spectral peak frequency. A Same-Different (AX) discrimination task investigated listeners' perceived similarity judgments between pairs of sibilants. In most cases, the acoustic characterizations led to correct predictions about differences in listeners' perceptions. However, results showed several disparities between acoustic similarity and perceived similarity. These cases necessarily involve acoustic dimensions other than the two measured here; probable candidates are voice quality on a following vowel, and lip rounding, with its spectral lowering effects. Cases of mismatch between acoustic and perceptual characterizations are fruitful areas for examining additional acoustic characteristics that may be responsible for listeners' ability to distinguish sounds. Acoustic and perceptual characterizations in tandem provide the best method of establishing areas of difference between the sounds of different languages, and in turn of establishing ways to teach L2 sounds to learners.
While the two-way voicing contrast of English stops can be distinguished by VOT alone, the three-way laryngeal contrast of Korean stops requires additional acoustic parameter, f0, together with VOT for its realization . The distinct acoustic characteristics of the Korean and English stops may create difficulties in English speakers' discrimination of the non-native Korean contrasts. To confirm this hypothesis, the current study examines English speakers' discrimination of a three-way laryngeal distinction of Korean stops /p t k/ in the word-initial position of disyllabic minimal pairs. The result supports the hypothetical link between acoustic patterns and perceptual discrimination to a large extent by displaying a relatively low correct discrimination level on the lenis-fortis contrast. This leads to a conclusion that f0 is as important as VOT for non-native listeners to fully perceive the three-way contrast of Korean stops.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2011
Current speech perception models propose that relative perceptual difficulties with non-native segmental contrasts can be predicted from cross-language phonetic similarities. Japanese (J) listeners performed a categorical discrimination task in which nine contrasts (six adjacent height pairs, three front/back pairs) involving eight American (AE) vowels [i+, I, e, ae+, A+,ˆ, U, u+] in /hVb@/ disyllables were tested. The listeners also completed a perceptual assimilation task (categorization as J vowels with category goodness ratings). Perceptual assimilation patterns (quantified as categorization overlap scores) were highly predictive of discrimination accuracy (r s ¼ 0.93). Results suggested that J listeners used both spectral and temporal information in discriminating vowel contrasts.
A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male and female speakers
Journal of Phonetics, 1996
F 1 -F 3 and f 0 of 10 Korean vowels and 13 American English vowels produced by 10 male and 10 female speakers of each language group were studied while holding dialectal factors as homogeneous as possible in each group . Within-and across-language comparisons of the collected data revealed considerable variation in vocal tract length between male and female speakers and between Korean and American English speakers . For a more precise comparison , the variation was drastically reduced by applying uniform scaling within and across the two languages . In the cross-language comparison of the normalized data , which were converted to a perceptual dimension , it is argued that adaptive dispersion is operating within a language's system of contrasts to fulfill a condition of suf ficient contrast . t -tests were conducted on those vowels transcribed using the same or similar IPA symbols in the two languages to assess the statistical significance of those comparisons .
Influences of listeners’ native and other dialects on cross-language vowel perception
2014
This paper examines to what extent acoustic similarity between native and non-native vowels predicts non-native vowel perception and whether this process is influenced by listeners’ native and other non-native dialects. Listeners with Northern and Southern British English dialects completed a perceptual assimilation task in which they categorized tokens of 15 Dutch vowels in terms of English vowel categories. While the cross-language acoustic similarity of Dutch vowels to English vowels largely predicted Southern listeners’ perceptual assimilation patterns, this was not the case for Northern listeners, whose assimilation patterns resembled those of Southern listeners for all but three Dutch vowels. The cross-language acoustic similarity of Dutch vowels to Northern English vowels was re-examined by incorporating Southern English tokens, which resulted in considerable improvements in the predicting power of cross-language acoustic similarity. This suggests that Northern listeners’ assimilation of Dutch vowels to English vowels was influenced by knowledge of both native Northern and non-native Southern English vowel categories. The implications of these findings for theories of non-native speech perception are discussed.