Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by Japanese listeners

Strange, Winifred; Akahane‐Yamada, Reiko; Kubo, Rieko; Trent, Sonja A.; Nishi, Kanae; Jenkins, James J.

doi:10.1006/jpho.1998.0078

Cited by 76 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…First of all, the vowel /a/ in Japanese-accented / " akto/ is not a phoneme of English (e.g., Ladefoged, 1999), and Japanese listeners perceive it as most similar to the English category />/ (Strange et al, 1998); and while English /b/ and /v/ are confusable at least for mid and low proficiency Japanese learners (Guion et al, 2000), Japanese-accented forms always contained an inserted vowel in coda position, thereby making the syllable structure of the English words permissible in Japanese. Listeners are known to be sensitive to phonological structure in their native language (e.g., Cutler & Otake, 1994Otake, Hatano, & Yoneyama, 1996), and it is unlikely therefore that Japanese listeners could not perceptually distinguish between the non-permissible CVC in /mu:v/ and the permissible CVs in /mu:bu/.…”

Section: Experiments 1bmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 Most studies on English phoneme identification by Japanese listeners report identification in terms of Japanese categories and not in terms of English categories (e.g., for vowels, Strange et al, 1998;for consonants, Guion, Flege, Akahane-Yamada, & Pruitt, 2000). 7 In 1999, Dupoux, Kakehi, Hirose, Pallier, and Mehler found that Japanese listeners report an epenthetic [u] vowel between consonants in VCCV syllables and also have difficulties distinguishing VCCV from VCVCV syllables.…”

Section: Experiments 1bmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spoken-word recognition in foreign-accented speech by L2 listeners

Weber

Broersma

Aoyagi

2011

Journal of Phonetics

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a b s t r a c tTwo cross-modal priming studies investigated the recognition of English words spoken with a foreign accent. Auditory English primes were either typical of a Dutch accent or typical of a Japanese accent in English and were presented to both Dutch and Japanese L2 listeners. Lexical-decision times to subsequent visual target words revealed that foreign-accented words can facilitate word recognition for L2 listeners if at least one of two requirements is met: the foreign-accented production is in accordance with the language background of the L2 listener, or the foreign accent is perceptually confusable with the standard pronunciation for the L2 listener. If neither one of the requirements is met, no facilitatory effect of foreign accents on L2 word recognition is found. Taken together, these findings suggest that linguistic experience with a foreign accent affects the ability to recognize words carrying this accent, and there is furthermore a general benefit for L2 listeners for recognizing foreign-accented words that are perceptually confusable with the standard pronunciation.

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Section: Experiments 1bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experiments 1bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spoken-word recognition in foreign-accented speech by L2 listeners

Weber

Broersma

Aoyagi

2011

Journal of Phonetics

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“…That is, for English speakers, both increased and decreased F1 feedback may have resulted in a comparable perceptual change from the intended vowel, which in turn, elicited a comparable amount of compensation. For Japanese speakers, however, the vowel found in "had" is unstable both perceptually (Strange et al, 1998;Strange et al, 2001) and productively (Lambancher et al, 2005;Mitsuya et al, 2011). Therefore when perturbation sounded more like "had," the sound might have been heard as an acceptable instance of the intended vowel for "head."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language dependent vowel representation in speech production

Mitsuya

Samson

Ménard

et al. 2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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The representation of speech goals was explored using an auditory feedback paradigm. When talkers produce vowels the formant structure of which is perturbed in real time, they compensate to preserve the intended goal. When vowel formants are shifted up or down in frequency, participants change the formant frequencies in the opposite direction to the feedback perturbation. In this experiment, the specificity of vowel representation was explored by examining the magnitude of vowel compensation when the second formant frequency of a vowel was perturbed for speakers of two different languages (English and French). Even though the target vowel was the same for both language groups, the pattern of compensation differed. French speakers compensated to smaller perturbations and made larger compensations overall. Moreover, French speakers modified the third formant in their vowels to strengthen the compensation even though the third formant was not perturbed. English speakers did not alter their third formant. Changes in the perceptual goodness ratings by the two groups of participants were consistent with the threshold to initiate vowel compensation in production. These results suggest that vowel goals not only specify the quality of the vowel but also the relationship of the vowel to the vowel space of the spoken language.

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“…Perceptually, at an early stage of learning a new language, the L2 sounds are categorized into speakers' L1 sound categories, but not consistently. For example, Japanese ESL speakers tend to categorize the English vowel /I/ as the Japanese /i/ or /ii/ most of the time, yet they may also categorize the vowel as the Japanese =e <=, =e < e <=, or =e < i= (Strange et al, 1998;Strange et al, 2001). Similarly, a study by Nishi and Kewley-Port (2007) showed that when asked to identify the English vowel /I/, Japanese ESL speakers reported the English vowel /e/ most of the time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A cross-language study of compensation in response to real-time formant perturbation

Mitsuya

MacDonald

Purcell

et al. 2011

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Past studies have shown that when formants are perturbed in real time, speakers spontaneously compensate for the perturbation by changing their formant frequencies in the opposite direction to the perturbation. Further, the pattern of these results suggests that the processing of auditory feedback error operates at a purely acoustic level. This hypothesis was tested by comparing the response of three language groups to real-time formant perturbations, (1) native English speakers producing an English vowel /e/, (2) native Japanese speakers producing a Japanese vowel (=e <=), and (3) native Japanese speakers learning English, producing /e/. All three groups showed similar production patterns when F1 was decreased; however, when F1 was increased, the Japanese groups did not compensate as much as the native English speakers. Due to this asymmetry, the hypothesis that the compensatory production for formant perturbation operates at a purely acoustic level was rejected. Rather, some level of phonological processing influences the feedback processing behavior.

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Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by Japanese listeners

Cited by 76 publications

References 27 publications

Spoken-word recognition in foreign-accented speech by L2 listeners

Spoken-word recognition in foreign-accented speech by L2 listeners

Language dependent vowel representation in speech production

A cross-language study of compensation in response to real-time formant perturbation

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