Training Japanese Listeners to Perceive American English Vowels: Influence of Training Sets

Nishi, Kanae; Kewley‐Port, Diane

doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2007/103)

Cited by 92 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…For Japanese-accented Consonant items, the word-final /v/ was replaced with /b/, and the vowel /u/ was suffixed (move pronounced as / " mu:bu/). Just like Dutch, Japanese lacks the English vowel /ae/ in its inventory; unlike Dutch, however, Japanese distinguishes only five vowel qualities (Homma, 1992;Ladefoged, 1993;Shibatani, 1990), and Japanese learners of English tend to perceive and produce English /ae/ as /a/ (Aoyama, Flege, Guion, Akahane-Yamada, & Yamada, 2003;Carruthers, 2006;Nishi & Kewley-Port, 2007). Likewise, Japanese does not have labiodental fricatives, and Japanese learners often produce /b/ instead of English /v/ (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992;Thompson, 2001).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On average, Japanese participants responded correctly 97.3% of the time (with no significant differences between conditions (F 1 [2,82] Again, we would like to argue that Japanese-accented primes facilitated word recognition for Japanese listeners because the accent in the primes conformed with the language background of the listeners, and Dutch-accented primes facilitated word recognition because the primes were perceptually confusable with the English standard pronunciation for Japanese listeners. As in Experiment 1, Dutch-accented Vowel items contained the vowel /e/ (/ " hepi/) which is difficult to distinguish from /ae/ for Japanese listeners (e.g., Nishi & Kewley-Port, 2007); in contrast to Experiment 1, however, Consonant items in Experiment 2 involved /t/ (/in " di:t/), a phoneme that is contrasted in Japanese with /d/, though not in final position. While Mann (1992, 1994) have shown that Japanese listeners can nevertheless distinguish final /d/ quite well from /t/, other studies have failed to show this ability (Morrison, 2002).…”

Section: Experiments 2bmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on cross-language speech perception has repeatedly shown an increase in phoneme confusions for sounds that are not part of the listeners' L1 inventory (for an overview, see for example Strange, 1995;Bohn & Munro, 2007). For English vowels, Nishi, and Kewley-Port (2007) have recently shown that Japanese listeners correctly identify English /e/ only 50% of the time, and they confuse it most often with English /ae/. Although, to our knowledge, for English consonants no equivalent confusion matrix for Japanese listeners exists, Takata and Nabelek (1990) report frequent errors in consonant identification for /v/ and /f/.…”

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: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experiments 2bmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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“…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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“…Rather, the five spectrally distinct long-short vowel pairs (including /ɯ/ and /ɯɯ/) are identified mainly on the basis of F1 and F2, together with phonemic duration (Nishi & Kewley-Port, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Early Phase of /ɹ/ Production Development in Adult Japanese Learners of English

Saito

Munro

2014

Lang Speech

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Although previous research indicates that Japanese speakers' second-language (L2) perception and production of English /ɹ/ may improve with increased L2 experience, relatively little is known about the fine phonetic details of their /ɹ/ productions, especially during the early phase of L2 speech learning. This cross-sectional study examined acoustic properties of word-initial /ɹ/ from 60 Japanese learners with a length of residence (LOR) between one month and one year in Canada. Their performance was compared to that of 15 native speakers of English and 15 lowproficiency Japanese learners of English. Formant frequencies (F2 and F3) and F1 transition durations were evaluated under three task conditions-word reading, sentence reading, and timed picture description. Learners with as little as two to three months of residence demonstrated target-like F2 frequencies. In addition, increased LOR was predictive of more target-like transition durations. Although the learners showed some improvement in F3 as a function of LOR, they did so mainly at a controlled level of speech production. The findings suggest that during the early phase of L2 segmental development, production accuracy is taskdependent and is influenced by the availability of L1 phonetic cues for redeployment in L2.

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Training Japanese Listeners to Perceive American English Vowels: Influence of Training Sets

Abstract: Training protocols for learning non-native vowels should present a full set of vowels and should not focus only on the more difficult vowels.

Cited by 92 publications

References 24 publications

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

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

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

The Early Phase of /ɹ/ Production Development in Adult Japanese Learners of English

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