Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T07:02:46.150Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 19 - Indexical Effects in Cross-Language Speech Perception

The Case of Japanese Listeners and English Fricatives

from Part V - Cognitive and Psychological Variables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

Ratree Wayland
Affiliation:
University of Florida
Get access

Summary

In this paper, we explore whether perceptual adjustments for gender are equally strong for Japanese- and English-speaking listeners' categorization of the sibilant fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ in CV sequences. These stimuli were created by combining a set of eight fricatives with a set of natural vocalic bases produced by a variety of men. We hypothesized that Japanese listeners' categorization would be more-strongly influenced by gender typicality, given the overall heightened attention to gendered speech features in Japanese speakers (Van Bezooijen, 1995), and the greater role that vocalic features play in fricative categorization in Japanese compared to English (Li, Edwards, & Beckman, 2009; Li, Munson, Yoneyama, Edwards, & Hall, 2011). Some evidence is found that Japanese listeners' categorization of fricatives is influenced more heavily on the gender typicality of men's voices in the vocalic portion of the stimulus than is English listeners, but the effects are neither consistent, nor in the direction predicted by previous research. Results point to the need for more research on how talker attributes affect the way that L2 listeners perceive L1 speech.

Type
Chapter
Information
Second Language Speech Learning
Theoretical and Empirical Progress
, pp. 463 - 484
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aoyama, K., Flege, J. E., Guion, S. G., Akahane-Yamada, R., & Yamada, T. (2004). Perceived phonetic dissimilarity and L2 speech learning: The case of Japanese/r/and English /l/ and /r. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 233250.Google Scholar
Aoyama, K., Guion, S. G., Flege, J. E., Yamada, T., & Akahane-Yamada, R. (2008). The first years in an L2-speaking environment: A comparison of Japanese children and adults learning American English. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 46, 6190.Google Scholar
Barr, D., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255278.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4 (R package Version 1.1-9). Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4Google Scholar
Best, C., & McRoberts, G. (2003). Infant perception of nonnative contrasts that adults assimilate in different ways. Language and Speech, 46, 183216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Best, C., McRoberts, G., & Goodell, E. (2001). Discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts varying in perceptual assimilation to the listener’s native phonological system. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 775794.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, C., & Tyler, M. (2007). Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In Munro, M. J. & Bohn, Ocke-Schwen (Eds.), Second language speech learning (pp. 1334). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. (2001). Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International, 5, 341345.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E. (1991). Perception and production: The relevance of phonetic input to L2 phonological learning. In Huebner, T & Ferguson, C (Eds.), Crosscurrents in second language acquisition and linguistic theories (pp. 249289). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Forrest, K., Weismer, G., Milenkovic, P., & Dougall, R. N. (1988). Statistical analysis of word-initial voiceless obstruents: Preliminary data. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 84, 115123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Funatsu, S. (1995). Cross language study of perception of dental fricatives in Japanese and Russian. In Elenius, K & Branderud, P (Eds.), Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 124127).Google Scholar
Halle, M., & Stevens, K. N. (1997). The postalveolar fricatives of Polish. In Hajime, H, Kiritani, S, & Fujisaki, H (Eds.), Speech production and language: In honor of Osamu Fujimura (pp. 176191). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4), 434446.Google Scholar
Jongman, A., Wayland, R., & Wong, S. (2000). Acoustic characteristics of English fricatives. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 108(3), 12521263.Google Scholar
Julien, H., & Munson, B. (2012). Modifying speech to children based on their perceived phonetic accuracy. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55, 18361849.Google Scholar
Kang, S., Johnson, K., & Finley, G. (2016). Effects of native language on compensation for coarticulation. Speech Communication, 77, 84100.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Christensen, R. H. B. (2013). lmerTest: Tests for random and fixed effects for linear mixed effect models (lmer objects of lme4 package) (R package Version 1.1-0). Retrieved from http://cran.rproject.org/web/packages/lmerTest/index.htmGoogle Scholar
Labov, W., Ash, S., & Boberg, C. (2008). The atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology and sound change. New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Li, F. (2012). Language-specific developmental differences in speech production: A cross-language acoustic study. Child Development, 83, 13031315.Google Scholar
Li, F., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2009). Contrast and covert contrast: The phonetic development of voiceless sibilant fricatives in English and Japanese toddlers. Journal of Phonetics, 37, 111124.Google Scholar
Li, F., & Munson, B. (2016). The development of voiceless sibilant fricatives in Putonghua-speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 59, 699712.Google Scholar
Li, F., Munson, B., Edwards, J., Yoneyama, K., & Hall, K. (2011). Language specificity in the perception of voiceless sibilant fricatives in Japanese and English: Implications for cross-language differences in speech-sound development. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 129, 9991011.Google Scholar
Maniwa, K., Jongman, A., & Wade, T. (2009). Acoustic characteristics of clearly spoken English fricatives. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 39623973.Google Scholar
Mann, V. A., & Repp, B. H. (1981). Influence of preceding fricative on stop consonant perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 69, 548558.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Munson, B. (2007). The acoustic correlates of perceived sexual orientation, perceived masculinity, and perceived femininity. Language and Speech, 50, 125142.Google Scholar
Munson, B. (2011). The influence of actual and imputed talker gender on fricative perception, revisited. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130, 26312634.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Munson, B., & Coyne, A. C. (2010). The influence of apparent vocal-tract size, contrast type, and implied sources of variation on the perception of American English voiceless lingual fricatives. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan, 14, 4859.Google Scholar
Munson, B., Crocker, L., Pierrehumbert, J. B., Owen-Anderson, A., & Zucker, K. J. (2015). Gender typicality in children’s speech: A comparison of boys with and without gender identity disorder. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 137, 19952003.Google Scholar
Munson, B., Jefferson, S. V., & McDonald, E. C. (2006). The influence of perceived sexual orientation on fricative identification. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 24272437.Google Scholar
Munson, B., Lackas, N., & Koeppe, K. (2019). The longitudinal development of gendered speech production in children: Patterns and predictors. Paper presented at the 2019 Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Munson, B., McDonald, E. C., DeBoe, N. L., & White, A. R. (2006). Acoustic and perceptual bases of judgments of women and men’s sexual orientation from read speech. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 202240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munson, B., Ryherd, K., & Kemper, S. (2017). Implicit and explicit gender priming in English lingual sibilant fricative perception. Linguistics, 55, 10731108.Google Scholar
Samal, A., Subramani, V., & Marx, D. (2007). Analysis of sexual dimorphism in human face. Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, 18, 453463.Google Scholar
Stevens, K. N., Li, Z., Lee, C., & Keyser, S. J. (2004). A note on Mandarin fricatives and enhancement. In Fujisaki, H, Fant, G, Cao, J, and Xu, Y (Eds.), From traditional phonology to modern speech processing (pp. 393403). Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.Google Scholar
Strand, E., & Johnson, K. (1996). Gradient and visual speaker normalization in the perception of fricatives. In Gibbon, D (Ed.), Natural language processing and speech technology: Results of the 3rd KONVENS conference, Bielfelt (pp. 1426). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, J. (2007). Empirical evidence for gendered speech production: /s/in Glaswegian. In Cole, J & Hualde, J. I. (Eds.), Laboratory phonology 9 (pp. 6586). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Van Bezooijen, R. (1995). Sociocultural aspects of pitch differences between Japanese and Dutch women. Language and Speech, 38, 253265.Google Scholar
Winn, M., Rhone, A., Chatterjee, M., & Idsardi, W. (2013). The use of auditory and visual context in speech perception by listeners with normal hearing and listeners with cochlear implants. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 824.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×