Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T16:04:04.561Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Intelligibility of American English vowels of native and non-native speakers in quiet and speech-shaped noise*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2012

CHANG LIU*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas at Austin
SU-HYUN JIN
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas at Austin
*
Address for correspondence: Chang Liu, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1100, Austin, TX 78712, USAchangliu@utexas.edu

Abstract

This study examined intelligibility of twelve American English vowels produced by English, Chinese, and Korean native speakers in quiet and speech-shaped noise in which vowels were presented at six sensation levels from 0 dB to 10 dB. The slopes of vowel intelligibility functions and the processing time for listeners to identify vowels were dependent on speakers’ language backgrounds and non-native speakers’ vowel intelligibility in quiet. These results indicated that noise background affected non-native speakers’ vowel intelligibility more greatly than native speakers, possibly due to the acoustic deviations in non-native speech and lack of listeners’ experience to non-native produced speech.

Type
Research Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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.)

Footnotes

*

Special thanks were given to Chia-Tsen Chen for her help in data analysis. The authors also would like to thank Catherine Rogers for her comments on this study. The authors are grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier drafts of this manuscript. This study was supported by the University of Texas at Austin Research Grant.

References

ANSI (2004). Specification for Audiometers. ANSI Report No. S3.6-2004, ANSI, New York.Google Scholar
Best, C. T. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In Strange (ed.), pp. 171–204.Google Scholar
Bradlow, A. R., & Bent, T. (2008). Perceptual adaptation to non-native speech. Cognition, 106, 707729.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, Y., Robb, M., Gilbert, H., & Lerman, J. (2001). Vowel production by Mandarin speakers of English. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 15, 427440.Google Scholar
Clarke, C. M., & Garrett, M. F. (2004). Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116, 36473658.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duanma, S. (2008). The phonology of Standard Chinese (2nd edn.). Oxford. University Press.Google Scholar
Eisner, F., & McQueen, J. M. (2005). The specificity of perceptual learning in speech processing. Perception & Psychophysics, 67, 224238.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings and problems. In Strange (ed.), pp. 233–277.Google Scholar
Hillenbrand, J., Getty, L. J., Clark, M. J., & Weeler, K. (1995). Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 97, 30993111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jin, S.-H., Liu, C., & Kamdar, S. (2009). Acoustic features and intelligibility of American-English vowels for English, Chinese, and Korean talkers. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 125, 2727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalikow, D. N., Stevens, K. M., & Elliott, L. L. (1977). Development of a test of speech intelligibility in noise using sentence materials with controlled word predictability. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 61, 13371351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liu, C., & Jin, S.-H. (2011). Audibility of American-English vowels produced by English-, Chinese-, and Korean-native speakers in speech-shaped noise. Hearing Research, 282, 4955.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marquardt, D. W. (1963). An algorithm for least squares estimation of parameters. Journal of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 11, 431441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayo, L. H., Florentine, M., & Buss, S. (1997). Age of second language acquisition and perception of speech in noise. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 40, 686693.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Munro, M. J. (1998). The effect of noise on the intelligibility of foreign-accented speech. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 139154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M., (1995). Processing time, accent, and comprehensibility in the perception of native and foreign-accented speech. Language and Speech, 38, 289306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nábélék, A. K., & Donohue, A. M. (1984). Perception of consonants in reverberation by native and non-native listeners. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 75, 632634.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nearey, T. M. (1989). Static, dynamic, and relational properties in vowel perception. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 85, 20882113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Brien, K., Woodall, A., & Liu, C. (2009). Vowel detection and vowel identification in long-term speech-shaped noise. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 125, 2696.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, C. L., Dalby, J., & Nishi, K. (2004). Effects of noise and proficiency on intelligibility of Chinese-accented English. Language and Speech, 47, 139154.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sebastián-Gallés, N., Vera-Constan, F., Larsson, J. P., Costa, A., & Deco, G. (2009). Lexical plasticity in early bilinguals does not alter phoneme categories, I: Experimental evidence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 23432357.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strange, W. (ed.) (1995). Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research. Timonium, MD: York.Google Scholar
Studebaker, G. (1985). A “rationalized” arcsine transform. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 42, 5664.Google Scholar
Van Wijingaarden, S. J. (2001). Intelligibility of native and non-native Dutch speech. Speech Communication, 35, 103113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, E. O., & Spaulding, T. J. (2010). Effects of noise and speech intelligibility on listener comprehension and processing time of Korean-accented English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 15431554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yang, B. (1996). A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male and female speakers. Journal of Phonetics, 24, 245261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar