Physical and perceptual configurations of Japanese fricatives from multidimensional scaling analyses

This study investigates the correlations between physical and perceptual spaces of voiceless Japanese fricatives /f s S C h/, using Multidimensional Scaling technique. The spatial configurations were constructed from spectral distance measures and perceptual similarity judgements. The results show that 2-dimensional solutions adequately account for the data and the correlations between the two spaces are high. The dimensions also corresponded to ‘sibilance’ and ‘place’ properties. The spectral analyses on fricative sections, excluding the transitions, seem to contain sufficient information for correct perceptual judgements. These results are highly comparable to those of English fricative study (Choo, 1999), and support a universal prototype theory, according to which the correct identification of speech segments depends on the perceived distance between speech stimuli and a prototype in perceptual spaces.