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...

This paper examined the intelligibility of the English mid-low central vowel / / produced by 20 native Japanese speakers (JE / /), and the acoustic characteristics of JE / / according to the different levels of intelligibility. Five native English speakers evaluated the intelligibility of JE / / in the word “but.” F1 and F2 frequencies and the duration of JE / / were measured and compared with ...

According to one theory, synaesthesia develops, or is preserved, because it helps children learn. If so, it should be more common among adults who faced greater childhood learning challenges. In the largest survey of synaesthesia to date, the incidence of synaesthesia was compared among native speakers of languages with transparent (easier) and opaque (more difficult) orthographies. Contrary to...

In this paper we present an automated method for the classification of the origin of non-native speakers. The origin of non-native speakers could be identified by a human listener based on the detection of typical pronunciations for each nationality. Thus we suppose the existence of several phoneme sequences that might allow the classification of the origin of non-native speakers. Our new metho...

Information on what kinds of mispronunciation cause the greatest loss in naturalness can be used in guidance to help learners achieve their goals of speaking with good pronunciation. We recorded Japanese words spoken by bilinguals in Tokyo Japanese and in foreign accents (English and Korean) and morphed them together with STRAIGHT emphasizing different acoustic parameters. By using STRAIGHT, we...

This paper investigates the unique pharyngeal and uvular consonants of Arabic from the point of view of automatic speech recognition (ASR). Comparisons of the recognition error rates for these phonemes are analyzed in five experiments that involve different combinations of native and non-native Arabic speakers. The most three confusing consonants for every investigated consonant are discussed. ...

The dynamics of spoken word recognition are acutely sensitive to competition among similar-sounding words. Here, we take advantage of this sensitivity to examine the manner in which native Italian speakers who are late learners of English perceive English vowels. Native Italian speakers and native English speakers listened to recordings of naturally produced words (”pin,” ”pen,” and ”pan”) and ...

In this paper we present an automated method for the classification of the origin of non-native speakers. The origin of non-native speakers could be identified by a human listener based on the detection of typical pronunciations for each nationality. Thus we suppose the existence of several phoneme sequences that might allow the classification of the origin of non-native speakers. Our new metho...

Research is reported on the way in which Finnish speakers of English interpret the semantic/pragmatic meaning of the fall-rise intonation in spoken English. A set of constructed mini-dialogues were used for listening tests in which the test subjects were to interpret the “meaning” of the fall-rise tone. To obtain baseline data, a group of native speakers of English listened to the same material...

In speech technology, we found several challenges in automatic speech transcription system for multilingual conferences or meetings. Firstly, the dialog occurs between native and non-native speakers. Secondly, the non-native speakers come from different parts of the world (e.g., English spoken by native French speakers or English spoken by native Vietnamese speakers, etc.). Thirdly, no data or ...