Previous research has shown that speakers of gendered languages think about and categorize nouns in accordance with the noun’s grammatical gender. Past studies have often used languages that do not mark grammatical gender as “genderless” control languages. We examine whether this characterization of non-gendered languages is in fact correct, by examining whether native speakers attribute gender...

In this paper, we propose a statistical evaluation method of pronunciation proficiency and intelligibility for presentations made in English by native Japanese speakers. We statistically analyzed the actual utterances of speakers to find combinations of acoustic and linguistic features with high correlation between the scores estimated by the system and native English teachers. Our results show...

This study investigated the effectiveness of auditory phonetic training on Greek native speakers’ perception and production of Southern British English vowels. The trainees identified and produced English bVt words before and after receiving five sessions of High Variability Phonetic Training (multiple speakers in multiple contexts). All of the trainees improved in their overall identification ...

Using a self-paced reading task, the present study investigates how highly proficient second language (L2) speakers of German with English as their native language process unambiguous wh-subject-extractions and wh-object-extractions in German. Previous monolingual research has shown that English and German exhibit different processing preferences for the type of wh-question under investigation,...

Previous work has shown that languages differ in their articulatory setting, the postural configuration that the vocal tract articulators tend to adopt when they are not engaged in any active speech gesture, and that this posture might be specified as part of the phonological knowledge speakers have of the language. This study tests whether the articulatory setting of a language can be acquired...

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...

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 ...

Communication in English increasingly involves non-native speakers. Such speakers can speak English with different degrees of non-native accentedness. In order to contribute to insights into the effects that these differences in accentedness can have on listeners, the current study systematically reviews experimental studies into the effects of degrees of foreign accentedness in English. It pre...