We examined the possible relationship between perception and production of /r–l/ by native Japanese speakers. Little evidence of a relationship between the cues used for perception and those for production was found for native Japanese and native English speakers. However, we found evidence of a shift from a reliance on conjunctive cues to single cues as listeners progressed from relatively naï...

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 ...

This study uses articulography, the measurement of the position of tongue and lips during speech, as a tool to quantitatively assess the differences between pronunciations of native and non-native (Dutch) speakers of English. In our study, we focus on two pairs of English sound contrasts: /s/-/ʃ/ and /t/-/θ/. Our analysis focuses on the anterior-posterior position of the tongue tip during the p...

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...

The primary aim of this study was to determine if adults whose native language permits neither voiced nor voiceless stops to occur in word-final position can master the English word-final /t/-/d/ contrast. Native English-speaking listeners identified the voicing feature in word-final stops produced by talkers in five groups: native speakers of English, experienced and inexperienced native Spani...

This study investigates pitch interplay in non-native (L2) speech. Specifically, experiments were conducted to examine how native English speakers perceive and produce Mandarin statements and unmarked questions. Results from the perceptual experiment showed English listeners did not resolve the simultaneous pitch cues from intonation and tone the same way as native Mandarin speakers. They had l...

The role of visual cues in native listeners' perception of speech produced by nonnative speakers has not been extensively studied. Native perception of English sentences produced by native English and Korean speakers in audio-only and audiovisual conditions was examined. Korean speakers were rated as more accented in audiovisual than in the audio-only condition. Visual cues enhanced word intell...

In this study we analyse 18 metrics which were extracted fully automatically from the acoustic signal to describe the melodic characteristics of recordings of English read by L2 Chinese speakers from Shanghai. The metrics were compared to those of native English speakers recording the same material and also to comparable Chinese recordings read by the same speakers from Shanghai and also by oth...