Production and perception of American English vowels in different consonantal contexts by native Japanese speakers

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2004-10, Vol.116 (4_Supplement), p.2573-2573
• Main Authors: Nozawa, Takeshi, Wayland, Ratree, Frieda, Elaina M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.4785277

This is a follow-up study to our previous work on the discriminability and perception of American English vowels by native Japanese speakers. Native Japanese speakers’ production of English vowels was compared to their perception. Participants were recorded saying English words and nonwords with varying CVC contexts with a delayed repetition task in order to assess vowel intelligibility. The accuracy of their productions was assessed by native English listeners to determine whether their utterances were perceived as intended. In general, vowels that were difficult for Japanese speakers to differentiate in perception were also difficult to differentiate in production. In keeping with our previous perceptual results, the effect of consonantal contexts also played a significant role in production. For instance, Japanese speakers discriminated /æ/ better when it was preceded by velar stops and their production of these same CVs received higher identification rates. Further, /≳/-/■/ was a difficult perceptual contrast regardless of the consonantal context and Japanese speakers’ productions of these vowels were also unintelligible. [Work supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)(1)(1410635).]