Acoustic and phonological factors in the perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners

Authors

  • J.S. Logan Dept. of Psychol., Carleton Univ., Ottawa, Ont., Canada
  • K. BharrathSingh Dept. of Psychol., Carleton Univ., Ottawa, Ont., Canada

Keywords:

speech recognition, /r/, /l/, Japanese listeners, perception, English, word-initial position

Abstract

As a first effort towards directly investigating the effect of /r-l/ duration on perception, a group of English and Japanese listeners were presented a series of English words. Stimuli with word-initial /r-l/ had the /r/ or /l/ portion elongated, whereas stimuli with word-final /r-l/ had the /r/ or /l/ portion shortened. If duration of the /r/-/l/ segments is the primary determinant of performance, then the Japanese listeners should identify the elongated stimuli in word-initial position with greater accuracy than normal duration word-initial stimuli. Conversely, they should find the shortened versions of the stimuli containing word-final /r/-/l/ more difficult to identify than the normal versions. If their performance is not positively affected by the duration manipulation, it would suggest that the phonological/attention system is so firmly entrenched that simple efforts to make the acoustic features underlying /r/ and /l/ more or less salient are unlikely to succeed

Downloads

Published

1994-09-01

How to Cite

1.
Logan J, BharrathSingh K. Acoustic and phonological factors in the perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners. Canadian Acoustics [Internet]. 1994 Sep. 1 [cited 2021 Oct. 28];22(3):141-8. Available from: https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/889

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 3 (1994)

Section

Proceedings of the Acoustics Week in Canada

License

Copyright on articles is held by the author(s). The corresponding author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors and does grant on behalf of all authors, a worldwide exclusive licence (or non-exclusive license for government employees) to the Publishers and its licensees in perpetuity, in all forms, formats and media (whether known now or created in the future)
i)    to publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Contribution;
ii)    to translate the Contribution into other languages, create adaptations, reprints, include within collections and create summaries, extracts and/or, abstracts of the Contribution;
iii)    to exploit all subsidiary rights in the Contribution,
iv)    to provide the inclusion of electronic links from the Contribution to third party material where-ever it may be located;
v)    to licence any third party to do any or all of the above.