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

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]. 1994Sep.1 [cited 2021May11];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

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