Speech Perception in “Bubble” Noise: Korean Fricatives and Affricates By Native and Non-native Korean Listeners

The current study examines acoustic cues used by second language learners of Korean to discriminate between Korean fricatives and affricates in noise and how these cues relate to those used by native Korean listeners. Stimuli consist of naturally-spoken consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) syllables: /sɑdɑ/, /s*ɑdɑ/, /tʃɑdɑ/, /tʃhɑdɑ/, and /tʃ*ɑdɑ/. In this experiment, the “bubble noise” methodology of Mandel at al. (2016) was used to identify the time-frequency locations of important cues in each utterance, i.e., where audibility of the location is significantly correlated with correct identification of the utterance in noise. Results show that non-native Korean listeners can discriminate between Korean fricatives and affricates in noise after training with the specific utterances. However, the acoustic cues used by L2 Korean listeners are different from those used by native Korean listeners. There were explicit differences in the use of the acoustic cues between the two groups for identifying tenseness. The results of this study contribute to a better understanding of how second language learners of Korean process language. Furthermore, the current study helps us to better understand how people learning a second language process speech perception in noisy environments

Cantonese affricates

"A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2008."Includes bibliographical references.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2009.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Perceptual distinctiveness between dental and palatal sibilants in different vowel contexts and its implications for phonological contrasts

Mandarin Chinese has dental, palatal, and retroflex sibilants, but their contrasts before [_i] are avoided: The palatals appear before [i] while the dentals and retroflexes appear before homorganic syllabic approximants (a.k.a. apical vowels). An enhancement view regards the apical vowels as a way to avoid the weak contrast /si-ɕi-ȿi/. We focus on the dental vs. palatal contrast in this study and test the enhancement-based hypothesis that the dental and palatal sibilants are perceptually less distinct in the [_i] context than in other vowel contexts. This hypothesis is supported by a typological survey of 155 Chinese dialects, which showed that contrastive [si, tsi, tsʰi] and [ɕi, tɕi, tɕʰi] tend to be avoided even when there are no retroflexes in the sound system. We also conducted a speeded-AX discrimination experiment with 20 English listeners and 10 Chinese listeners to examine the effect of vowels ([_i], [_a], [_ou]) on the perceived distinctiveness of sibilant contrasts ([s-ɕ], [ts-tɕ], [tsʰ-tɕʰ]). The results showed that the [_i] context introduced a longer response time, thus reduced distinctiveness, than other vowels, confirming our hypothesis. Moreover, the general lack of difference between the two groups of listeners indicates that the vowel effect is language-independent

Analyzing Hidden Representations in End-to-End Automatic Speech Recognition Systems

Neural models have become ubiquitous in automatic speech recognition systems. While neural networks are typically used as acoustic models in more complex systems, recent studies have explored end-to-end speech recognition systems based on neural networks, which can be trained to directly predict text from input acoustic features. Although such systems are conceptually elegant and simpler than traditional systems, it is less obvious how to interpret the trained models. In this work, we analyze the speech representations learned by a deep end-to-end model that is based on convolutional and recurrent layers, and trained with a connectionist temporal classification (CTC) loss. We use a pre-trained model to generate frame-level features which are given to a classifier that is trained on frame classification into phones. We evaluate representations from different layers of the deep model and compare their quality for predicting phone labels. Our experiments shed light on important aspects of the end-to-end model such as layer depth, model complexity, and other design choices.Comment: NIPS 201

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING CHILDREN

Due to gaps in literature exploring communication outcomes in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children with access to more than one spoken language, limited agreement on optimal language use for DHH children, and an ongoing cultural and linguistic loss in this population, the aim of this pilot study was to further the literature and comprehensively explore the impact of oral bilingualism in DHH children. Participants were self-selected and recruited primarily through relevant social media. Speech and language development in children were observed and quantified at two time points (at the time of enrollment into the study and subsequently after 3-4 months of initial assessment), through administration of standardized questionnaires and twenty minutes of conversational play language samples between the parent and child. Specific language constructs such as the mean length utterance, number of total words, number of different words, and rate of spoken words per minute were analyzed. Speech production skills were assessed by identifying the sounds the child was able to produce during the conversational play sample to compare to monolingual norms. The data from the five case studies presented in this paper indicated that DHH children with access to more than one language were able to develop language skills on par with their typical hearing peers when factors such as early acoustic access, linguistically rich environment, and active parent advocacy were present

An Acoustic Phonetic Portfolio of a Chinese-Accented English Idiolect

This acoustic portfolio contains four sections, including nine voice data analysis projects. The first section represents my pronunciation of English using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The second section describes the spectrogram data parsing of the vowels and consonants as I pronounce them. The third section focuses on acoustic correlates that I use to express lexical stress on homographic and multi-syllabic words. The fourth and final section investigates various phonological rules that apply in my pronunciation of the word . Praat and NORM are the two acoustic computer software programs used in this study

American Chinese learners’; acquisition of L2 Chinese affricates /ts/ and /tsh/

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/poma/18/1/10.1121/1.4798223.Many studies on L2 speech learning focused on testing the L1 transfer hypothesis. In general, L2 phonemes were found to be merged with similar L1 phoneme to different degrees (Flege 1995). Few studies examined whether non-phonemic phonetic categories in L1 help or block the formation of new phonetic categories in L2. The current study examined the effect of L1 English consonantal clusters [ts] and [dz] on learning L2 Chinese affricates /ts/ and /tsh/. We studied duration and center of gravity (COG) of Chinese affricates /ts/ and /tsh/ produced by native Chinese speakers, novice American Chinese learners and advanced learners. In terms of duration, both learner groups showed contrast between L2 /ts/ and /tsh/, which is similar to native Chinese speakers' production. However, for COG, only the advanced learner group showed contrast between L2 /ts/ and /tsh/, which is similar to native speakers' production while the novice learner group did not show a COG difference between the two L2 affricates. The results suggest an early acquisition of the durational contrast between the L2 Chinese affricates and later acquisition of COG contrast between the two L2 affricates

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF BILINGUAL DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING CHILDREN

Due to gaps in literature exploring communication outcomes in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children with access to more than one spoken language, limited agreement on optimal language use for DHH children, and an ongoing cultural and linguistic loss in this population, the aim of this pilot study was to further the literature and comprehensively explore the impact of oral bilingualism in DHH children. Participants were self-selected and recruited primarily through relevant social media. Speech and language development in children were observed and quantified at two time points (at the time of enrollment into the study and subsequently after 3-4 months of initial assessment), through administration of standardized questionnaires and twenty minutes of conversational play language samples between the parent and child. Specific language constructs such as the mean length utterance, number of total words, number of different words, and rate of spoken words per minute were analyzed. Speech production skills were assessed by identifying the sounds the child was able to produce during the conversational play sample to compare to monolingual norms. The data from the five case studies presented in this paper indicated that DHH children with access to more than one language were able to develop language skills on par with their typical hearing peers when factors such as early acoustic access, linguistically rich environment, and active parent advocacy were present