Comparison of Native and Non-native Evaluations of the Naturalness of Japanese Words with Prosody Modified through Voice Morphing
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Author(s)
Kato, Shuhei
Short, Greg
Minematsu, Nobuaki
Tsurutani, Chiharu
Hirose, Keikichi
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2011
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Information on what kinds of mispronunciation cause the great- est loss in naturalness can be used in guidance to help learn- ers achieve their goals of speaking with good pronunciation. We recorded Japanese words spoken by bilinguals in Tokyo Japanese and in foreign accents (English and Korean) and mor- phed them together with STRAIGHT emphasizing different acoustic parameters. By using STRAIGHT, we can simulate a wide variety of English-accented and Korean-accented pronun- ciations of Japanese. Then, we had native Japanese speakers and non-native speakers (Australian) evaluate the naturalness of these morphed ...
View more >Information on what kinds of mispronunciation cause the great- est loss in naturalness can be used in guidance to help learn- ers achieve their goals of speaking with good pronunciation. We recorded Japanese words spoken by bilinguals in Tokyo Japanese and in foreign accents (English and Korean) and mor- phed them together with STRAIGHT emphasizing different acoustic parameters. By using STRAIGHT, we can simulate a wide variety of English-accented and Korean-accented pronun- ciations of Japanese. Then, we had native Japanese speakers and non-native speakers (Australian) evaluate the naturalness of these morphed utterances. The experimental results showed that Australian learners were very insensitive to the difference between native and non-native pitch although Japanese speakers were critically sensitive to these errors. Following these results, we give some pedagogical suggestions on what kind of pronun- ciation guidance is necessary for learners to become aware of what is unnatural to native speakers.
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View more >Information on what kinds of mispronunciation cause the great- est loss in naturalness can be used in guidance to help learn- ers achieve their goals of speaking with good pronunciation. We recorded Japanese words spoken by bilinguals in Tokyo Japanese and in foreign accents (English and Korean) and mor- phed them together with STRAIGHT emphasizing different acoustic parameters. By using STRAIGHT, we can simulate a wide variety of English-accented and Korean-accented pronun- ciations of Japanese. Then, we had native Japanese speakers and non-native speakers (Australian) evaluate the naturalness of these morphed utterances. The experimental results showed that Australian learners were very insensitive to the difference between native and non-native pitch although Japanese speakers were critically sensitive to these errors. Following these results, we give some pedagogical suggestions on what kind of pronun- ciation guidance is necessary for learners to become aware of what is unnatural to native speakers.
View less >
Conference Title
Speech and Language Technology in Education workshop (SLaTE-2011)
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Copyright Statement
© 2011 ISCA and the Authors. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. For information about this conference please refer to the conference’s website or contact the authors.
Subject
Laboratory Phonetics and Speech Science