This paper examined the intelligibility of English /s/ and /esh/ followed by the vowel /ilengthmark/ produced by 20 native speakers of Japanese (JE /s/, JE /esh/), and the acoustic characteristics of JE /s/ and /esh/ according to the different levels of intelligibility. Five native English speakers evaluated the intelligibility of JE /s/ and /esh/ in the word-initial position of "seat" and "sheet." The major energy peak locations were analyzed for /s/ and /esh/ produced by Japanese speakers and native English speakers, and for the Japanese sibilant /ctc/.
It was found that the overall intelligibility was lower for JE /esh/ than for /s/ and that JE /s/ and /esh/ with low intelligibility were heard as /esh/ and /s/, respectively. When the intelligibility was lower, JE /s/ had energy peaks in the lower frequencies, and JE /esh/, in the higher frequencies, having characteristics similar to /ctc/. L1 transfer occurred in the pronunciation of English /s/ and /esh/ by Japanese speakers.
Cite as: Joto, A., Nagase, Y., Funatsu, S. (2007) The intelligibility and its relations to acoustic characteristics of English /s/ and /esh/ produced by native speakers of Japanese. Proc. Interspeech 2007, 2321-2324, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2007-629
@inproceedings{joto07_interspeech,
author={Akiyo Joto and Yoshiki Nagase and Seiya Funatsu},
title={{The intelligibility and its relations to acoustic characteristics of English /s/ and /esh/ produced by native speakers of Japanese}},
year=2007,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2007},
pages={2321--2324},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2007-629}
}