FRIDAY MORNING, 20 MAY 2005 REGENCY E, 8:30 A.M. TO 12:00 ...

2:10–2:15 Break
2:15–4:15
Panel Discussion
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, 20 MAY 2005
REGENCY D, 1:00 TO 5:00 P.M.
Session 5pSC
Speech Communication: Speech Production and Perception II „Poster Session…
Bryan W. Gick, Chair
Dept. of Linguistics, Univ. of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall E 270, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada
Contributed Papers
All posters will be on display from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. To allow contributors an opportunity to see other posters, contributors of
odd-numbered papers will be at their posters from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. and contributors of even-numbered papers will be at their
posters from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
5pSC1. Perceptual development of phonotactic features in Japanese
infants. Ryoko Mugitani NTT Commun. Sci. Labs., NTT Corp., 2-4
Hikari-dai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, 619-0237, Japan, Laurel Fais
Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4, Sachiyo
Kajikawa, Shigeaki Amano NTT Corp., Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto,
619-0237, Japan, and Janet Werker Univ. of British Columbia,
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4
Acceptable phonotactics differ among languages. Japanese does not
allow consonant clusters except in special contexts and this phonotactic
constraint has a strong effect on adults speech perception system. When
two consonants follow one another in nonsense words, adult Japanese
listeners hear illusory epenthetic vowels between the consonants. The current
study is aimed at investigating the influence of language-specific phonotactic
rules on infants’ speech perception development. Six-, 12-, and
18-month-old infants were tested on their sensitivity to phonotactic
changes in words using a habituation-switch paradigm. The stimuli were
three nonsense words: ‘‘keet /ki:t/,’’ ‘‘keets /ki:ts/,’’ and ‘‘keetsu
/ki:tsu/.’’ ‘‘Keetsu’’ perfectly follows Japanese phonotactic rules.
‘‘Keets’’ is also possible in devoicing contexts in fluent speech, but the
acceptability of ‘‘keets’’ for adult native Japanese speakers is much less
than ‘‘keetsu.’’ ‘‘Keet’’ is phonotactically impossible as a Japanese word.
The results indicate the existence of a developmental change. Twelve
months and older infants detected a change from the acceptable Japanese
word ‘‘keetsu’’ to the possible but less acceptable word ‘‘keets.’’ However,
discrimination between ‘‘keets’’ and the non-Japanese ‘‘keet’’ is seen only
in 18-month infants. Implications for infants’ speech perception with relation
to language specific phonotactical regularities will be discussed.
5pSC2. Temporal evidence against the production of word-internal
syllable structure. Melissa A. Redford Dept. of Linguist., 1290 Univ.
of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, redford@darkwing.uoregon.edu
A production study examined whether the temporal pattern that cues
onset cluster syllabification in English should be attributed to syllable
structure per se or to coarticulatory processes that depend on segment
identity and sequencing, but not on syllable structure. Experiment 1 tested
for independent effects of syllable structure on intervocalic stop-liquid
consonant duration. Three speakers produced stimuli in which sequence
order, boundary strength, and stress were manipulated. The results showed
that stimuli with word-internal sequences were produced with similar
stop-liquid duration (S:L) ratios regardless of sequence order or stress.
When a word boundary split the consonants, S:L ratios were much
smaller, primarily because liquids were longer. Experiment 2 was aimed at
distinguishing between alternate explanations for the pattern observed in
Experiment 1. Data from three Russian speakers suggested that the English
pattern was due to word-internal liquid reduction rather than to
boundary lengthening. The S:L ratios in Russian were not affected by
sequence order or boundary strength. Further, the ratios were significantly
different from the word-internal S:L ratios of English, but not from the
word-peripheral ones. Overall, the results argue against a causal relationship
between syllable structure and articulatory timing, and for word-sized
articulatory units in English.
5pSC3. Perception of coarticulated speech with contrastively
enhanced spectrotemporal patterns. Travis Wade and Lori Holt Dept.
Psych., Carnegie Mellon Univ., 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213,
twade@andrew.cmu.edu
High-level contrastive mechanisms cause perception of auditory
events to be influenced by spectral and temporal properties of surrounding
acoustic context, and may play a role in perceptual compensation for
coarticulation in human speech. However, it is unknown whether auditory
contrast is incorporated optimally to compensate for different speakers,
languages and situations or whether amplification of the processes involved
would provide additional benefit, for example, in the perception of
hypoarticulated speech, under adverse listening conditions, or in an incompletely
acquired language. This study examines effects of artificial
contrastive modification of spectrotemporal trajectories on the intelligibility
of connected speech in noise by native and non-native listeners. Adopting
methods known to improve automatic classification of speech sounds,
we model contrast-providing context as an averaged estimated vocal tract
function LPC-derived log area ratio coefficient vector over a Gaussianweighted
temporal window. Local coefficient values are adjusted from this
context based on previously observed contrastive perceptual tendencies,
and the intelligibility of the resulting speech is compared with that of
unmodified trajectories across listener language backgrounds. Results are
discussed with respect to implementation and applicability of general auditory
processes.
2617 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 117, No. 4, Pt. 2, April 2005 149th Meeting: Acoustical Society of America 2617
5p FRI. PM