Spectral and duration cues of English vowel identification for Chinese-native listeners

Abstract

This study was to investigate how Chinese-native listeners use spectral and duration cues for English vowel identification. The first experiment was to examine whether Chinese-native listeners’ English vowel perception was related to their sensitivity to the change of vowel formant frequency that is a critical spectral cue to vowel identification. Identification of 12 isolated American English vowels was measured for 52 Chinese college students in Beijing. Thresholds of vowel formant discrimination were also examined for these students. Results showed that there was a significantly moderate correlation between Chinese college students’ English vowel identification and their thresholds of vowel formant discrimination. That is, the lower vowel formant threshold of listeners, the better vowel identification. However, the moderate correlation between vowel identification and formant discrimination suggested some other factors accounting for the individual variability in English vowel identification for Chinese-native listeners. In Experiment 2, vowel identification was measured with and without duration cues, showing that vowel identification was reduced by 5.1% when duration cue was removed. Further analysis suggested that for the listeners who depended less on duration cue, the better thresholds of formant discrimination, the higher scores of vowel identification, but no such correlation for listeners who used duration cues remarkably.