United States accents compared: The relation of acoustic distances and perceptual tasks

Abstract

This project investigates correlations between accent production and perception by comparing two sets of data: acoustic distances of American dialectal speech samples, measured using Euclidean distances of each vocalic stimuli's first three formants across a trajectory, and perceptual data in the form of online survey material and EEG tests which judge the differences between the same varieties. The speech samples used consist of six sentences from eight regions of the United States; each sentence containing phonological features that may be marked as perceptually relevant for dialect classification. Here, we examine the preliminary outcomes from such perceptual tests performed by naive listeners, which include free classification, identification, perceived difference and ranking similarity, as well as attitude judgment tasks. Additionally, EEG tests were carried out to evaluate the relation between acoustic distance of accents and ERPs. Of special interest here is the relation between a non-regionally sp...