Abstract
This work is an addition to the relatively short line of research concerning second language prosody perception. Using a prominence marking experiment, the study demonstrates that Japanese learners of English can perceptually discriminate between different focus scopes. Perceptual score profiles imply that narrowly focused words are identified and discriminated relatively easily, while differentiation of different scopes of broad focus presents a greater challenge. An analysis of a range of acoustic cues indicates that perceptual scores correlate most strongly with F0-based features. While this result is in contradiction with previous research results, it is shown that the divergence is attributable to the particular acoustic characteristics of the stimulus.
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Pintér, G., Jokisch, O., Mizuguchi, S. (2017). Investigating Acoustic Correlates of Broad and Narrow Focus Perception by Japanese Learners of English. In: Karpov, A., Potapova, R., Mporas, I. (eds) Speech and Computer. SPECOM 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10458. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66429-3_46
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66429-3_46
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