INTERSPEECH 2015 Perception of Italian Liquids by Japanese Listeners: Comparisons to Spanish Liquids Tomohiko Ooigawa Phonetics Laboratory, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan [email protected] Abstract liquid contrast for special words. In Japanese, the first segment of a pair of geminate consonants (except nasals) is called The present research tests Japanese listeners’ perception of sokuon and the segment is usually transcribed as /Q/. No Italian liquids under the framework of the Perceptual geminate liquid is found in native Japanese or Sino-Japanese Assimilation Model (PAM), a model of non-native speech words. However, in some loanwords and interjections, perception. The study examines the discrimination and the Japanese liquid can be geminated [11, 13, 14], and Japanese identification of Italian liquids (/l/, /r/, /ll/, /rr/ and /ʎ/), while /Qr/ is usually realized as [lː], [13]. comparing the results with those of replicated perception Although both Italian and Spanish have similar experiments of Spanish liquids (/l/, /ɾ/ and /r/). Japanese realizations of liquids, the phonological structures are different listeners showed poor discrimination performance on Italian from each other. Italian has three liquids: /l/, /r/ and /ʎ/ /l/-/r/ and very good discrimination performance on the other (coronal lateral, rhotic and palatal lateral, respectively). Italian liquid contrasts (/l/-/ll/, /l/-/rr/, /ll/-/r/, /ll/-/rr/, /r/-/rr/, Intervocalically, /l/ and /r/ have both single and geminate form, /l/-/ʎ/, /ll/-/ʎ/, /r/-/ʎ/ and /rr/-/ʎ/). The listeners perceptually and /ʎ/ is always geminated [15-17]. Therefore, the five assimilated Italian /l/ and /r/ to Japanese /r/, Italian /ll/ to liquids (/l/, /r/, /ll/, /rr/ and /ʎ/) are contrastive in Italian. On Japanese /Qr/, Italian /rr/ to Japanese /rur/, and Italian /ʎ/ to the other hand, Spanish has no single-geminate contrasts, and Japanese /rj/. The findings indicate that PAM accounts for the has three contrastive liquids in intervocalic position: /l/, /ɾ/ and perception of Italian liquids by Japanese listeners. /r/ (coronal lateral, tap/flap, trill, respectively) [18, 19]. Some Index Terms: Italian, Spanish, Japanese, liquid, PAM conservative speakers have another liquid /ʎ/ that is written as ll. However, the contrast between /ʎ/ and /ʝ/ (written as y) is 1. Introduction neutralized for the other speakers. In order to identify how native speakers of Japanese perceive 1.2. PAM non-native liquid sounds, the present study aims to examine PAM (the Perceptual Assimilation Model) is a theoretical Japanese listeners’ discrimination and identification of Italian model accounting for how naïve listeners perceive non-native liquids, and to interpret the results under the Perceptual phonological contrasts [e.g., 1, 2]. The model posits that, when Assimilation Model [e.g., 1, 2]. The realizations of Italian and listening to an unfamiliar non-native phone, naïve listeners Spanish liquids are similar to each other, yet the phonological perceptually assimilate the non-native phone to the most systems of the languages are different from each other. In articulatorily-similar native phoneme in their native language. 10.21437/Interspeech.2015-631 order to better understand the perception, I compare the results If we know the perceptual assimilation patterns of non-native obtained from Italian liquids with the results in replicated tests phones, PAM can predict the discrimination difficulties of of Spanish liquids. non-native phonological contrasts as follows: Very good to 1.1. Liquids excellent discrimination is predicted for Two Category (TC) assimilation, in which the two non-native phones are According to [3], the term liquids includes laterals (l-sounds) perceptually assimilated to acceptable tokens of two different and rhotics (r-sounds). Laterals share a common manner of native phonemes. Poor discrimination is predicted for Single articulation (i.e., lateral) except for vocalized realizations in Category (SC) assimilation, in which the two non-native some languages such as English and Portuguese [4, 5]. Rhotics phones are perceptually assimilated to equally good or poor are still not known to share any common articulation or tokens of the same native phoneme. Intermediate acoustic cues. The only commonality of rhotics is to be written discrimination is predicted for Category Goodness (CG) with the letter “r” that is derived from the Greek counterpart difference, in which the two non-native phones are “P (rho)” [3, 6]. Cross-linguistic phonological commonalities perceptually assimilated to tokens of the same native phoneme, of liquids have been discussed in a few studies, such as [7] and but they differ in goodness of fit to the tokens of the native [8]. However, to my knowledge, no study has shown any phoneme. convincing phonological commonalities of all liquids of all languages. 1.3. Previous studies In Japanese, the phoneme /r/ is usually realized as [ɾ], yet Although Japanese has no lateral-rhotic contrast, naïve the phoneme has various phonetic realizations, including Japanese listeners can discriminate some non-native liquid rhotic and lateral sounds [9-12]. In addition, Japanese has only contrasts very well. PAM can account for the following a single qualitative liquid contrast, the plain-palatalized perceptions: Japanese listeners assimilate both English /l/ and contrast (/r/ vs. /rj/). The language also has a quantitative /ɹ/ to Japanese /r/ [20, 21], although it depends on the position Copyright © 2015 ISCA 3135 September 6-10, 2015, Dresden, Germany of the liquids in a syllable [22]. The assimilation pattern of One male native speaker of Italian (25 years old, from the English liquids by Japanese listeners is generally SC. The province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Italy), and one male native discrimination is predicted to be poor, and they do perform it speaker of Spanish (32 years old, from Madrid, Spain) poorly in tests [e.g., 22, 23, 24, 25]. In the case of French participated in the recording. The speakers had grown up in a liquids, Japanese listeners assimilate French /l/ to Japanese /r/, mono-lingual family. They asserted that they had no and French /ʁ/ to Japanese /h/ or /ɡ/, although it depends on difficulties in speaking and hearing. The stimulus materials the phonetic realization of French /ʁ/ [21, 26, 27]. The consisted of bi-syllabic words /ˈpaLa/ (“L” stands for “liquid”). assimilation pattern of French liquids by Japanese listeners is The words had a stressed /pa/ in the first syllable and a liquid generally TC. PAM would predict very good to excellent followed by /a/ in the second syllable (see, Table 1). The discrimination, and experimentation bears this out [21, 27, 28]. carrier sentence in Italian was Scriva “_” per favore. /ˈskriva In the case of Spanish liquids’ perception, Japanese listeners “_” per faˈvore/ ‘Write “_” please.’ and that in Spanish was assimilate Spanish /l/ and /ɾ/ to Japanese /r/, and Spanish /r/ to Diga “_” por favor. /ˈdiɡa “_” poɾ faˈboɾ/ ‘Say “_” please.’ In Japanese /rur/ (i.e., double /r/) [25]. The assimilation pattern of both sentences, the target words were placed between a mono- Spanish /l/-/ɾ/ by Japanese listeners is SC, and the patterns of syllabic word ending with /a/ and a mono-syllabic word Spanish /l/-/r/ and /ɾ/-/r/ are TCs. The discrimination of starting with /p/. The speakers were asked to produce the Spanish /l/-/ɾ/ is predicted to be poor, and the discriminations stimuli with the carrier sentence in a soundproof room, and to of Spanish /l/-/r/ and /ɾ/-/r/ are predicted to be very good to read the sentences along with some distracters in a random excellent. These predictions are consistent with the results of a order at least five times. The utterances were recorded onto a discrimination test in [25]. Russian has a four-way liquid digital recorder (PCM-M10) through a microphone (ECM- contrast (/l/, /lj/, /r/ and /rj/). According to [29], Japanese MS957) and digitized at 48 kHz with 16 bits. The target word listeners perform very well in discriminating the Russian tokens were extracted from the carrier sentences. For each plain-palatalized contrasts (/l/-/lj/ and /r/-/rj/), while they target word, the most clearly produced two tokens were poorly discriminate the lateral-rhotic contrasts (/l/-/r/ and /lj/- selected from the recorded materials as stimuli. j j /rj/). Japanese listeners assimilate Russian /l / and /r / to Table 1 shows the words used in the present research. A Japanese /rj/, and they assimilate Russian /l/ and /r/ to pseudo-word “palla /ˈpaʎa/” was recorded as a Spanish Japanese /r/. The assimilation patterns of the Russian plain- stimulus, but most of the tokens perceived as [ˈpaʝa] by the palatalized contrasts should be TCs for Japanese listeners, and author. According to the speaker, he was not conscious of the those of the Russian lateral-rhotic contrasts should be SCs. contrast between /ʎ/ and /ʝ/. As mentioned in section 1.1, the To my knowledge, there has been no study on Japanese contrast between /ʎ/ and /ʝ/ is neutralized for some speakers. listeners’ perception of Italian liquids, except [30]. This study As the term liquids includes laterals and rhotics and lateral was on the perception of Italian single and geminate sounds share the same articulation named lateral (not central consonants, including not only liquids but also other fricative), /ʎ/ was not regarded as a Spanish liquid in this consonants. In the test of the study, Japanese listeners were paper. Therefore, this paper does not report