Acoustic and perceptual similarity of Japanese and American

English vowelsa)

Kanae Nishib兲 and Winifred Strange

Ph.D. Program in Speech and Hearing Sciences, City University of New York—Graduate School
and University Center, New York, New York 10016

Reiko Akahane-Yamada and Rieko Kubo

Cognitive Information Science Laboratory, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International
and ATR Learning Technology Corporation, Kyoto 619-0288, Japan

Sonja A. Trent-Brownc兲
Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620
共Received 2 March 2007; revised 31 March 2008; accepted 19 April 2008兲
Acoustic and perceptual similarities between Japanese and American English 共AE兲 vowels were
investigated in two studies. In study 1, a series of discriminant analyses were performed to
determine acoustic similarities between Japanese and AE vowels, each spoken by four native male
speakers using F1, F2, and vocalic duration as input parameters. In study 2, the Japanese vowels
were presented to native AE listeners in a perceptual assimilation task, in which the listeners
categorized each Japanese vowel token as most similar to an AE category and rated its goodness as
an exemplar of the chosen AE category. Results showed that the majority of AE listeners assimilated
all Japanese vowels into long AE categories, apparently ignoring temporal differences between 1-
and 2-mora Japanese vowels. In addition, not all perceptual assimilation patterns reflected
context-specific spectral similarity patterns established by discriminant analysis. It was
hypothesized that this incongruity between acoustic and perceptual similarity may be due to
differences in distributional characteristics of native and non-native vowel categories that affect the
listeners’ perceptual judgments. © 2008 Acoustical Society of America. 关DOI: 10.1121/1.2931949兴
PACS number共s兲: 43.71.Hw, 43.70.Kv, 43.71.Es, 43.70.Fq 关MSS兴 Pages: 576–588

I. INTRODUCTION that of the L2 influences perception. In addition, both models

Studies of cross-language speech perception have docu-
mented that the ease with which listeners can perceive spe-
cific contrasts among speech sounds is shaped by their lin-
guistic environment during the early years of life 共e.g., Best
et al., 1988; Werker and Tees, 1984兲. Such early language-
specific shaping in speech perception leads to great difficulty
in learning a new phonological system as adults.
In order to explain the complex processes involved in
cross-language speech perception and to predict difficulty in
both perception and production experienced by adult second
language 共L2兲 learners, several models have been proposed.
Among those, of particular interest here are the perceptual
assimilation model 共PAM兲 by Best 共1995兲 and the speech
learning model 共SLM兲 by Flege 共1995兲. Both PAM and SLM
propose somewhat similar mechanisms in which learners’
native phonological system acts as a sieve in processing non-
native phones. Both claim that the similarity between pho-
netic inventories of the learners’ native language 共L1兲 and
a兲
Portions of this work were presented in “Perceptual assimilation of Japa-
nese vowels by American English listeners: effects of speaking style,” at
the 136th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Norfolk, VA,
October 1998.
b兲
Present address: Boys Town National Research Hospital, 555 North 30th
Street, Omaha, NE 68131; electronic mail: nishik@boystown.org
c兲
Present address: Psychology Department, Hope College, 35 E. 12th Street,
Holland, MI 49423.
suggest that differences in the phonetic realization 共gestural
and acoustic-phonetic details兲 of the “same” phonological
segments in the two languages must be taken into consider-
ation in establishing cross-language similarities, as well as
the token variability within similar phonetic categories in the
two languages—whether due to speaking styles, consonantal/
prosodic contexts, or individual speakers.
Thus far, numerous studies of vowels have attempted to
provide evidence for PAM and SLM, but the majority has
focused on how listeners from an L1 with fewer vowel cat-
egories assimilate vowels from larger L2 inventories that in-
clude vowels that do not occur as distinctive categories in the
L1. The present study examined perceptual assimilation of
L2 vowels from a small inventory by listeners whose L1
included more vowels differing in “quality” 共spectral charac-
teristics兲, but for whom vowel length was not phonologically
contrastive, namely, perception of Japanese vowels by
American English 共AE兲 listeners.
The subsequent four sections present the two models in
more detail, briefly describe the vowel systems of AE and
Japanese, provide summaries of previous studies that exam-
ined Japanese listeners’ perception of AE vowels 共Strange et
al., 1998; 2001兲 and AE listeners’ use of vowel duration in
perceptual assimilation of German vowels, and present the
design and the research questions for the present study.

576 J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 124 共1兲, July 2008 0001-4966/2008/124共1兲/576/13/$23.00 © 2008 Acoustical Society of America
A. Perceptual assimilation model and speech
learning model
PAM 共Best, 1995兲 has its basis in the direct realist view
of speech perception and hypothesizes that listeners directly
perceive articulatory gestures from information specifying
those gestures in the speech signal. It predicts relative diffi-
culty in perceiving distinctions between non-native phones in
terms of perceptual assimilation to and category goodness of
the contrasting L2 phones with respect to L1 categories. Ac-
cording to PAM, if contrasting L2 phones are perceptually
assimilated to two different L1 categories 共two-category pat-
tern兲, their discrimination should be excellent. However, if
they are assimilated to a single L1 category as equally good
共or poor兲 instances 共single-category pattern兲, they are pre-
dicted to be very difficult to discriminate. On the other hand,
if two L2 phones are assimilated to a single L1 category but
are judged to differ in their “fit” to that category 共category
goodness pattern兲, their discrimination will be more accurate
than single-category pairs but not as good as for two-
category pairs. If both phones are perceived as speech sounds
but cannot be assimilated consistently to any L1 category
共uncategorizable兲, their discrimination will vary depending
on their phonetic similarity to each other and perceptual
similarity to the closest L1 categories. Finally, there can be
cases where one L2 phone falls into an L1 category and the
other falls outside the L1 phonological space 共categorizable-
uncategorizable pattern兲. In such a case, PAM predicts their
discrimination to be very good.1
Although much of Flege and colleagues’ work has fo-
cused on the accentedness of L2 productions by inexperi-
enced and experienced L2 learners, his SLM 共Flege, 1995兲
also considers the effects of cross-language phonetic simi-
larities in predicting relative difficulties in learning both to
perceive and produce L2 phonetic categories. SLM hypoth-
esizes that L2 learners initially perceptually assimilate L2
phones into their L1 phonological space along a continuum
from “identical” through “similar” to “new” 共equivalence
classification兲 based on L2 phones’ phonetic similarities to
L1 categories. If an L2 phone is “identical” to an L1 cat-
egory, L1 patterns continue to be used, resulting in relatively
little difficulty in perception and production. At the other
extreme, if an L2 phone is phonetically “new” 共very different
from any L1 category兲, it will not be perceptually assimilated
to any L1 category and eventually a new category will be
created that guides both perception and production of the L2
phone. Therefore, perception and production will be rela-
tively accurate for “new” L2 phones after some experience
with the L2. However, if an L2 phone is phonetically “simi-
lar” to an L1 category, it will continue to be assimilated as a
member of that L1 category. According to SLM, this pattern
may lead to persistent perception and production difficulties
because even though there may be a mismatch between L1
and L2 phones, learners continue to use their L1 category in
perception and production. If two L2 phones are assimilated
as “identical” or “similar” to a single L1 category, discrimi-
nation is predicted to be difficult, just as for PAM.
Studies have shown that the relative difficulty that late
L2 learners have in discriminating L2 consonant and vowel
contrasts varies considerably due to the phonetic context
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008
共i.e., allophonic variation兲 and token variability contributed
by speakers, speaking rate, and speaking style differences
共cf. Schmidt, 1996 for consonants; Gottfried, 1984 for vow-
els兲. This causes difficulties even for contrasts that may be
distinctive in both languages but differ in phonetic detail
across languages 共cf. Pruitt et al., 2006, for perception of
Hindi 关d-t兴 and 关dh-th兴 by AE listeners and Japanese listeners;
Rochet, 1995, for perception of French vowels 关i-y-u兴 by AE
listeners and Brazilian Portuguese listeners兲. However, the
majority of these reports are based on assimilation of more
L2 categories into fewer L1 categories 共“many-into-few” as-
similation兲, and at present, it is not known whether PAM or
SLM can account for the cases where learners are required to
assimilate fewer L2 categories into a more differentiated L1
phonological inventory 共“few-into-many” assimilation兲.
B. Japanese and American English vowel inventories
According to traditional phonological descriptions of
Japanese and AE vowel inventories, the two languages differ
markedly in their use of quality 共tongue, lip, and jaw posi-
tions兲 and quantity 共duration of vocalic gestures兲 to differen-
tiate vowels. Japanese has a “sparse” system with five dis-
tinctive vowel qualities 关i, e, a, o, %兴 which form five long
共2-mora兲-short 共1-mora兲 pairs 共Homma, 1992; Ladefoged,
1993; Shibatani, 1990兲. These vowels vary in height 共three
levels兲 and backness 共front versus back兲. Thus, vowel quan-
tity or duration is phonologically contrastive, and phoneti-
cally, long-short pairs are reported to be very similar in spec-
tral structure 共Hirata and Tsukada, 2004兲. 共Hereafter, the
Japanese vowels will be transcribed as short 关i, e, a, o, %兴
and long 关ii, ee, aa, oo, %%兴.兲 Only the midback vowels 关o,
oo兴, are rounded, and all vowels are monophthongal. In ad-
dition, the central and back vowels have distinctive palatal-
ized forms 关 ja共a兲 , jo共o兲 , j%共%兲兴 in the majority of consonan-
tal contexts.
In contrast to Japanese, AE has a relatively “dense”
vowel system, described as including 10-11 spectrally dis-
tinctive, nonrhotic vowels 关ib, (, e(, ␧, æb, Äb, #, Åb, o*, *, ub兴
that vary in height 共five levels兲 and backness 共front versus
back兲, one rhotic vowel 关É兴, and three true diphthongs 关a(, Å(,
a*兴. The mid, low to high, back vowels 关Åb, o*, *, ub兴 are
rounded, and 关ub兴 can be palatalized in limited phonetic con-
texts 共e.g., 关 ju兴 in “view, pew, cue”兲 and is allophonically
fronted in coronal contexts 共Hillenbrand et al., 1995; Strange
et al., 2007兲. Although to a lesser extent than the true diph-
thongs, the mid, front 关e(兴 and mid, back 关o*兴 are diph-
thongized in slow speech and open syllable contexts, and
several others of the so-called monophthongs show “vowel-
inherent spectral change” in some contexts and some dialects
共Hillenbrand et al., 1995; Nearey, 1989; Stack et al., 2006兲.
In many dialects of AE, the distinction between 关Äb, Åb兴 has
been neutralized to a low, slightly rounded 关"b兴. Finally,
while vowel length is not considered phonologically distinc-
tive in AE, phonetically, “intrinsic duration” of AE vowels
varies systematically 共Peterson and Lehiste, 1960兲, with
seven long vowels 关ib, e(, æb, Äb, Åb, o*, ub兴 and four short
vowels 关(, ␧, #, *兴. Vocalic duration also varies allophonically
Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels 577
as a function of the voicing of the following consonant, the
syllable structure, and other phonetic and phonotactic vari-
ables 共Klatt, 1976; Ladefoged, 1993兲.
C. Previous cross-language vowel perception studies
Although they differ in detail, both PAM and SLM hy-
pothesize that L2 learners’ perception and production error
patterns can be predicted from the phonetic similarity be-
tween L1 and L2 phones because they posit that L2 learners
initially attempt to perceptually assimilate L2 phones to L1
categories. However, it is important to establish phonetic
similarity, independent of discrimination difficulties in order
to make these claims noncircular. In some studies, Best and
her colleagues describe phonetic similarity in terms of ges-
tural features 共degree and place of constriction by the tongue,
lip postures, velar gestures兲, using rather abstract definitions
of gestural characteristics 共e.g., Best et al., 2001兲. In many of
Flege’s studies of vowels, acoustic-phonetic similarity has
been established through comparisons of formant frequen-
cies in an F1/F2 space 共e.g., Fox et al., 1995; Flege et al.,
1999兲. Best, Flege, and other researchers working within
these theoretical frameworks have also employed techniques
that directly assess cross-language perceptual similarity of
L2 phones, using either informal L1 transcriptions by non-
native listeners or a cross-language identification or so-called
perceptual assimilation task 共see Strange, 2007 for a detailed
description of these techniques兲. In our laboratory, listeners
perform a perceptual assimilation task in which they are
asked to label 共using familiar key words兲 multiple tokens of
each L2 vowel as most similar to 共underlying representations
of兲 particular L1 vowel categories, and to rate their “category
goodness” as exemplars of the L1 category they chose on a
Likert scale 共e.g., 1 = very foreign sounding; 7 = very native
sounding兲. This technique has been successfully used in pre-
vious studies that investigated perceptual assimilation of
larger L2 vowel inventories by listeners with smaller L1
vowel inventories 共Strange et al., 1998; 2001; 2004; 2005兲,
but has never been used to assess assimilation of L2 vowels
by listeners from L1s with more vowels. The following is a
summary of those previous assimilation studies.
Strange et al. 共1998兲 examined the influence of speaking
style and speakers 共i.e., 关hVb共.兲兴 syllables produced in lists
关citation condition兴 versus spoken in continuous speech 关sen-
tence condition兴兲 on the assimilation of 11 AE vowels 关ib, (,
e(, ␧, æb, Äb, #, Åb, o*, *, ub兴 by Japanese listeners living in
Japan at the time of testing. Acoustic analysis showed that
the duration ratios between long and short AE vowels were
the same for both conditions 共1.3兲, but the absolute durations
of vowels in sentences were somewhat longer than those in
citation form. The results of perceptual assimilation tests
showed that none of the 11 AE vowels were assimilated ex-
tremely consistently 共i.e., with ⬎90% consistency within and
across listeners兲 into a single Japanese category in either
condition. Japanese listeners assimilated short AE vowels in
both conditions primarily into 1-mora Japanese vowels 共94%
in citation versus 83% in sentence兲, whereas the proportion
of long AE vowels assimilated to 2-mora Japanese vowels
was twice as great in sentence 共85%兲 condition as in citation
578 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008
condition 共42%兲. This indicated that Japanese listeners were
highly attuned to vowel duration when they were given a
prosodic context in which to judge the 共small兲 relative dura-
tion differences. As for spectral assimilation patterns, consis-
tent patterns were observed for four vowels 关ib, Äb, *, ub兴 in
both conditions. Six vowels 关(, e(, ␧, æb, o*, Åb兴 were assimi-
lated primarily to two Japanese spectral categories, but pat-
terns changed between citation and sentence conditions for
the first five vowels, reflecting the influence of speaking
style. Finally, 关#兴 was assimilated to more than two Japanese
categories, suggesting its “uncategorizable” status.
In Strange et al. 共2001兲, only sentence materials were
used but vowels were produced in six consonantal contexts
关b-b, b-p, d-d, d-t, g-g, g-k兴. Similar to Strange et al. 共1998兲,
none of the 11 AE vowels were consistently assimilated into
a single Japanese category, with the pattern varying with
context and/or speaker for six vowels. Assimilation of long
AE vowels to 2-mora Japanese categories also varied with
speakers and contexts. More AE vowels were assimilated to
2-mora categories when followed by voiced consonants, in-
dicating that Japanese listeners attributed 共lengthened兲 vo-
calic duration to the vowels rather than to the consonants.
Strange et al. 共2004; 2005兲 explored AE listeners’ as-
similation of North German 共NG兲 vowels. NG has 14 vowel
qualities that form seven spectrally adjacent long-short pairs.
However, the spectral overlap between the long-short pairs is
less marked than for Japanese, and the duration differences
between spectrally similar long-short vowels 共1.9 in citation,
1.5 in sentence materials兲 are smaller than for Japanese but
greater than for AE. Results of perceptual assimilation tests
showed that AE listeners categorized the 14 NG vowels pri-
marily according to their spectral similarity to AE vowels,
and largely ignored vowel duration differences.
D. The present study
The present study is part of a series investigating the
influence of token variability on cross-language vowel per-
ception. Thus far, as described above, we have investigated
many-into-few assimilation patterns by systematically ma-
nipulating sources of variation 共e.g., speaking style and con-
sonantal context兲. The present study is the first of few-into-
many assimilation studies and focused on the influence of
speaking style. Other factors, such as consonantal context,
speaking rate, and prosodic context, are left for future stud-
ies.
As in Strange et al. 共1998兲, the effects of token variabil-
ity were investigated using two utterance forms 共i.e., citation
and sentence兲 produced by multiple speakers, while phonetic
context was held constant 共关hVb共a兲兴兲. This specific conso-
nantal context was chosen because in Japanese and AE, both
关h兴 and 关b兴 have minimal coarticulatory influence on the
spectral characteristics of the vocalic nucleus. Thus, the vow-
els in these materials should reflect their “canonical” spectral
structure that, in turn, specifies their “articulatory targets.” In
addition, the CVCV disyllables are phonotactically appropri-
ate in both languages, and the consonants are very similar.
The acoustic measurements of Japanese vowels are consid-
ered of archival value because no study has compared the
Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels
distributional characteristics of Japanese and American vow-
els in comparable materials, even though averages of spectral
and duration measures for Japanese vowels have been re-
ported 共e.g., Han, 1962; Homma, 1981; Keating and Huff-
man, 1984; Hirata and Tsukada, 2004兲. While the AE corpus
was partially described in our previous studies 共Strange et
al., 1998; 2004兲, the Japanese corpus has not been described
in any published studies.
Based on the phonetic and phonological differences be-
tween AE and Japanese vowel inventories described above, it
was predicted that most of the Japanese vowels would spec-
trally overlap one or more AE vowels. Because AE has twice
as many spectral categories as Japanese, the SLM would
predict that all Japanese vowels should be assimilated into
some AE category as “identical” or “similar” and none as
“new” with relatively high category goodness ratings. PAM
would predict that uncategorizable or categorizable-
uncategorizable patterns should not be observed, but other
patterns may occur as a function of token variability within a
particular Japanese category as manifested as the difference
in category goodness ratings.
II. ACOUSTIC SIMILARITY OF JAPANESE AND AE
VOWELS
This section reports the results of both within-language
and cross-language acoustic comparisons. Linear discrimi-
nant analysis 共cf. Klecka, 1980兲 was chosen as the quantita-
tive method because its conceptual framework resembles the
perceptual assimilation processes. Discriminant analysis is a
multidimensional correlational technique that establishes
classification rules to maximally distinguish two or more
predefined nominal categories from one another 共i.e., vowel
categories兲. The classification rules are specified by linear
combinations of input variables 共i.e., acoustic measures, such
as formant frequencies and vowel duration兲 with weights for
each variable determined to maximize separation of catego-
ries using the values for center of gravity of each category
and within-category dispersion in the input set. By applying
the classification rule established for the input set, member-
ship of tokens in the input set can be re-evaluated 共posterior
classification technique兲, and the amount of overlap between
categories can be quantified in terms of incorrect classifica-
tion of tokens. It is also possible to classify a new set of data
共test set兲 using the previously established classification rules.
In the present study, three types of discriminant analysis
were performed. First, by performing analysis with and with-
out vowel duration as a variable, the contribution of spectral
and duration cues in distinguishing vowel categories were
evaluated for each language 共within-language, within-
condition analyses兲. Second, by using the classification rules
for the citation materials, the extent of changes in acoustic
structure across speaking styles in each language was char-
acterized 共within-language, cross-condition analyses兲. Lastly,
using the classification rules for the AE materials in each
speaking style, similarity between the spectral characteristics
of Japanese and AE vowels were evaluated for citation and
sentence conditions separately 共cross-language analyses兲.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008
A. Method
1. Speakers and stimulus materials
Four adult Japanese males 共speakers 1–4; 32– 39 yr old兲
served as speakers. All were native speakers of Tokyo dialect
and resided in Japan all of their lives. All had at least eight
years of English language education beginning in the seventh
grade, but in the Japanese school system, little emphasis was
placed on the spoken language. They had no training in pho-
netics and spoke very little English in their daily life. They
reported no hearing or speech problems.
Stimuli were five long/short pairs of Japanese vowels
关ii/i, ee/e, a/a, oo/o, %%/%兴. These vowels were embedded
in a nonsense 关hVba兴 disyllable and recorded in two speak-
ing styles. First, these disyllables were read singly in lists
共citation form兲, each preceded by an identifying number and
a pause, and spoken in falling intonation. Second, each
关hVba兴 disyllable was embedded in a carrier sentence
共sentence form兲, Kore wa 关hVba兴 desu ne
关koTewa#hគba#des共%兲ne兴, which translates to “This is
关hVba兴, isn’t it?” Each speaker produced four randomized
lists of 10 vowels for each form. Only the last three readings
were used as stimuli. When problems with fluency or voice
quality were detected, the token from the first reading was
used as a replacement. Thus, a total of 240 tokens
共10 vowels⫻ 3 repetitions⫻ 2 forms⫻ 4 speakers兲 were in-
cluded in the final analysis.
All tokens were recorded in an anechoic sound chamber
at ATR Human Information Processing Research Laborato-
ries in Kyoto, Japan, using a condenser microphone 共SONY
ECM77-77s兲 connected to a DAT recorder 共SONY PCM-
2500A, B兲. Each speaker sat approximately 22 cm from the
microphone. Speakers read stimuli from randomized lists
with identification numbers preceding each token. Speakers
were instructed to read at their natural rate without exagger-
ating the target nonsense syllables. Recorded lists were digi-
tally transferred to Audio Interchange File Formant 共AIFF兲
files and down-sampled from 48 to 22.05 kHz, using a
Power Macintosh 8100/ 100 computer and SOUNDEDIT16
共Version 1.0.1, Macromedia兲. AIFF files for individual to-
kens for analysis and perceptual testing were created from
the down-sampled files by deleting the identification num-
bers.
The AE corpus was produced and analyzed using similar
techniques, except that they were recorded in a sound booth
at University of South Florida 共USF兲. Four male speakers of
general American English dialect each recorded four tokens
for each of 11 vowels in the two speaking styles; three tokens
were retained for analysis. Further details of the stimulus
preparation for the AE stimuli are reported elsewhere
共Strange et al., 1998兲.
2. Acoustic analysis
Acoustic analysis was performed using a custom-
designed spectral and temporal analysis interface in
SOUNDSCOPE/16 1.44 共PPC兲™ speech analysis software 共Copy-
right 1992 GW Instruments, Somerville, MA 02143兲. First,
the vocalic duration of the target vowel was determined by
locating the beginning and ending of the target vowel using
Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels 579
Citation Form
2
ii

i shown in the right column.
(Bark)
3
o i
(Barak)

4
Formant
e oo
FirstFormant
ee
5 e
a
6
First
7 Sentence→ Citation
aa
8 American English Corpora
16 12 10 14 8 6
Second Formant (Bark)
FIG. 1. Formant 1/formant 2 共bark兲 plots for ten Japanese vowels produced
by four male speakers in 关hVba兴 contexts in citation form 共left panel兲 and
sentence form 共right panel兲: 12 tokens per vowel. Filled circles are for
2-mora vowels; open circles are for 1-mora vowels.
both the spectrographic and waveform representations of the
stimuli. The vowel onset was the first pitch period after the
preceding voiceless segment 关h兴, and the vowel offset was
determined as the reduction of the waveform amplitude and
the cessation of higher formants in the spectrogram indicat-
ing the start of the 关b兴 closure; vocalic duration was calcu-
lated as the difference between these two time points. The
first three formants 共F1, F2, and F3, respectively兲 were mea-
sured at the 25%, 50%, and 75% temporal points of the
vocalic duration. Only the measurements from the 50% point
共midsyllable兲 are used in the discriminant analyses 共average
values for each vowels are reported in Appendix兲. Linear
predictive coding 共LPC兲 spectra 共14-pole, 1024-point兲 were
computed over approximately three pitch periods 共a 25 ms-
Hamming window兲 around the 50% point. When the cross-
check with the spectrographic representation indicated the
LPC estimate of a formant reflected merged, spurious, or
missed formants, the formant frequency was manually esti-
mated from the wideband fast Fourier transfer 共FFT兲 repre-
sentation of the windowed portion. In very few cases where
wideband FFT also failed, a narrowband FFT was used.
B. Results
1. Within-language comparisons: Within and across
speaking styles
Figure 1 presents the target formant frequency data
共F1/F2 bark values at vowel midpoint兲 for the 120 tokens of
Japanese vowels produced in citation form 共left panel兲, and
the 120 tokens produced in sentence form 共right panel兲. El-
lipses surround all 12 tokens of each vowel 共4 speakers
⫻ 3 tokens兲; tokens of the long vowels are represented by
filled circles, the short vowels are represented by open
circles. As Fig. 1 shows, across the five long/short Japanese
vowel pairs, there was little spectral overlap in either speak-
ing style, despite considerable acoustic variability within and
across speakers. Deviant tokens were found for low vowels:
for 关a兴, one each in the citation 共by speaker 1兲 and in the
sentence conditions 共by speaker 2兲; for 关aa兴, two in the cita-
tion condition and one in the sentence condition 共both by
speaker 2兲. However, since these tokens 共and all others兲 were
readily identified by a native Japanese listener as the in-
580 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008
Sentence Form TABLE I. Percent correct classification of within-form and cross-form dis-
criminant analyses based on spectral parameters alone 共F1/F2 in bark val-
ii ues兲 shown in the left column, and spectral parameters plus vocalic duration
 
ee oo o F1/F2 共%兲 F1 / F2 + Duration 共%兲
a Japanese Corpora
Citation Form 77 98
Sentence Form 65 100
62 98
aa
4 16 12 10 14 8 6 4
Citation form 85 91
Sentence form 86 95
Sentence→ Citation 78 89
tended vowels, they were considered extreme cases of token
variability and were not eliminated from the analysis. Long/
short pairs of the same vowel quality overlapped consider-
ably, especially for the sentence materials. Thus, as pre-
dicted, duration appears to play an important role in
separating these contrasting vowel categories.
The duration ratios of Japanese long to short vowels
共L/S ratios兲 averaged 2.9 for both speaking styles 共ranged
from 2.6 to 3.4 for each of five vowel pairs; see Appendix for
detail兲. That is, long vowels in both forms were, on average,
three times as long as short vowels. Note that these L/S
ratios for Japanese vowels are greater than those for the Ger-
man vowels reported in Strange et al. 共2004兲 共average L/S
ratio= 1.9 for citation form, 1.5 for sentence form兲. As pre-
viously reported, average L/S ratios for AE vowels were
markedly smaller compared to Japanese vowels 共1.3 for both
citation and sentence forms兲.
In order to statistically evaluate the above observations
and to quantify the spectral overlap among vowels and the
contribution of duration in further differentiating vowel cat-
egories, two series of discriminant analyses were performed
for each language corpus. The first analysis used spectral
parameters alone 共F1 and F2兲,2 and the second analysis used
spectral parameters plus vocalic duration as input variables.
In these analyses, “correct classification” was defined as the
posterior classification of each token as the speaker-intended
vowel category. For the formant values, as in the previous
studies 共Strange et al., 2004; 2005; 2007兲 only the measure-
ments at vowel midpoint were entered. Table I presents the
results for the Japanese citation and sentence forms 共also
depicted in Fig. 1兲 and for the comparable AE corpus. For
both languages, the values in the first two rows represent the
within-condition differentiation of vowels in the relevant in-
put sets. The third row shows the results of cross-condition
analyses 共citation as input set, sentence as test set兲.
As these overall correct classification rates indicate, the
ten Japanese vowels were not well differentiated by spectral
parameters alone, especially for the sentence materials. How-
ever, almost all of the misclassifications were within long/
short vowel pairs 共25 out of 28 cases for citation form and 41
out of 42 cases for sentence form兲. Therefore, when vowel
duration was included as a parameter, classification im-
proved to almost perfect. Thus, the Japanese five spectral
Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels
categories are well differentiated even when variability due A. Long J Vowels in Citation Form C. Long J Vowels in Sentence Form

to speaker differences was included in the corpus, and with 22 22

ii
 ii 
the use of duration, those five spectral categories are further i i

First Formant (Bark)

First Formant (Bark)

3 3 33
ee u ee u
separated into ten distinctive vowel categories. 44 44
 oo e oo
For the comparable analyses for AE vowels, spectral dif- e  
o   o
55  55
ferentiation 共F1/F2 Bark values alone兲 of the 11 vowels was 
  
66  66 
somewhat better than for Japanese vowels, reflecting the fact æ
77  77 æ 
that phonetically long and short AE vowels differ spectrally. aa aa
As reported in Strange et al. 共2004兲 study, many of the mis- 88
16
16 14
14 12
12 10
10 8
8 6
6 44
88
16 14 12 10 8 6 4
16 14 12 10 8 6 4
classifications of AE tokens included confusions between Second Formant (Bark) Second Formant (Bark)
spectrally adjacent pairs 关ib / e(, e( / (, e( / ␧, æb / ␧, Äb / #, Åb / o*,
o* / *, ub / *兴 and between 关Äb兴 and 关Å兴. When duration was B. Short J Vowels in Citation Form D. Short J Vowels in Sentence Form
included as an input variable, correct classification rates for 2
2 22
both forms improved but to lesser degrees than for Japanese. i  i 

First Formant (Bark)

First Formant (Bark)

33 33
The next series of analyses was performed to quantify e e
44 o 44 o
cross-condition similarity. When sentence materials were
classified using parameter weights and centers of gravities 55
a
55
established for citation materials 共F1/F2 Bark values兲, only 66 66
62% of Japanese vowels were correctly classified. However, 77 77 a
when both spectral and temporal parameters were included, 8
8 88

only two tokens were misclassified as vowels of the same 16 14

temporal categories 共关ee兴 as 关ii兴 and 关%兴 as 关o兴兲. Note that the
absolute duration of vowels in sentences were, on average,
15% shorter than those in citation form. These results indi-
cate that the spectral differences among the five vowel cat-
egories are maintained across speaking styles, and that de-
spite the changes in vowel duration between the two
speaking styles, the temporal differences between the 1- and
2-mora Japanese vowels are still large enough to differentiate
the ten categories.
As for the cross-condition analysis for the AE vowels, it
was predicted that the inclusion of duration in the analysis
should help differentiate the 11 AE vowels in sentence form
but to a lesser degree than in Japanese because there was less
spectral overlap among AE vowels in each speaking style. As
predicted, the cross-condition analysis revealed that the rate
of correct classifications improved by 11% when duration
was included, but 15 cases remained misclassified. These 15
cases include the following: six cases of long/short confu-
sions 共number of misclassified tokens兲: 关(兴 as 关e(兴 共1兲, 关␧兴 as
关æb兴 共1兲, 关#兴 as 关ab兴 共1兲, 关o*兴 as 关*兴 共1兲, 关ub兴 as 关*兴 共2兲; eight
long/long confusions: 关e(兴 as 关ib兴 共2兲, 关Äb兴 as 关Åb兴 共4兲, between
关Åb兴 and 关o*兴 共2兲; and one short/short confusion: 关*兴 as 关#兴.
2. Cross-language spectral similarity
Additional discriminant analyses were performed in
which the spectral parameters for the 11 AE vowels served as
the input set, and those for the ten Japanese vowels served as
the test set. That is, these analyses determined the spectral
similarity of Japanese vowels to AE vowels using the classi-
fication rules established for AE vowel categories. Separate
analyses were performed for the two speaking styles. Figure
2 displays the F1/F2 Bark plots of Japanese and AE vowels.
Distributions of vowels in the two languages are indicated by
the ellipses 共solid for Japanese and dashed for AE兲 that sur-
round all 12 tokens of each vowel. Individual Japanese to-
kens are represented by filled circles; for clarity, individual
AE tokens are not shown. Panels on the left are for citation
materials, and the panels on the right are for sentence mate-
16 14 12
12 10
10 8
8 6
6 4
4 16 14
16 14 12
12 10
10 8
8 6
6 4
4
Second Formant (Bark) Second Formant (Bark)
FIG. 2. Formant 1/formant 2 共bark兲 plots for 2-mora 共upper panels兲 and
1-mora Japanese vowels 共lower panels兲 produced by four male speakers in
关hVba兴 in citation form 共left panels兲 and sentence form 共right panels兲 super-
imposed on 11 AE vowels 共dotted ellipses兲. Solid ellipses encircle all 12
tokens of a Japanese vowel; individual AE tokens are not plotted.
rials. The two top panels are for long Japanese vowels, and
the two bottom panels are for short Japanese vowels. The
same dashed ellipses for the 11 AE vowels in each form are
shown in the background. As can be seen, most Japanese mid
and short, low vowels were higher 共lower F1 values兲 on
average3 and revealed greater within-category variability
than the comparable AE vowels while the front and back,
high vowels were spectrally quite similar across languages.
In the cross-language discriminant analysis for the cita-
tion materials, the citation AE vowel corpus was used as the
input set 共F1/F2 Bark values as input parameters兲; then all
tokens of the Japanese citation corpus were classified using
the rules established for these AE categories. The results are
summarized in Table II, where Japanese vowels are grouped
in terms of the duration 共1-mora and 2-mora兲 and tongue
height 共high, mid, low兲, as shown in the first column. The
third and fourth columns display the modal AE vowels and
the number of Japanese vowel tokens 共max= 12兲 classified as
most similar to the respective AE category. In order to make
acoustic classification consistent with the dialect profile of
the listeners who performed the perceptual assimilation task
in study 2, and to make results comparable between studies,
Japanese tokens classified into AE 关Äb兴 or 关Åb兴 were pooled
共关Äb-Åb兴兲. The last two columns show the classification of the
remaining tokens.
For the citation materials, 52 out of 60 tokens of 2-mora
vowels were classified as spectrally comparable long AE
vowels 关ib, e(, Äb-Åb, o*, ub兴. Some tokens of mid, front 关ee兴
and low 关aa兴 were spectrally similar to short AE categories
共关(兴 and 关#兴, respectively兲. In contrast, only 21 out of 60
tokens of 1-mora vowels were classified as spectrally com-

J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008 Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels 581
TABLE II. Acoustic similarity 共F1/F2 in Bark values兲 of Japanese and Japanese vowels 关ii, i, %%, %兴 were consistently classified
American English 共AE兲 vowles: hVb共a兲 syllables produced in citation. as spectrally similar to long AE high vowels 关ib, ub兴, while
Modal classification Other categories
the mid, front 关ee, e兴 and low vowels 关aa, a兴 were classified
as most similar to two or more AE categories. The mid, back
Japanese. AE No. of AE No. of vowel 关o兴 in this form was more consistently classified as AE
vowel vowel tokens vowel tokens
关o*兴.
2-mora
High ii ib 12 C. Discussion
%% ub 12
Mid ee e( 7 ( 5
The results of acoustic comparisons between Japanese
oo o* 12 and AE vowels suggested the following.
Low aa Äb–Åb 9 # 3 共1兲 Regardless of speaking styles, Japanese vowels were
1-mora consistently classified into five nonoverlapping spectral
High i ib 12 categories. These five spectral categories were further
% ub 9 * 3 differentiated into short 共1-mora兲 and long 共2-mora兲
Mid e ( 8 e( 2 vowels by vowel duration. Altogether, classification was
ib 1 almost perfect for all ten vowel categories when F1, F2
* 1 values at vowel midpoint and vowel duration were in-
o o* 9 ub 3 cluded in the analysis.
Low a 7 2
# Äb–Åb
共2兲 AE vowels produced in both speaking styles were differ-
␧ 1
entiated by mid-syllable formant frequencies fairly well,
o* 1
* 1
and some vowel pairs were further differentiated by vo-
calic duration. However, overall correct classification
was not as good as for the Japanese vowels, indicative of
a more crowded vowel space.
parable short AE vowels 关(, ␧, #, *兴, suggesting that they are
共3兲 Within-language cross-condition discriminant analyses
spectrally more similar to AE long vowels. The classification
revealed that both AE and Japanese vowels produced in
of Japanese 1-mora mid, front and low vowels was to two or
sentences share similar spectral and temporal character-
more AE spectrally adjacent vowels, indicating that they are
istics to the citation material in this phonetic context,
intermediate among several AE categories.
indicating that despite the effects of speaking style, the
Table III presents the results of the discriminant analysis
acoustic distinctions among vowel categories are main-
共F1/F2 Bark values兲 with the AE sentence materials as the
tained for both Japanese and AE.
input set and the Japanese sentence materials as the test set.
共4兲 Cross-language discriminant analyses using only the
The results resembled those for the citation materials: 47 out
spectral parameters indicated that Japanese high vowels
of 60 tokens of 2-mora Japanese vowels were classified into
关ii, i兴, 关%%, %兴, and mid, back vowels 关oo, o兴 in both
spectrally comparable long AE vowels, whereas only 12 out
forms were spectrally similar to AE long vowels 关ib兴, 关ub兴
of 60 tokens of 1-mora vowels were classified as spectrally
and 关o*兴, respectively, while the mid, front and low Japa-
comparable short AE vowels. Similar to citation form, high
nese vowels in both speaking styles were found spec-
trally more intermediate between two or more AE cat-
TABLE III. Acoustic similarity 共F1/F2 in Bark values兲 of Japanese and egories. The Japanese 1-mora vowels 关e, a兴 in citation
American English 共AE兲 vowles: hVb共a兲 syllables produced in citation.
form were especially variable with respect to their spec-
Modal classification Other categories tral similarity to AE vowels.

Japanese AE No. of AE No. of In the next section, the results from the perceptual as-
vowel vowel tokens vowel tokens similation experiment are presented and discussed in relation
2-mora to the acoustic comparisons between Japanese and AE vow-
High ii ib 12 els presented in this section.
%% ub 12
Mid ee ( 9 e( 3 III. PERCEPTUAL ASSIMILATION OF JAPANESE
oo o* 12 VOWELS BY AE LISTENERS
Low aa Äb–Åb 8 # 4
A listening experiment was performed using the Japa-
1-mora nese corpus analyzed in Sec. II. Native AE speakers with no
High i ib 10 e( 2 experience with the Japanese language served as listeners
% ub 12 and performed a perceptual assimilation task that involved
Mid e ( 8 e( 3
two judgments: categorization of Japanese vowels using AE
* 1
vowel category labels and rating the category goodness of
o o* 12
Low a Äb–Åb 8 # 3
the Japanese vowels as exemplars of the chosen AE vowel
o* 1 categories. Based on the results of the acoustic analyses, it
was predicted that perceptual assimilation of Japanese high

582 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008 Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels
vowels 关ii, i兴, 关%%, %兴, and mid, back vowels 关oo, o兴 would
not be affected by speaking style and would be perceived as
good exemplars of AE long vowels 关ib兴, 关ub兴, and 关o*兴 unless
AE listeners detected and responded on the basis of the con-
siderable temporal differences between the 1- and 2-mora
pairs. In comparison, perceptual assimilation of Japanese 关e,
ee兴 and 关a, aa兴 was predicted to be less consistent 共and pos-
sibly with poorer category goodness ratings兲 within and
across listeners, reflecting the fact that spectrally, these vow-
els straddled more than one AE category. In addition, the
effects of speaking style were expected to be observed for
关ee, e, aa, a兴.
A. Method
1. Listeners
Twelve undergraduate students 共two males and ten fe-
males, mean age= 26.2 yr old兲 at USF served as the listeners
for extra credit points. They were recruited either from intro-
ductory phonetics or phonology courses offered in the De-
partment of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Some
of them had had at least one semester of phonetics by the
time of testing. All were fluent only in American English,
and none of them had lived in a foreign country for an ex-
tended length of time. All reported that they had normal
hearing. Among these listeners, ten had lived in Florida more
than ten years, and two had lived in the northeastern United
States more than ten years. Four additional listeners were
tested but their data were excluded either because they failed
to return for the second day of testing or because they were
bilinguals.
2. Stimulus materials
Stimulus materials were the 240 tokens of ten Japanese
vowels 共10 vowels⫻ 4 speakers⫻ 2 utterance forms⫻ 3
repetitions兲 acoustically analyzed in study 1
3. Apparatus and instruments
All listening sessions including familiarization were pro-
vided individually in a sound booth in the Speech Perception
Laboratory of USF. Stimuli were presented through head-
phones 共STAX SR LAMBDA semi-panoramic sound electro-
static ear speaker兲. The listeners adjusted the sound volume
for their comfort. For all sessions, stimulus presentation was
controlled by a HYPERCARD 2.2 stack on a Macintosh Quadra
660AV computer with a 14 in. screen. The HYPERCARD stack
used for the listening test had two components. The first
component was for categorization and displayed 11 buttons
labeled with Phonetic symbols 共IPA兲 for 11 AE vowels 关ib, (,
e(, ␧, æb, Äb, #, Åb, o*, *, ub兴 and keywords in 关hVd兴 context
共heed, hid, hayed, head, had, hod, hud, hawed, hoed, hood,
who’d, respectively兲. The second component appeared after
the listener categorized a stimulus vowel and displayed a
seven-point Likert scale 共1 = foreign, 7 = English兲 on which
the listeners judged the category goodness of the stimulus
vowel in the chosen AE category.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008
4. Procedures
A repeated-measure design was employed in which each
listener was presented all tokens from all four speakers in
both utterance forms. All listeners were tested on two days:
one for citation materials and the other for sentence materi-
als. The order was counterbalanced across listeners.
a. Familiarization Before testing on day 1, all listeners
completed an informed consent form and a language back-
ground questionnaire. Then, a brief tutorial on the IPA and
two task familiarization sessions were given. The tutorial for
the IPA provided a brief description of relationship between
IPA for the 11 AE vowels and their sounds using the 11
关hVd兴 keywords. A HYPERCARD stack provided audio and
text explanations.
Task familiarization had two parts: categorization-
only and categorization and category goodness judgment.
Stimuli for the categorization only familiarization were
关h.C1VC2兴 disyllables, where C1-C2 combinations were
关b-d, b-t, d-d, d-t, g-d, g-t兴 and the V was one of the 11 AE
vowels. These disyllables were embedded in a carrier sen-
tence, “I hear the sound of 关h.C1VC2兴 some more.” The fifth
author recorded 11 vowels in at least one of the C1-C2 con-
text, and an additional 44 tokens were recorded by a male
native speaker of AE who was not the speaker for the AE
stimuli used in study 1. In the categorization-only part, these
55 tokens were presented in four blocks. The first block pre-
sented 11 tokens from the female speaker, the next two
blocks presented 11 tokens from the male speaker randomly
selected from his 44 tokens, and the last block presented the
remaining 22 tokens from the male speaker. The listeners
were asked to indicate which of the 11 AE vowels they heard
by clicking on one of the response buttons on the screen.
Feedback was provided by the computer program after each
categorization response. When a response was incorrect, the
experimenter sitting beside the listener provided explana-
tions why the response was incorrect.
In the second part, familiarization for the category
goodness judgment was given using 56 German sentence-
form tokens randomly chosen from a total of 560 tokens
共14 vowels⫻ 4 speakers in 5 consonantal contexts兲 used in
Strange et al. 共2005兲 study. A short task description was pro-
vided by a HYPERCARD stack and the listeners practiced on
the German tokens using the same interface as the testing. In
each trial, the listeners were asked to categorize a German
vowel in terms of the 11 AE categories, and then indicate its
category goodness in the chosen AE category on the seven-
point Likert scale 共1 = foreign, 7 = English兲. No feedback was
provided in this part.
b. Test Each listener was tested on two days. On day 1,
a testing session was given following the task familiariza-
tion. On day 2, the listeners were given only the testing
session, which followed the same procedure as testing on
day 1. Half of the listeners heard citation materials on day 1
and sentence materials on day 2; presentation order was re-
versed for the remaining listeners.
In a testing session, stimuli were blocked by
speaker, and a total of four blocks of 120 trials 共10 vowels
⫻ 3 tokens⫻ 4 repetitions兲 were presented for a speaking
style. Block order was counterbalanced across the listeners.
An opportunity for a short break was provided after the sec-
ond block. In each trial, the same stimulus was presented
twice; after the first presentation of a stimulus, the listeners
categorized the Japanese vowel by choosing one of the 11
Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels 583
 TABLE IV. Perceptual assimilation patterns: Categorization responses, expressed as percentages of total re-
sponses summed over speakers and listeners for citation-form 共A兲 and sentence-form 共B兲 materials. Bold
= modal perceptual classification; boxed= modal acoustic classification.

AE response categories

ib ( e( ␧ æb Äb–Åb # o* * ub

共A兲 Citation
2-mora
ii 99 1
ee 2 94 5
aa 2 89 9
oo 1 99 1
%% 1 2 5 92
1-mora
i 95 4 1
e 16 76 8
a 3 57 39
o 1 95 1 2
% 3 1 5 91

共B兲 Sentence
2-mora
ii 99
ee 1 97 2
aa 1 96 3
oo 98 1
%% 2 2 96
1-mora
i 98 2
e 1 23 48 28
a 2 77 21
o 95 4
% 2 1 7 89

AE responses, then the same stimulus was presented again,
and the listener rated its category goodness to the chosen AE
category on a seven-point Likert scale 共1 = foreign, 7
= English兲. The listeners were allowed to change their cat-
egorization response before making a rating response but
were discouraged from doing so. A new trial began after the
rating response was completed; thus, testing was listener
paced.
No specific instruction was given in familiarization
or test regarding the use of vowel duration, number of spec-
tral categories in Japanese, or differences between AE and
Japanese vowel inventories since the focus of the current
study was to examine how naïve L2 listeners classify foreign
speech sounds using L1 categories.
B. Results and discussion
First, for the category goodness responses, medians of
ratings across all the listeners were obtained for all AE cat-
egories that received more than 10% out of 576 total re-
sponses for a Japanese vowel. As predicted from the results
of the acoustic comparisons, this analysis yielded higher
overall median ratings 共6兲 for 关ii, i兴, 关%%, %兴, 关oo, o兴 in both
conditions and 关ee兴 in sentence condition, and slightly lower
median ratings 共5兲 for 关e, aa, a兴 in both conditions and 关ee兴 in
citation condition.
To analyze the categorization results, each listener’s re-
sponses were transferred to a spreadsheet and confusion ma-
trices were constructed for 共1兲 individual speakers, 共2兲 indi-
vidual listeners, and 共3兲 two speaking styles. Examination of
these matrices revealed some differences among listeners for
some vowels 共not associated with dialect兲 and between
speaking styles.
Table IV presents the group data in which categorization
responses were pooled across the speakers, repetitions, and
listeners. In order for the results to be consistent with the
majority of listeners’ dialect profile, AE response categories
关Äb兴 and 关Åb兴 were pooled as 关Äb-Åb兴 in this analysis.4 The top
part 共A兲 of the table displays the categorization for citation
materials, and the bottom part 共B兲 presents the results for
sentence materials. The first column lists the Japanese vow-
els grouped by the temporal categories 共2-mora or 1-mora兲.
The cells in columns 2–11 present percentages of responses.
Numbers in boldface indicate the modal perceptual responses
for each Japanese vowel; boxed entries indicate the spec-
trally most similar AE vowels for each Japanese vowel de-
termined by the cross-language discriminant analyses pre-
sented in Sec. II.
As predicted from the results of acoustic comparisons,
the majority of Japanese vowels were assimilated to long AE
vowels. All five 2-mora vowels 关ii, ee, aa, oo, %%兴 were
consistently assimilated to long AE counterparts 关ib, e(, Äb-Åb,
o*, ub兴 respectively 共overall percentages from 89% to 99%兲,
and both high and the mid, back 1-mora vowels 关i, %, o兴 in

584 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008 Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels
both speaking styles were also assimilated to AE long cat-
egories 关ib, ub, o*兴, respectively 共overall percentages from
89% to 98%兲. These patterns were consistent with their spec-
tral similarity to AE categories, except for 关ee兴 in sentence
context. This suggests that AE listeners disregarded the tem-
poral differences between these 1- and 2-mora Japanese
vowels and perceived them as equally good exemplars of
long AE vowels.
By contrast, the assimilation patterns for the other Japa-
nese vowels were not straightforward. First, contrary to pre-
diction from acoustical similarity, Japanese 2-mora 关ee兴 did
not show any influence of speaking style and was perceived
as most similar to AE 关e(兴 in both conditions. Even though
some tokens of citation-form 关ee兴 were determined spectrally
to be most similar to AE 关(兴 共5 out of 12 tokens, see Table II兲,
the influence of token variability was not observed in its
assimilation pattern 共94% to 关e(兴兲. As for sentence form 关ee兴,
9 out of 12 tokens were spectrally similar to AE 关(兴 共see
Table III兲, but AE listeners were not influenced by token
variability or spectral similarity, and almost unanimously as-
similated it to AE 关e(兴. However, for sentence-form 关ee兴, the
average vocalic duration was 140 ms, which was closer to
that of AE 关e(兴 共132 ms兲 than 关(兴 共94 ms兲. Therefore, al-
though AE listeners ignored vowel duration for 关ii, i, %%, %,
oo, o兴, temporal similarity may have contributed to AE lis-
teners’ perceptual assimilation of Japanese 关ee兴.
As expected, perceptual assimilation patterns for 1-mora
关a兴 and 关e兴 in both forms included more than one AE cat-
egory. The modal responses were long AE vowels 共关Äb-Åb兴
and 关e(兴, respectively兲, but relatively large proportions of
other responses were given 共关#兴 for 关a兴 and 关(, ␧兴 for 关e兴兲. As
indicated in Table IV, these perceptual assimilation patterns
were not entirely predictable from spectral similarity com-
parisons. Even when vocalic duration was considered, unlike
sentence-form 关ee兴, these assimilation patterns suggest the
influence of other factors.
In order to account for the less consistent overall assimi-
lation patterns observed for 关e兴 and 关a兴 in both speaking
styles, further examination was performed to discover
whether these patterns were due to individual differences
across AE listeners or to within-listener inconsistency. The
results revealed that a few listeners consistently made non-
modal responses for these vowels and their responses can be
classified into either spectra-based or duration-based catego-
rizations. Spectra-based patterns were found for citation-
form 关e兴 and 关a兴: responses from three listeners 共2, 3, 11兲
consisted of 83% of 关(兴 responses for citation 关e兴. Similarly,
for citation-form 关a兴, 52% of 关#兴 responses were made by
three listeners 共1, 4, 10兲. Although sentence-form 关a兴 was
spectrally most similar to AE 关Äb-Åb兴, three listeners 共1, 2, 10兲
perceived this vowel as most similar to AE short vowel 关#兴,
suggesting the influence of duration. The response pattern for
sentence 关e兴 can be considered partially spectra-based. Six
listeners made 68% of the nonmodal responses 共关(兴 or 关␧兴兲.5
Of these nonmodal responses, one listener 共1兲 responded
with AE 关(兴 and 关␧兴 equally often 共44%兲; two listeners 共2, 3兲
made 关(兴 responses most often, whereas 关␧兴 was the modal
response for the three remaining listeners 共8, 10, 11兲. The 关(兴
response was consistent with the spectral and possibly tem-
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008
poral similarity to 1-mora 关e兴; other listeners may have cho-
sen 关␧兴 because 1-mora 关e兴 共53 ms兲 was temporally more
similar to 关␧兴 共98 ms兲 than 关e(兴 共132 ms兲. Still, it is not clear
as to why the majority of listeners responded with spectrally
and temporally less similar AE vowels in perceptually as-
similating these Japanese vowels.
IV. GENERAL DISCUSSION
In the present study, the similarity of Japanese vowels to
the AE vowel system was examined through acoustic com-
parisons and perceptual assimilation tasks, using stimulus
materials produced by four male speakers from each lan-
guage. Consonantal context was held constant and CV and
VC coarticulatory effects were considered minimal, but the
target vowels were produced in citation form and in a carrier
sentence to examine the influence of token variability asso-
ciated with speaking style as well as individual speakers.
Results of the acoustic analysis 共Sec. II兲 showed that
Japanese has five distinctive spectral vowel categories that
were further separated into five long-short pairs. In contrast,
although the 11 AE categories were differentiated fairly well
by spectral measures, the inclusion of stimulus duration im-
proved classification only slightly. Token variability due to
speaking style was small for both Japanese and AE. Cross-
language acoustic comparisons using only spectral measures
共F1 and F2 at vowel midpoint兲 indicated that Japanese vow-
els 关ii, i, %%, %, oo, o兴 in both speaking styles were most
similar to long AE vowels 关ib, ub, o*兴, respectively, whereas
classification of 关ee, e, aa, a兴 straddled more than one AE
category. Thus, it was predicted that if AE listeners rely pri-
marily on the spectral cues, the perceptual assimilation pat-
terns should reflect these acoustic similarity patterns, with
highly consistent categorization of long and short 关ii/i, oo/o,
%%/%兴, but less consistent assimilation of long and short
关ee/e, aa/a兴.
Perceptual assimilation results revealed that the five
2-mora Japanese vowels 关ii, ee, aa, oo,

兴 produced in
both speaking styles were consistently assimilated to compa-
rable long AE vowels 关ib, e(, Äb-Åb, o*, ub兴, respectively.
Therefore, according to SLM 共Flege, 1995兲, Japanese 2-mora
vowels can be considered perceptually identical or highly
similar to AE long vowels. On the other hand, the Japanese
1-mora vowels showed more varied patterns. The high vow-
els 关i, %兴 and mid, back vowel 关o兴 were consistently assimi-
lated to AE vowels 关ib, ub, o*兴, respectively. This is in accor-
dance with the results of spectral comparisons, and suggests
that AE listeners perceived these Japanese vowels as identi-
cal or highly similar to their spectrally most similar AE long
vowels and disregarded their shorter duration. Considering
that their 2-mora counterparts 关ii, %%, oo兴 were also assimi-
lated to these same AE categories, the assimilation patterns
of these long/short Japanese pairs can be considered ex-
amples of a “single-category pattern” in PAM 共Best, 1995兲.
As for the remaining 1-mora vowels 关e, a兴, the responses
from a few listeners were accounted for by cross-language
acoustic similarity 共spectral, temporal, or both兲. On the other
hand, the remaining AE listeners assimilated these Japanese
Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels 585
vowels into the same AE categories 关e(, Äb-Åb兴 as for their
2-mora counterparts and as equally good exemplars, suggest-
ing a “single-category” assimilation pattern. Unlike the mi-
nority responses, these responses could not be explained by
cross-language acoustic similarity patterns.
Then what would explain these majority responses? Re-
call that the perceptual task used in the present study has
been used successfully to assess assimilation of many L2
vowels by listeners from L1s with smaller vowel inventories
共Strange et al., 1998; 2001; 2004; 2005兲. In those studies,
cross-language discriminant analyses predicted perceptual
assimilation patterns well for most, but not all non-native
vowels that had counterparts in the L1. However, for some
“new” vowels, such as the front rounded vowels of German
that are not distinctive in AE, context-specific spectral simi-
larity did not predict perceptual similarity patterns by naïve
AE listeners. Since all five Japanese vowel qualities can be
considered to be present in AE, it was hypothesized in the
present study that the same perceptual assimilation task
should effectively reveal perceptual similarity patterns based
primarily on cross-language spectral similarity. The present
results suggested otherwise in some cases. For these failures,
at least two explanations can be offered. One concerns the
method of acoustic comparison, and the other is associated
with the assumptions of the perceptual task.
As Hillenbrand et al. 共1995兲 and others have shown in
AE, formant trajectories for many spectrally adjacent short/
long vowel pairs tend to be in the opposite directions in the
vowel space, with the lax vowels 共including long 关æ兴兲 mov-
ing toward more central positions, while tense vowels move
toward peripheral positions in vowel space. These formant
movements have been shown to affect vowel perception by
AE listeners 共cf. Nearey and Assmann, 1986; Nearey, 1989;
Strange et al., 1983兲. Therefore, even though both long and
short Japanese vowels tend to be monophthongal, if they are
spectrally similar to AE 关e(, Äb-Åb兴 at some time point other
than the vocalic midpoint, AE listeners’ perceptual assimila-
tion might be influenced by such similarity. Furthermore, as
PAM hypothesizes, if listeners perceive articulatory gestures
in the acoustic signal, similarity in the formant trajectories
may explain the perceptual results. In order to test this hy-
pothesis, Japanese 1-mora vowels 关e兴 and 关a兴 were subjected
to a series of cross-language discriminant analyses using F1
and F2 values at three time points, namely, 25%, 50%, and
75% points of vowel duration. Separate analyses were per-
formed for each speaking style using four combinations of
three time points: 25% only, 75% only, 25% + 75%, and
25% + 50% + 75%. Results showed that none of the four
combinations yielded different results from those reported in
Tables II and III. Therefore, although there might be some
other subtle cues that have influenced perceptual assimila-
tion, it was deemed reasonable to exclude inadequacy or in-
sufficiency of the present acoustic comparison in failing to
predict perceptual assimilation patterns for these vowels.
Turning to the second hypothesis, considering that both
关e兴 and 关a兴 were assimilated primarily to AE categories 关e(,
Äb-Åb兴 that are closer to the periphery in the vowel space than
the spectrally more similar 关(, #兴 are 共see Fig. 2兲, the present
results suggest the possible existence of other mechanisms
586 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 124, No. 1, July 2008
that are not currently included in PAM or SLM. For example,
although it was not intended to make such a claim, the
present results resemble the “peripherality bias” that Polka
and Bohn 共2003兲 suggested to account for asymmetries in
infant vowel discrimination. They summarized the results of
their own studies and others and showed that the asymme-
tries in vowel perception by infants exhibit a bias for better
discrimination in the category change paradigm when the
stimuli changed from a more central to a more peripheral
vowel 共e.g., 关*兴 to 关o兴, 关␧兴 to 关æ兴, 关y兴 to 关u兴, etc.兲. They
concluded that this bias toward peripheral vowels may have
an important role as perceptual anchors for language acqui-
sition. Assuming this bias is present into adulthood and
guides non-native speech learning, the present results for
Japanese 1-mora vowels, including 关e, a兴 might be explained
by this perceptual bias toward more peripheral vowels as
follows. Judging from the acoustic similarity and the ob-
served perceptual assimilation patterns, it can be hypoth-
esized that AE listeners compared the incoming 1-mora Japa-
nese vowels against both long and short AE vowels, but due
to their lack of attunement to duration cues and the periph-
erality bias, AE listeners chose more peripheral vowels as
most similar to the Japanese vowels.6
Finally, the present study compared Japanese and AE
vowels produced in relatively uncoarticulated 关hVb兴 context
in both citation and sentence conditions. More research is
underway that compares how cross-language acoustic and
perceptual similarities may vary when vowels are coarticu-
lated in different consonantal contexts, and at different
speaking rates and in different prosodic environments. Re-
search on AE listeners’ perceptual assimilation of North Ger-
man and Parisian French vowels 共Strange et al., 2005兲 sug-
gests that perceptual assimilation patterns often reflect
context-independent patterns of acoustic similarity. For in-
stance, AE listeners assimilate front, rounded vowels to back
AE vowels, rather than to front, unrounded AE vowels, even
in contexts in which back AE vowels are not fronted. How-
ever, since back AE vowels are fronted in coronal consonan-
tal contexts 共whereas front, unrounded AE vowels are never
backed兲 共Strange et al., 2007兲, front, rounded vowels can be
considered allophonic variations of back AE vowels by AE
listeners. In citation-form utterances, AE listeners were able
to indicate that these front “allophones” were inappropriate
in noncoronal contexts by rating them as poor exemplars of
AE back vowels. However, in sentence condition, front,
rounded vowels were considered “good” instances of back
AE vowels even when surrounded by labial consonants.
Thus, while context-specific spectral similarity did not pre-
dict assimilation of front, rounded vowels in noncoronal con-
texts, context-independent spectral similarity relationships
did. Further research on acoustic and perceptual similarity of
Japanese and AE vowels is needed to determine whether
context-independent spectral similarity patterns might ac-
count for perceptual assimilation of Japanese 关e, a兴, as well
as the remaining 1-mora vowels.
Nishi et al.: Similarity of Japanese and American vowels
V. CONCLUSIONS
J F1 F2 F3 Duration AE F1 F2 F3 Duration
The present study set out to test whether the perceptual long/short long/short
task used in previous studies was also useful in assessing ratio= 2.9 ratio= 1.3
perceptual similarity of non-native vowels from a small Sentence form
vowel inventory by listeners from a relatively large vowel ii 299 2189 3198 116 ib 303 2336 2961 108
inventory. As in previous studies, the results showed that
ee 445 1925 2638 140 e( 423 2175 2722 132
cross-language acoustic similarity may not always accurately
aa 687 1146 2337 138 Äb 754 1234 2609 125
predict perceptual assimilation of non-native vowels. Thus,
direct assessments of perceptual similarity relationships will Åb 660 1056 2571 152
be better predictors of discrimination difficulties by L2 learn- oo 434 796 2400 127 o* 479 933 2571 126
ers according to PAM and SLM. It was hypothesized that the %% 319 1128 2361 128 ub 342 1064 2422 115
inconsistency between acoustic and perceptual similarity re- æb 714 1645 2456 147
sults may suggest the existence of comparison processes that i 312 2076 3115 37 ( 461 1826 2634 94
are influenced by listeners’ knowledge about the distribu- e 464 1770 2407 53 ␧ 627 1657 2544 98
tional characteristics of phonetic segments in their native a 672 1134 2288 49 # 631 1232 2619 98
language. Under some stimulus and task conditions, the lis- o 423 776 2345 47
teners may be able to compare phonetically detailed aspects % 348 1069 2343 38 * 495 1202 2492 107
of non-native segments, while in others, they may resort to a long/short long/short
phonological level of analysis in making cross-language ratio= 2.9 ratio= 1.3
similarity judgments. Further research is needed to investi-
gate under what conditions AE listeners may be able to uti-
1
lize the large duration differences in Japanese 1-mora and In addition to these cases of assimilation of speech sounds to L1 catego-
ries, PAM includes a case of categorization of L2 sounds to nonspeech
2-mora vowels when making perceptual similarity judgments categories 共i.e., nonassimilable兲 where discrimination can range from good
and when attempting to differentiate these phonologically to very good, based on the psychoacoustic salience of the acoustic
contrastive vowel pairs. In general, the findings of the patterns.
2
present studies, as well as previous experiments on AE lis- The preliminary analyses for Japanese vowels did not reveal considerable
differences between two-formant vs three-formant analyses. Therefore, all
teners’ perceptual assimilation of German vowels suggest
discriminant analyses were performed using only F1 and F2 values.
that vocalic duration differences are often ignored in relating 3
The lower F1 for Japanese mid and low vowels were deemed cross-
non-native vowels to native categories. language differences rather than differences in vocal tract sizes between
the two speaker groups based on the acoustic similarity between Japanese
关ii兴 and AE 关i:兴.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 4
According to Labov et al. 共2006兲, differentiation between 关Ä:, Å:兴 by AE
speakers in Tampa area is variable overall, although they are produced
This research has been supported by NIDCD under distinctively before 关n兴 and 关t兴.
Grant No. DC00323 to W. Strange and JSPS under Grant No. 5
In some dialects in American English, 关(兴 and 关␧兴 may be merged 共Labov
17202012 to R. Akahane-Yamada. The authors are grateful to et al., 2006兲. However, the dialectal profiles of these listeners indicate no
such relationship with their response patterns.
Katherine Bielec, Mary Carroll, Robin Rodriguez, and David 6
It should be pointed out that the present study is considerably different
Thornton for their support with HYPERCARD stack program- from the studies with infants in methodological aspects. Using synthetic
ing, subject running, and data analysis. stimuli, Johnson et al. 共1993兲 found that phonetic targets for native vowels
are similar to the hyperarticulated forms, but the existence of a peripher-
ality bias for speaker-produced stimuli by adult listeners has not yet been
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