音段和韵律信息对汉语外语口音感知及言语可懂度的影响

The Contributions of Segmental and Prosodic Information to the Perception of Foreign Accent and Speech Intelligibility

本研究借助语音编辑和合成技术,通过对英语母语者和日语母语者的言语进行音段替换和韵律替换,考察了音段和韵律信息对汉语外语口音感知和言语可懂度的影响及其相对重要性。研究发现:在外语口音方面,音段和韵律替换都会带来外语口音感的明显降低,但韵律替换的作用更大;在言语可懂度方面,韵律替换的影响不大,而音段替换却会带来可懂度的显著上升。结果表明,韵律和音段信息对于汉语外语口音感知和言语可懂度的影响存在较大差别,也说明外语口音强弱和言语可懂度并非简单的对应关系。

By use of speech editing and synthesizing techniques, the present study examines the relative contributions of segmental and prosodic information to the perception of foreign accent and intelligibility in second language Chinese speech. The stimuli were digitally processed to exchange the segmental and prosodic features between recordings of the same Chinese sentences produced by native Chinese speakers and English/Japanese speakers learning Chinese as a foreign language. The results show that （1） while both segmental and prosodic manipulations contribute to the perception of foreign accent, prosodic manipulations play a more important role; （2） segmental manipulations contribute to speech intelligibility while prosodic manipulations do not. It is concluded that segmental and prosodic features are of different salience in perceiving accentedness and speech intelligibility and that perceptual processing of accent seems to be somewhat dissociated from that of intelligibility.