A forced-choice test was administered to 10 university-level Korean talkers to evaluate their American English vowel perception abilities. The presented stimuli consisted of 148 CV syllables in which the target 9 vowels were presented in 18 onset consonant environments. After each presentation of CV syllables, the talkers were forced to click on one of 9 vowel icons on the computer screen. The responses were re-grouped according to the major consonant features (voicing, place, and manner) of the preceding consonants in the stimulus group and the presenters sex (males or females voice), to see if there is any contextual variability effect of them on vowel perception. It was found that sibilancy in onset consonants deteriorated vowel perception more drastically than the other features. And vowel perception after voiced consonants was better than after voiceless consonants. Furthermore, vowels presented in females voice was more difficult to identify than in males voice.
1. Introduction
2. Methods
3. Results and discussion I: preliminary inter-vowel comparison
4. Results and discussion II: contextual variation effects on vowel perception
5. Summary and conclusion
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