Bilingual speaker identification: Chinese and English
Issue: Vol 22 No. 1 (2015)
Journal: International Journal of Speech Language and the Law
Subject Areas: Linguistics
DOI: 10.1558/ijsll.v22i1.18636
Abstract:
Very few studies have examined voice memory and speaker identification in bilingual contexts. This study investigated how well bilingual listeners could identify bilingual voices in different language conditions. 89 Cantonese-English and 89 Mandarin-English listeners participated in voice line-ups with Cantonese-English voices in the same-language and cross-language conditions. Results show that the overall identification accuracy was low. Cantonese-English listeners performed significantly better in the same-language than cross-language conditions, similar to previous findings based on monolingual subjects. However, there was no language effect for the Mandarin-English listeners, possibly due to their unfamiliarity with the languages concerned. Confidence ratings showed that all listeners were more confident in the same-language condition with their most familiar language, although the relationship between confident and accuracy was not reliable. The results suggest that some indexical information about speaker identity is language-dependent. Different articulatory settings may explain the better performance of Cantonese-English listeners in the same-language conditions.
Author: Peggy P.K. Mok, Robert Bo Xu, Donghui Zuo
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