Assessing the perceptual contributions of vowels and consonants to Mandarin sentence intelligibility.
This study investigated the perceptual contributions of vowels and consonants to Mandarin sentence intelligibility. Mandarin sentences were edited using a noise-replacement paradigm to preserve various amounts of segmental information and presented to normal-hearing listeners to recognize. The vowel-only Mandarin sentences yielded a remarkable 3:1 intelligibility advantage over the consonant-only sentences. This advantage is larger than that obtained with English sentences, suggesting that vowels may have a greater contribution to sentence intelligibility in Mandarin than in English. Although providing information redundant to contributions from vowel centers, a little vowel-consonant boundary transition would significantly improve the intelligibility of the consonant-only Mandarin sentences.
Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Prince Philip Dental Hospital, 34 Hospital Road, Hong Kong, Hong Kong. feichen1@hku.hk
Fei
F
Chen
Lena L N
LL
Wong
Eva Y W
EY
Wong
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult