ISCA Archive Eurospeech 2003
ISCA Archive Eurospeech 2003

Considerations on vowel durations for Japanese CALL system

Taro Mouri, Keikichi Hirose, Nobuaki Minematsu

Due to various difficulties in pronunciation, utterances by non-native speakers may be lacking in fluency. The Japanese pronunciation is said to have mora-synchronism, and, therefore, we assume that the disfluency may cause larger variations in vowel durations. Analyses of vowel (and CV) durations were conducted for Japanese sentence utterances by 2 non-Japanese speakers and one Japanese speaker (all female speakers). Larger variations were clearly observed in non-Japanese utterances. Then, 10 Japanese speakers were asked to rate the non-Japanese utterances. Strong negative correlations were observed between durational variations and pronunciation ratings. Based on the result, a method was developed for automatic evaluation of non- Japanese utterances. The ratings by the method were shown to be close to those by native speakers. Also, in order to offer a corrective feedback in learner's voice, non-Japanese utterances were modified in their vowel durations by referring to native Japanese utterances. The modification was done using TD-PSOLA scheme. The result of listening test indicated some improvements in nativeness.