| Budget Amount *help |
¥11,050,000 (Direct Cost: ¥8,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥2,550,000)
Fiscal Year 2018: ¥1,560,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥360,000)
Fiscal Year 2017: ¥2,860,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥660,000)
Fiscal Year 2016: ¥2,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2015: ¥4,030,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥930,000)
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
Japanese accented English pronunciation was studied in terms of speech communication by native and non-native English speakers. The focus of the study is to examine if Japanese accented English is easily understood by other language speakers and whether the necessary information is conveyed to listeners. First, acoustic details of Japanese accented English were examined using a large-scale speech corpus. Based on these findings, Japanese accented English was synthesized by changing the degree of Japanese accentedness of some English phonemes using the Cyborg speech synthesis system, developed based on deep-learning-based speech synthesis. Then perception tests were performed to investigate segmental accuracy and Japanese accentedness. We found that assessors’ first language had little effect on the comprehension of the Japanese accented English. The results suggest that new pronunciation teaching systems need to be developed that focus on improving segmental accuracy.
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