The Mutual Intelligibility of Different World English Varieties : The Correlation between Production and Perception and the Measurable Effects of Prosodic Parameters on Intelligibility

2010 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21820062
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Yokohama College of Commerce
• Principal Investigator: YAMAZAKI Daisuke Yokohama College of Commerce, 商学部, 講師 (00549537)
• Project Period (FY): 2009 – 2010
• Keywords: 音声学 / 英語 / 日本語の母語話者 / 分かりやすさ / プロソディー

Research Abstract

This research sets out to investigate the mutual intelligibility of different World English varieties, placing the major focus on the correlation between production and perception and the measurable effects of prosodic parameters on intelligibility. For this study, some experiments including production, recognition, and perception tests were conducted to examine the main hypotheses which were posited to achieve the purpose of the study. A large number of non-native speakers of English participated in the experiments as a test subject. Then, all data were analyzed and scrutinized. As a result, there was a substantial number of findings related to the mutual intelligibility of English spoken by native speakers of Japanese.