| Daily communication is often carried out under noise condition.The noise produces masking effects on the target speech signal,leading to the reduction of the acoustic information that can be obtained from the speech,which may greatly affect listeners’ speech perception.Therefore,people usually adjust their strategies of speech perception and speech production to achieve normal communication under noise condition.Consonants are an important part of English phonetic system and Chinese phonetic system.Previous researchers have found that people’s consonant perception performances differ in different noise conditions.However,most studies focused on English consonant perception in noise by people from European countries.By far,limited studies have explored English consonant perception in noise by native Chinese speakers.Moreover,few studies have explored the perception of Mandarin consonant in noise.Therefore,the present study aims to compare the perception performances of Mandarin consonants and English consonants by native Chinese listeners under different conditions.In addition,this study also explores the influence of native language transfer on the perception of English consonants in noise by native Chinese speakers.This study mainly answers the following three research questions:1.What is the influence of different noise types on English consonant perception by native Chinese speakers?2.What is the influence of different noise types on Mandarin consonant perception by native Chinese speakers?3.What are the differences and similarities between native Chinese speakers’perception performance of English consonants and that of Mandarin consonants under different noise conditions?Will native Chinese speakers’ performances under different test conditions be influenced by native language transfer?A total of 32 native Chinese speakers with normal hearing participated in the current study.The English stimuli in the experiment were 384 nonsense vowel-consonant-vowel(VCV)syllables consisting of the combinations of 24 English consonants(/p,b,t,d,k,g,t(?),d(?),f,v,ε,(?),s,z,(?),(?),h,m,n,(?),l,r,j,w/)and 9 types of English vowel contexts.The Mandarin stimuli were 384 nonsense VCV syllables consisting of the combinations of 24 Mandarin consonants(/ph,p,th,t,kh,k,tsh,ts,t(?)h,t(?),tch,tc,f,s,(?),c,x,m,n,(?),l,(?),y,w/)and 9 types of Mandarin vowel contexts.The subjects were asked to complete the English consonant perception test and the Mandarin consonant perception test under four different test conditions:quiet condition,speech-shaped noise(SSN),competing speaker noise(CS),and eight-talker babble noise(8BB).The order of noise types for each subject in the experiment is at random.Subjects need to identify the stimuli through headphones and choose the consonant that they heard by clicking the button on the screen.The results of the experiment are as follows:1.In English consonant perception test,native Chinese speakers had different mean accuracy for the overall identification of 24 English consonants in different test conditions.Native Chinese speakers had an accuracy of 79.56%in quiet.Among three noise conditions,native Chinese speakers had the highest accuracy in CS(61.91%)and the lowest accuracy in SSN(56.34%).However,the rank of the size of masking effect for different types of noise varied for different consonants.Eight consonants(/θ,(?),s,z,(?),(?),(?),r/)showed the highest accuracy in SSN among three noise conditions.Ten consonants(/b,k,t(?),f,h,m,n,l,j,w/)showed clear higher accuracy in CS than in SSN.According to consonant confusion matrix,it can be found that native Chinese speakers had a mutual confusion for certain consonants such as/(?)/with/z/or/v/with/w/.In addition,it was found that native Chinese speakers performed worst in the perception of English dentals(/θ,(?)/)under all test conditions.Alveolar showed the highest accuracy in SSN(71.10%).Glottal showed the highest accuracy in CS(79.38%),and affricate showed the highest accuracy in 8BB(75.55%).2.In Mandarin consonant perception test,native Chinese speakers had different mean accuracy for the overall identification of 24 English consonants in different test conditions.Native Chinese speakers had an accuracy of 91.49%in quiet.Among three noise conditions,native Chinese speakers had the highest accuracy in SSN(84.42%)and the lowest accuracy in 8BB(78.44%).Native Chinese speakers had little difference in perception performance of seven consonants including/t(?)h,t(?),tch,c,s,(?),(?)/,while six consonants(/p,k,tc,x,m,n/)showed clear higher accuracy in CS than in 8BB.According to consonants confusion matrix,under different test conditions,native Chinese speakers most easily confused/t(?)/into/tc/,followed by the/t(?)h/into/tch/and/(?)/into/c/.3.By comparing English consonant perception with Mandarin consonant perception in noise,the current study found that native Chinese speakers were affected by the masking effects of noise in perceiving both English consonants and Mandarin consonants.However,the overall results showed that listeners got significantly higher identification scores in Mandarin consonant perception test than in English consonant perception test in all test conditions.Under all noise conditions,native Chinese speakers had a better perception performance in plosives of both English and Mandarin.Native Chinese speakers were poor at those English consonants that have no counterparts in Chinese such as/θ,(?),(?)/,which to some extent proved the influence of L1 transfer on the perception of L2 consonants.The current study proves that people’s perception of second language consonants in noise is affected by many factors such as noise types,native language transfer and acoustic properties of individual consonants.Theoretically,this study can explain and enrich the theory of second language speech perception to a certain extent,and deepen the understanding of consonant perception under noise conditions.In addition,this study also provides some inspiration and thinking for English phonetic learning and teaching. |
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