Assessing the perceptual contributions of vowels and consonants to Mandarin sentence intelligibility

J Acoust Soc Am. 2013 Aug;134(2):EL178-84. doi: 10.1121/1.4812820.

Abstract

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acoustic Stimulation
  • Adult
  • Audiometry, Speech
  • Cues
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Phonetics*
  • Recognition, Psychology
  • Speech Acoustics*
  • Speech Intelligibility*
  • Speech Perception*
  • Voice Quality*
  • Young Adult