Some measures of intelligibility of natural and coded speech for native and non-native speakers of English
K. Ozawa, John S. Logan · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1987
Segmental intelligibility of both natural and coded speech was measured using the modified rhyme test (MRT). Pitch predictive multipulse excited speech coding (MPC) [K. Ozawa and T. Araseki, Proc. ICASSP86 33.3, 1689–1692 (1986)] was used to produce high-quality coded speech at 8 kb/s. As a reference, μ-law PCM was also used. To investigate not only perceptual differences between natural and coded speech but also the differences due to linguistic knowledge and experience with English, both native and non-native speakers of English were used as subjects. All of the stimuli were bandlimited through a low-pass filter with 4.5-kHz cutoff frequency and sampled at 10-kHz sampling frequency. Closed format MRT scores were obtained to measure the intelligibility for three conditions, natural speech, μ-law PCM and 8 kb/s MPC. Detailed analysis of the results of the intelligibility test will be presented. Differences between the intelligibility scores of native and non-native subjects and the relationship between these scores and their linguistic experience will also be discussed.