Gnevsheva Ksenia, Bürkle Daniel
School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Australian National University, Australia.
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, UK.
Lang Speech. 2020 Mar;63(1):166-183. doi: 10.1177/0023830919827621. Epub 2019 Feb 13.
Current research shows that listeners are generally accurate at estimating speakers' age from their speech. This study investigates the effect of speaker first language and the role played by such speaker characteristics as fundamental frequency and speech rate. In this study English and Japanese first language speakers listened to English- and Japanese-accented English speech and estimated the speaker's age. We find the highest correlation between real and estimated speaker age for English listeners listening to English speakers, followed by Japanese listeners listening to both English and Japanese speakers, with English listeners listening to Japanese speakers coming last. We find that Japanese speakers are estimated to be younger than the English speakers by English listeners, and that both groups of listeners estimate male speakers and speakers with a lower mean fundamental frequency to be older. These results suggest that listeners rely on sociolinguistic information in their speaker age estimations and language familiarity plays a role in their success.
当前研究表明，听众通常能够根据说话者的语音准确估算其年龄。本研究调查了说话者的母语以及诸如基频和语速等说话者特征所起的作用。在本研究中，以英语为母语和以日语为母语的人收听带有英语和日语口音的英语语音，并估算说话者的年龄。我们发现，对于收听英语说话者的英语听众而言，实际年龄与估算年龄之间的相关性最高，其次是收听英语和日语说话者的日语听众，而收听日语说话者的英语听众的相关性最低。我们发现，英语听众认为日语说话者比英语说话者年轻，并且两组听众都认为男性说话者以及平均基频较低的说话者年龄更大。这些结果表明，听众在估算说话者年龄时依赖社会语言信息，并且语言熟悉程度在他们的判断中发挥了作用。
