Is there conflation? An acoustic analysis of vowels in Japanese English

This article examines whether conflation, a term introduced by Nihalani, occurs among English vowels produced by four Japanese native speakers reading a short English text. On the basis of perceptual, acoustic, and statistical methods, it is argued that conflation is not key to understanding the structure of vowels in Japanese English (JE). Having inspected vowel variants, we conclude the following. First, since conflation is not guaranteed, singular emphasis on suprasegmental features is untenable. Second, vowel space in JE tends to be centralized. As a result, speakers have more difficulty producing open back vowels. Third, the centralized vowel [a], substituted for five vowels (/æ/, /ə/, /ʌ/, /ɜ/, /ɑ/), is not statistically speaking a single sound. Fourth, JE speakers produce near-native vowels to different degrees. Statistical test results showed no significant difference between the pronunciation of the open-mid vowel [ʌ] produced by JE speakers and an American English speaker. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group