著者

Sakae INOUYE Yoshibumi SUGIHARA

出版者

The Phonetic Society of Japan

雑誌

音声研究 (ISSN:13428675)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.19, no.3, pp.43-49, 2015-12-30 (Released:2017-08-31)

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We created a device for measuring the strength of puffs near the mouth which are generated during speaking, and then compared the strength among Japanese, English and Chinese languages. Subjects were 14 or 15 male university-students for each group of the three languages. They read aloud texts (about 3-minute length) from a Murakami Haruki's novel in their native languages with a funnel held by hand before the mouth. The wind pressure (stagnation pressure) produced at the bottom of the funnel, which reflects the initial velocity of the puff, was transformed to electrical signals through a differential pressure transducer. The signals converted from analogue to digital data at 10-millisecond intervals were recorded on a personal computer. Then all of the pressure data with 15 pascals or higher were summed up for each reading, and the sum was designated as "Strong Puff Total, SPT". It was found that there was no significant difference in the SPT medians between English and Chinese groups, but the medians of the two groups were more than 3 times greater than that of the Japanese group; it quantitatively confirmed that the strength of puffs from the mouth in Japanese speaking is weak.