Both human listeners and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems tend to struggle more with recognizing second-language (L2) speech than first-language (L1) speech. This study examined the performance of Whisper (a state-of-the-art ASR system) and L1 English listeners in recognizing L1 and L2 English under a controlled, homogeneous setting (using the same sentences and data collection procedures), enabling a direct comparison across listener and talker types. Speech recordings from 67 L2 English talkers and 25 L1 English talkers embedded in varying levels of background noise were tested, and transcriptions from Whisper and humans were analyzed. Across both L1 and L2 speech, Whisper showed overall higher word recognition accuracy than humans. Notably, it achieved near-perfect performance in quiet or low-noise conditions. Despite this superior performance, Whisper showed greater hallucination rates than humans under loud-noise conditions, with a particularly large gap for L2 speech. Further analysis revealed that Whisper’s hallucination rates remained higher for L2 than L1 speech even after controlling for accuracy, suggesting that these hallucinations are not merely a byproduct of recognition difficulty but reflect a functional difference in how Whisper processes L1 vs. L2 speech. Overall, these findings underscore both the strengths and limitations of Whisper: its robustness in clean listening conditions, but also its hallucination bias against L2 speech.
목차
1. Introduction 2. Methods 2.1. Speech materials 2.2. Word recognition accuracy and hallucination rate 2.3. Statistical analysis 3. Results 3.1. Word recognition accuracy and hallucination rate of L2 speech 3.2. Word recognition accuracy and hallucination rate of L1 speech 3.3. Post-hoc comparison of hallucination rate in L1 vs. L2 speech 4. Discussion 5. Conclusion References [Abstract]
국제언어인문학회 [INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR HUMANISTIC STUDIES IN LANGUAGE]
설립연도
2000
분야
인문학>언어학
소개
국제언어인문학회는 '언어를 통한 인문학 연구'의 필요성에 동감하는 여러 전공분야 학자들의 뜻을 담고 있습니다. 언어에 초점을 맞추는 것은, 다양한 전공분야의 참여에서 생겨날 수 있는 '이질적 집합'의 상황을 극복하기 위한 장치입니다. 현재로서는 작은 불씨를 지핀 것에 불과합니다. 그러나 이렇게 일구어진 불꽃이 새로운 학풍의 바람결에 커다란 섬광으로 빛나게 될 날이 올 것을 우리는 확신합니다. 우리의 학회와 학술지는 인문학 불변의 가치와 시대적 사명을 인식하는 국내외의 학자들을 향해 활짝 개방되어 있습니다. 특정 전공의 범위를 넘어서서 철학, 문학, 언어학, 종교, 역사, 문화, 예술 등의 시각에서 언어의 본질을 토론할 기회가 될 것입니다.