Presenter(s): Hayli Brown—Linguistics, Japanese
Faculty Mentor(s): Kaori Idemaru
Session 1: Speech and Sound—Can you Hear Me?
This study extends previous findings on the perception of pitch accent in Japanese second language speech (L2) and further analyzes its effect on the word level in isolation . Previous research revealed that pitch accent is the strongest acoustic factor that affects how accented a speaker sounds
when speaking Japanese as an L2 . Analyzing this effect at the word level will inform us on where this accentedness is heaviest in a phrase . Japanese speech samples were collected from 20 American English speakers (10 speakers in both second and third year groups) studying Japanese . The L2 participants provided speech samples of 18 words both with and without a native speaker model . Pitch patterns 0 (LHH), 1 (HLL), and 3 (LHL) were examined in words that had three morae— units of time, which are given separate pitch accents to create a tonal pattern in Japanese . Native Japanese listeners (10 participants) rated the samples with regard to degrees of foreign accent . Words with Type 0 and Type 2 pitch accents were rated the highest for having a perceived foreign accent . Perceived foreign accentedness was also rated higher for the second year group of Japanese learners . Further research should be conducted to ascertain the exact acoustic or phonological motivations for these results, but the difference between English and Japanese intonation patterns is considered as one motivation in this study . With more research, the findings of this study may provide useful tools for better pronunciation teaching methods with the goal of achieving native-like fluency .