Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

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Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityPerception of Japanese quantity by Swedish speakinglearners: A preliminary analysisMiyoko InoueDepartment of Japanese Language & Culture, Nagoya University, JapanAbstractSwedish learners’ perception of Japanesequantity was investigated by means of an identificationtask. Swedish informants performedsimilarly to native Japanese listeners inshort/long identification of both vowel andconsonant. The Swedish and Japanese listenersreacted similarly both to the durational variationand to the F0 change despite the differentuse of F0 fall in relation with quantity in theirL1.IntroductionA quantity language is a language that has aphonological length contrast in vowels and/orconsonants. Japanese and Swedish are known assuch languages, and they employ both vowelsand consonants for the long/short contrast (Han,1965, for Japanese; Elert, 1964, for Swedish).Both of the languages use duration as a primaryacoustic cue to distinguish the long/short contrast.Quantity in Japanese is known to be difficultto acquire for learners (e.g. Toda, 2003), however,informants in previous research havemainly been speakers of non-quantity languages.In their research on L2 quantity in Swedish,McAllister et al. (2002) concluded that the degreeof success in learning L2 Swedish quantityseemed to be related to the role of the durationfeature in learners’ L1. It can, then, be anticipatedthat Swedish learners of Japanese may berelatively successful in acquiring Japanesequantity. The present study, thus, aims to investigatewhether Swedish learners are able toperform similarly to the Japanese in the perceptionof Japanese quantity of vowels and consonants.In addition to duration, there can be otherphonetic features that might supplement thequantity distinction in quantity languages. InSwedish, quality is such an example, but such afeature may not be necessarily utilized in otherlanguages. For example, quality does not seemto be used in the quantity contrast in Japanese(Arai et al., 1999).Fundamental frequency (F0) could be such asupplementary feature in Japanese. Kinoshita etal. (2002) and Nagano-Madsen (1992) reportedthat the perception of quantity in L1 Japanesewas affected by the F0 pattern. In theirexperiments, when there was a F0 fall within avowel, Japanese speakers tended to perceive thevowel as ‘long’. On the other hand, a vowelwith long duration was heard as ‘short’ when theonset of F0 fall was at the end of the vowel(Nagano-Madsen, 1992).These results are in line with phonologicaland phonetic characteristics of word accent inJapanese. It is the first mora that can be accentedin a long vowel, and the F0 fall is timed with theboundary of the accented and the post-accentmorae of the vowel. Since the second mora in along vowel does not receive the word accent, aF0 fall should not occur at the end of a longvowel.In Swedish, quantity and word accent seemonly to be indirectly related to the stress in sucha way that the stress is signaled by quantity andthe F0 contour of word accent is timed with thestress. In the current research, it is also examinedif Swedish learners react differently tostimuli with and without F0 change. Responseto unaccented and accented words will becompared. An unaccented word in Japanesetypically has only a gradual F0 declination,while an accented word is characterized by aclear F0 fall. It can be anticipated that Swedishlearners would perform differently from nativeJapanese speakers.MethodologyAn identification task was conducted in order toexamine the categorical boundary between longand short vowels and consonants and the consistencyof the categorization. The task wascarried out in a form of forced-choice test, andthe results were compared between Swedish andJapanese informants.StimuliThe measured data of the prepared stimuli 1 areshown in Table 1 and112
Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityTable 2. The original sound, accented and unaccented/mamama, mama:ma/ (for long/shortvowel) and /papapa, papap:a/ (for long/shortconsonant), was recorded by a female nativeJapanese speaker. For the accented version, the2nd mora was accented for both ma- andpa-series. The stimuli were made by manipulatinga part of recorded tokens with Praat(Boersma and Weenink, 2004) so that the longsound shifts to short in 7 steps. Thus, a total of28 tokens (2 series x 7 steps x 2 accent type)were prepared. The F0 peak, the location of F0peak in V2 and the final F0 were fixed at theaverage value of long and short sounds.Table 1. The measurements of the stimuli inma-series (adopted from Kanamura, 2008: 30 (Table2-2) and 41 (Table 2-5), with permission). Theunaccented and the accented stimuli are differentiatedby the utterance final F0 (rightmost column).No. RatioC3Duration(ms)WordDuration(ms)1 0.25 78 5822 0.40 128 6273 0.55 168 6734 0.70 213 7185 0.85 259 7646 1.00 303 8107 1.15 349 855F0Peak(Hz)PeakLocationinV2330 48%FinalF0 (Hz)242(unacc)136(acc)Table 2. The measurements of the stimuli inpa-series. The unaccented and the accented stimuliare differentiated by the utterance final F0 (rightmostcolumn).No. RatioC3Duration(ms)WordDuration(ms)1 0.25 85 4632 0.40 136 5143 0.55 188 5664 0.70 239 6175 0.85 290 6686 1.00 341 7197 1.15 392 770F0Peak(Hz)PeakLocationinV2295 96%FinalF0 (Hz)231(unacc)116(acc)InformantsThe informants were 23 Swedish learners ofJapanese (SJ) at different institutions in Japanand Sweden. The length of studying Japanesevaried from 3 to 48 months. 2 Thirteen nativespeakers of standard Japanese (NJ) also participatedin the task in order for comparison.ProcedureAn identification task was conducted usingExperimentMFC of Praat. Four sessions(ma-/pa-series x 2 accent) were held for eachinformant. In each session, an informant listenedto 70 stimuli (7 steps x 10 times) randomlyand answered whether the stimulus played was,for example, /mamama/ or /mama:ma/ byclicking on a designated key.Calculation of the categorical boundaryand the ‘steepness’ of categorical functionThe location of the categorical boundary betweenlong and short, and also the consistency(‘steepness’) of the categorization function wascalculated following Ylinen et al. (2005). Thecategorical boundary is indicated in milliseconds.The value of steepness is interpreted insuch a way that the smaller the value, thestronger the consistency of the categorizationfunction.ResultsIt was reported in Kanamura (2008) that severalof the Chinese informants did not show correspondencebetween the long/short responses andthe duration of V2 in the mamama/mama:mastimuli. She excluded the data of such informantsfrom the analysis. No such inconsistencybetween the response and the duration wasfound for the Swedes or for the Japanese in thecurrent study, and thus none of the data wereomitted in this regard. However, the data of oneJapanese informant was eliminated from theresult of ma-series since the calculated boundarylocation of that person was determined as extremelyhigh compared with the others.Perception of long and short vowel(ma-series)Figure 1 indicates the percentage of ‘short’ responseto the stimuli. The leftmost stimulus onx-axis (labeled as ‘0.25’) is the shortest soundand the rightmost the longest (‘1.15’). Theplotted responses traced s-shaped curves, andthe curves turned out to be fairly close to eachother. Differences are found at 0.55 and 0.70,and the ‘short’ responses by NJ differ visiblybetween unaccented and accented stimuli. The‘short’ response to the accented stimuli at 0.55113
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