This study examines how closely Japanese utterances produced by German learners match those of Japanese natives, especially with respect to word and sentence prosody. Utterances were rated perceptually by Japanese native listeners as well as evaluated with respect to timing and F0 contours. We found that the German learners speak at a similar speech rate, but their syllabic durations are much more at variance than those of the Japanese controls. Altogether their rhythmic patterns are more similar than those by the Japanese. Contrary to our expectations perceptually prominent so-called pseudo-accent syllables are not lengthened, although the timing of tonal transitions at these is slightly different from the Japanese norm. Some transitions were not at all realized due to “deaccenting” phenomena.
Cite as: Mixdorff, H., Hayashi, R., Yamada-Bochynek, Y., Hirose, K., Fujisaki, H. (2010) German learners of Japanese - perceptual and prosodic analysis of utterances from a meditative setting. Proc. Second Language Studies: Acquisition, Learning, Education and Technology (L2WS 2010), paper O3-2
@inproceedings{mixdorff10_l2ws,
author={Hansjörg Mixdorff and Ryoko Hayashi and Yoriko Yamada-Bochynek and Keikichi Hirose and Hiroya Fujisaki},
title={{German learners of Japanese - perceptual and prosodic analysis of utterances from a meditative setting}},
year=2010,
booktitle={Proc. Second Language Studies: Acquisition, Learning, Education and Technology (L2WS 2010)},
pages={paper O3-2}
}