2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Study of mechanism of spoken-word recognition and phonological information
| Project/Area Number |
15520267
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Linguistics
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| Research Institution | Dokkyo University |
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Principal Investigator |
OTAKE Takashi Dokkyo University, Foreign Languages, Professor, 外国語学部, 教授 (50203815)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2004
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| Keywords | spoken-word recognition / word activation model / phonemes / prosody / accentless dialects / Tokyo dialect / syllable structure / onset-rime |
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| Research Abstract |
This research has investigated the function of the phonological information which is associated with spoken-word recognition, specifically focusing on its universality and language-specificity. The following three topics were investigated during the granted period between 2003 and 2004.
The first topic was concerned with phonological units in spoken-word recognition. The current models in spoken-word recognition assume phonemes as a unit for word activation. It was examined whether phonemes could be used as the unit for word activation in Japanese, using Japanese school children without knowledge of Roman alphabet. The experimental data showed that they could access to Japanese lexicon with phonemes, suggesting that phonemes may be a universal phonological unit for word activation.
The second topic was concerned with the role of prosody in spoken-word recognition. Our earlier studies have shown that prosody is directly involved with the selection of possible word candidates in Tokyo Japa
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nese, but not with accentless Japanese dialects, such as Kumamoto and Tochigi dialects. In this study it was examined further whether accentless dialect is not directly involved with the selection of possible word candidates, using Fukushima dialect speakers. The data confirmed that accentless dialect speakers were less sensitive to employ this information in the word selection.
The final topic was concerned with recognition of internal structure of syllable. It is widely known that English speakers recognize the onset-rime structure within syllable. One possible interpretation is that they are constantly exposed to English in which the onset-rime structure is favored. In this study it was tested whether this constant exposure of English causes the preference, by comparing Japanese English bilinguals with Japanese monolinguals. The data showed that the bilinguals were sensitive to the onset-rime structure, while the monolinguals were not, suggesting that the constant exposure could be responsible for the recognition of the onset-rime structure. Less
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Research Products
(12 results)
