2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Development of a tone adjustment self-study app with evaluation, including all the functions of Japanese intonation and elucidating their relationship

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	19K00743
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 02090:Japanese language education-related
Research Institution	Kumamoto Health Science University (2020-2023) Prefectural University of Kumamoto (2019)
Principal Investigator	Baba Ryoji 熊本保健科学大学, 保健科学部, 研究員 (30218672)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	飯村伊智郎熊本県立大学, 総合管理学部, 教授 (50347697) 森山賀文熊本県立大学, 総合管理学部, 教授 (10413866) 石橋賢熊本県立大学, 総合管理学部, 准教授 (70749118)
Project Period (FY)	2019-04-01 – 2024-03-31
Keywords	音調独習アプリ / AIによる発音評価 / 日本語学習者 / 楽しく学べるシステムの開発
Outline of Final Research Achievements	Language sounds are made up of speech sounds and prosody, and Japanese prosody is, broadly speaking, supported by length and pitch. Research on the pitch and tone of Japanese speech is progressing, but functions such as discriminating meaning, identifying utterance intent, indicating syntactic structure, and expressing emotion have been addressed individually. In this study, we investigated cases where the accent changes depending on the meaning, such as hurahurada/hurahurasuru, phrases where the meaning changes depending on the tone, such as neteiru inu no kodomo, and phrases where the emphasis changes depending on the tone, such as yama de soba o tabemashita. We developed an app that allows you to self-study the above-mentioned listening practice and changing pronunciation, and verified its effectiveness on actual learners.
Free Research Field	日本語教育　日本語音声学　言語学
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	ちょっとした発音の誤りが事故の原因となることがある。そして、深刻なのが、感情的な誤解である。それを防ぐために、日本語母語話者でさえ気づきにくい、音調に着目し、スマホのアプリに実装した。発音の上達には毎日の継続が必要であり、教育の現場では対応しきれない。情報のやり取りから感情表現まで、誰もが持つ高機能端末であるスマートフォンで、利用者が楽しく、楽に学べるシステムを提供する、基礎を築いた。