The influence of L1 prosodic systems on the perception of English stress patterns

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520558
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Doshisha University
• Principal Investigator: SUGAHARA Mariko 同志社大学, 文学部, 准教授 (10411050)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 英語の語強勢 / 日本語のアクセント / 外国語音声の知覚 / 母語の影響 / 英語母語話者 / 日本語母語話者 / 韓国語母語話者 / 英語学習者

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study has investigated whether Japanese speakers’ knowledge about lexical accent distribution in Japanese, i.e., L1’s phonological knowledge, influences their judgement of lexical stress locations in English (L2) words. Auditory perception experiments with English word stimuli, in which Japanese, English and Seoul Korean speakers participated, were carried out. English lexicon is dominated by word-initial stress and Seoul Korean has neither lexical stress nor accent. On the other hand, the most popular accent location in Japanese is the syllable that contains the ‘antepenultimate’ mora. Japanese speakers’ perception pattern in the experiments turned out to be different from other groups’ patterns, which is appropriately accounted for if we consider their perception influenced by their knowledge about the distribution of Japanese lexical accent.

Free Research Field

音韻論・音声学・英語と日本語の韻律