On the physical factors which makes the mother tongue dialogues smoothly - through the comparison with the non-mother tongue

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24650075
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Perception information processing/Intelligent robotics
• Research Institution: Chiba University
• Principal Investigator: KUROIWA Shingo 千葉大学, 融合科学研究科(研究院), 教授 (20333510)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ICHIKAWA Akira 千葉大学, 大学院融合科学研究科, 名誉教授 (80241933) ; HORIUCHI Yasuo 千葉大学, 大学院融合科学研究科, 准教授 (30272347) ; KIKUCHI Hideaki 早稲田大学, 人間科学学術院, 教授 (70308261)
• Research Collaborator: NAKA Makiko 北海道大学, 大学院文学研究科, 教授 (00172255) ; OHASHI Hiroki 東京大学, 大学院教育学研究科 ; KAWABATA Yoshiko 千葉大学, 大学院社会科学研究科, 特別研究員 ; TAKIZAWA Keiko 早稲田大学, 大学院人間科学研究科
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 音声学 / 話者交替 / 対話機能獲得 / 話者移行適格場 / TRP / プロソディ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In the dialogue among mother tongue adult speakers, overlapping utterances are produced in transition-relevance places (TRP). This phenomenon seems to appear as the result of some capability which reduces the mental ‘burden’ of the dialogue in the mother tongue. We examined the age to acquire this capability regarding Japanese mother tongue speakers.
The timing of the turn taking of the mother tongue and the non-mother tongue speakers was compared first. It was found that the non-mother tongue speaker could not maintain TRP. Next, the timing of turn taking between adults and five-year olds or six-year olds was examined. As for five-year olds, a difference between them and adults was present, but a difference between six-year olds and adults was absent. As a result, it found that the capability was already acquired by six.

Free Research Field

音声情報処理