2015 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
母語と外国語のプロソディ（＝言語の音楽的要素）の脳内処理と外国語教育への応用
| Project/Area Number |
15J07142
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| Research Institution | Nagoya University |
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Principal Investigator |
浅野 友紀 名古屋大学, 国際開発研究科, 特別研究員(PD)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-24 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | prosody / second language learning / working memory / Psycholinguistics / experiments |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The aim of the study during the tenure is to explore how the music of a first and second language (= L1 and L2 prosody) is processed in the brain and how L2 speakers can overcome the difficulties in acquiring L2 prosody. Since L2 prosody has been still undertaught and understudied, it is high time to investigate this issue.
The first experiment tested the production and perception of L2 prosody under various experimental situations that required different grades of cognitive load. Predicted difficulties in acquiring L2 Japanese prosody were either presented in isolated words or were embedded in different carrier sentences. German, English and Spanish learners of Japanese were tested in comparison with Japanese L1 speakers. The result clearly showed increased difficulties in perceiving and producing L2 prosody under increased cognitive load. Regardless of the three learner groups, even highly advanced L2 learners encountered the same difficulties that beginners did, suggesting that grammatical and vocabulary knowledge of the learners did not predict the degree of their prosodic skills.
The follow-up experiment investigated the perception of L2 prosody by L1 listeners. To this aim, the production data of the first experiment were used as stimuli. Japanese L1 listeners participated to the study. The result showed comprehensive difficulties due to L2 prosody, regardless of the learner groups and of the levels of the learners' L2 grammatical and vocabulary knowledge. The study empirically confirmed the importance of successful acquisition of L2 prosody for a communication.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
In the first quartile of the year, I developed experimental stimuli and recorded them and programmed the first experiment. Moreover, I read numerous literatures and previous works for the second study. Since I used a software for developing psycholinguistic experiments, which I am familiar with, the developing work run very smoothly. In the second quartile of the year, I extensively gathered data for the two studies (48 German learners of Japanese, 24 Japanese native speakers, 48 English learners of Japanese and 12 Spanish learners of Japanese for the first study and 24 Japanese native speakers for the second study).
Moreover, I attended an international conference on phonetic sciences in Glasgow (UK) in August and gave an oral presentation to a large number of international audiences. The feedbacks that I achieved from them were insightful not only for the presented study, but also for the studies planned during the tenure of the fellowship. On the conference, I got to know an Italian researcher who introduced me an innovative data analysis method for prosodic data. Therefore I started to acquire the analysis skills, on which I am currently also working.
In the third quartile of the year, I submitted four papers for three conferences. All peer-reveiwed papers were accepted. In the fourth quartile of the year, I dedicated myself to writing a journal paper based on the first experimental data. Finally, I started to develop experimental materials for the second study.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In the second year, I am going to pursue the second and third studies as planned before:
In the first quartile of the year, I will finish to develop the first experiment of the second study and will gather data in Germany. In the second quartile of the year, I will gather data in Nagoya and finally start to analyze the data. In the third quartile of the year, I would like to take opportunity to apply didactic methods based on the findings in a Japanese classroom at an University in Germany. In the fourth quartile of the year, I will start to prepare for the third study planned for the tenure track.
During the whole year, I am also going to write conference and journal papers to report the results of the studies.
Moreover, in 2016, I will attend several international conferences on which I am going to present my work.
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Research Products
(11 results)
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[Journal Article] Self Organizing Maps for the Visual Analysis of Pitch Contours2015
Author(s)
Sacha, D., & Asano, Y., & Rohrdantz, C., & Keim, D., & Braun. B., & Butt, M.
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Journal Title
Proceedings of the 20th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics
Volume: NA
Pages: 181-190
DOI
Peer Reviewed / Open Access / Int'l Joint Research / Acknowledgement Compliant
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