Doctoral Dissertation Research: Acquisition and Processing of Pitch Accents: A Cross-linguistic Study of English and Japanese Second Language Learners

本论文探讨第二语言使用韵律--句子的“节奏”和“旋律”--来传达和理解信息结构。在英语中，对比信息（“玛丽安娜做了苹果面包吗？”“玛丽安娜做了香蕉面包。”）和新的信息（“玛丽安娜做了什么？”“玛丽安娜做了香蕉面包。）的重音会更高，持续时间更长，而旧的信息则会被弱化（“谁做了香蕉面包？“--“玛丽安娜做了香蕉面包。").对比信息和新信息以音高的音调区分，前者以低声调后高声调出现，后者以高坪声调出现。相比之下，在东京日语中，音高的存在或缺失表明了单词的含义（“a 'me”“rain”与“ame”“candy”），而不是信息结构。鉴于这些差异，本研究探讨了目的语韵律感知是否受到母语（L1）属性的调制，以及L2学习者如何发展信息结构的韵律标记。本研究对母语为日语的英语学习者和母语为英语的日语学习者进行了对比音高、规则高音和去重音三种韵律及其与信息结构的关系的测试：（1）感知任务，对音高和音长的自然度与信息状态进行了评价;（2）一个二元的图片着色生产任务，操纵颜色和绘图工具的信息状态（“用蓝色喷雾/蓝色笔/红色笔给狗着色。现在用红笔给猫涂颜色。");（3）理解任务，即听力任务（2）的对应任务，利用眼动追踪技术，首次对二语韵律进行研究，系统地处理和分析韵律细节，并在控制良好的语境实验中测试二语学习者的感知、产出和理解。由于对二语学习者韵律信息的使用知之甚少，该项目可以作为一个重要的数据源，制定一个二语习得理论的韵律，并帮助设置一个更高层次的语音习得/处理/教学的二语议程。

This dissertation investigates second language (L2) use of prosody--the "rhythm" and "melody" of sentences--to convey and comprehend Information Structure. In English, contrastive information ("Did Mariana make the apple bread?"-"Mariana made the BANANA bread.") and new information ("What did Mariana make?"-"Mariana made the BANANA bread.") are emphasized with higher pitch and longer duration, whereas old information is deaccented ("Who made the banana bread?"-"Mariana made the banana bread."). Contrastive information and new information are differentiated by tune of pitch: the former with low tone followed by high tone, the latter with high plateau tone. In Tokyo-Japanese, by contrast, presence or absence of pitch indicates word meaning ("a'me" 'rain' vs. "ame" 'candy'), not Information Structure. In light of these differences, this bi-directional study examines whether Target Language prosodic perception is modulated by native language (L1) properties and how L2 learners develop prosodic marking of Information Structure. L1-Japanese learners of English and L1-English learners of Japanese are tested on 3 prosodies--contrastive pitch, regular high pitch, deaccentuation--and their link to Information Structure: (1) a perception task in which naturalness of pitch and duration vis-a-vis information status is rated; (2) a dyadic picture-coloring production task, manipulating information status of colors and drawing instruments ("Color the dog with the blue spray / blue pen / red pen. Now color the cat with the red pen."); (3) a comprehension task, the listening counterpart to task (2), utilizing eyetracking.This is the first investigation of L2 prosody that systematically manipulates and analyzes prosodic details and tests L2 learners' perception, production, and comprehension in well-controlled, contextualized experiments. Since very little is known about L2 learners' use of prosodic information, the project could serve as an important data source for formulating an L2 acquisition theory of prosody and help set an L2 agenda for higher-level phonological acquisition/processing/teaching.