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

博士论文研究：音调重音的习得和处理：英语和日语第二语言学习者的跨语言研究

• 批准号: 1324511
• 负责人: Bonnie Schwartz
• 金额: $ 1.45万
• 依托单位: University of Hawaii
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2017-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1324511&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Acquisition; Processing

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.

本论文研究第二语言（L2）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（“Did Mariana made the apple bread？”-“Mariana made the BANANA bread.”）和新信息（“What did Mariana made？”-“Mariana made the BANANA bread.”）会以更高的音调和更长的持续时间来强调，而旧信息则被淡化（“Who made the Banana bread？”-“Mariana made the Banana bread.”）。对比信息和新信息以音调区分：前者先低音后高调，后者先高平调。相比之下，在东京日语中，音调的存在或不存在表示单词含义（“a'me”“雨”与“ame”“糖果”），而不是信息结构。鉴于这些差异，这项双向研究探讨了目标语言韵律感知是否受到母语 (L1) 属性的调节，以及 L2 学习者如何开发信息结构的韵律标记。学习英语的日语 L1 学习者和学习日语的 L1 英语学习者接受了 3 种韵律测试——对比音调、规则高音调、减重音——以及它们与信息结构的联系：(1) 感知任务，其中对音调和持续时间相对于信息状态的自然度进行评级； （2）二元图片着色制作任务，操纵颜色和绘图工具的信息状态（“用蓝色喷雾/蓝笔/红笔给狗着色。现在用红笔给猫着色。”）； (3) 理解任务，与任务 (2) 相对应，利用眼动追踪。这是对二语韵律的首次研究，系统地操纵和分析韵律细节，并在良好控制的情境化实验中测试二语学习者的感知、表达和理解。由于人们对二语学习者对韵律信息的使用知之甚少，因此该项目可以作为制定二语韵律习得理论的重要数据源，并帮助制定更高层次的语音习得/处理/教学的二语议程。