The Acquisition Mechanism of Perception and Pronunciation of Plosives by East-Asian Learners of Japanese : A Study of Interlanguage

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Based on the following three investigations, four papers and five oral presentations at academic conferences were prepared to show research results (1) through (5) below.Longitudinal study on perception and pronunciation of plosives by Korean learners of Japanese (July 2003--February 2004) ; Interlingual investigation on the categorical perception of plosives using the synthesized variations of voice onset time (VOT) at Tianjin Foreign Studies University and Shanghai International Studies University, of China, and Kyung Hee University, of Korea (February--March 2004) ; Research on plosives and accents at Kyung Hee University (September 2004) and Tongji University, in Shanghai (January 2005).(1) It is commonly difficult for East-Asian learners of Japanese to acquire perception and pronunciation of plosives. As for learners from Korea (Seoul-dialect speakers), where less research has been performed from the standpoints of perception and pronunciation, they experience a severe problem in … More pronunciation. This reveals the possibility that they understand the voiced plosives of Japanese words to be lax in pronunciation, much like the word initials of Korean. In perception, they hear voiceless plosives in the word initials of Japanese that appear to be similar to the forced sounds of Korean. Based on these data, the mechanism of acquisition containing the major factors of confusion in the learning of Japanese was successfully clarified.(2) Acoustic-phonetic analysis of the Beijing-dialect, the Shanghai-dialect, and the Seoul-dialect of Korean speakers revealed that the acquisition of perception and pronunciation differ. Shanghai-dialect speakers acquired both perception and pronunciation first ; Beijing-dialect speakers had the most difficulty. In perception, Beijing- and Shanghai- dialect speakers misheard voiceless plosives in the middle of words as voiced plosives, but Korean speakers misheard voiceless plosives in word initials as voiced plosives. In regards to pronunciation, it was difficult for all speakers to pronounce voiced plosives in word initials. Shanghai-dialect and Korean speakers, who had voiced plosives in their native languages, pronounced them as the voiceless unaspirated sounds and as the lax word initials of their native languages, respectively.(3) In the acquisition by Korean learners of perception and pronunciation of plosives, there was also first language (L1) interference related to accents. As a result of an examination using fundamental frequency, it was revealed that a word including a voiceless plosive at its initial was pronounced in the high-low pitch pattern. A word including a voiced plosive at its initial, however, was pronounced in the middle-high pitch pattern, with the first mora low in pitch and the subsequent mora rising.(4) When the categorical perception of Japanese plosives by Beijing-dialect, Shanghai-dialect, and Korean speakers studying Japanese was examined by means of synthesized variations with different voice onset times (VOT), it was found that the categorical perception of Beijing- and Shanghai-dialect speakers was similar to that of native speakers of Japanese when a plosive was included in a word initial. However, Korean speakers corresponded to native speakers of Japanese when a plosive was in the middle of a word. These results revealed different categorical perceptions among languages.(5) The process of shaping an interlanguage in the acquisition of plosives was examined through the developmental processes, such as including interference and approximation. As a result, it was found that the Ontogeny Model for second language (L2) acquisition developed by Mayor (1997) could not be applied to all situations, and it was believed to have contributed to the construction of the interlanguage theory. Less