Perception of Japanese prosody by foreign learners of Japanese and Accessing Meaning

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This study, which supports the claim of a prosodic interference between L1 and L2, examined the perception of rhythm and intonation in Japanese by the Chinese, German, and French learners. Our multivariate analyses on the experimental data showed some significant differences among several factors : namely, mother tongues, pitch and durational oppositions. A careful interpretation of the statistical issues suggests a strong influence of prosodic aspects of L1 for each language group. Interestingly, post-experimental comments provided by the participants revealed useful cues in the strategy of prosodic processing for language teaching. Hearing of sound forms being thus observed, relations between sound and meaning were attempted as next step through some basic pilot experiments in the production of Japanese prosody.