A Study of English Prosody Produced by Native Speakers of Japanese in Consideration of Communicative Ability

本研究考察了日语本族语者产生的英语的韵律特征，分析了本族语者对日语英语产物的可理解性水平的评价以及英语和日语本族语产物的声学数据。韵律特征随着句子的长度、焦点在句子中的位置、语调的种类和焦点的种类而不同。本研究揭示了日本学习者在产生包括组块在内的可理解语调方面存在的一些困难，同时也为日本学习者的英语语调教学提供了一些有益的建议。

This study examined the prosodic features of English produced by native speakers of Japanese, analyzing the ratings of the intelligibility levels of Japanese English productions by native speakers of English and the acoustic data of English and Japanese speakers’ productions. The prosodic characteristics varied across the length of sentences, the position of the focus in a sentence, the kind of tone, and the kind of focus. The present study revealed some difficulties that Japanese learners have in producing intelligible intonation including chunking, and also provided some useful suggestions for the teaching of English intonation to Japanese learners.