The Effects of Heavy Syllable Position and Accentual Pattern on the Perception of Japanese Special Moras by L2 Learners of Japanese

Abstract

This study addresses two issues on the perception of Japanese long vowels and geminate consonants by American learners of Japanese: (1) whether they can identify existing heavy syllable units including special moras and (2) which phonetic differences, namely, the position of a heavy syllable (1^st syllable or 2^nd syllable), moraic types (long vowel or geminate consonants), the position of an accented syllable (1^st accent, 2^nd accent, or no accent), or the combinations of these features, influence learners' perception.

The participants in the study are native English speakers who are novice-level learners of Japanese. They were auditorily presented with a series of pseudo-words and were asked to judge whether the words included a heavy syllable unit, and where it was located.

The results show that it is significantly more difficult to perceive the existence of a heavy syllable unit than its absence, and geminate consonants are more difficult to perceive than long vowels. In addition, the heavy syllable is significantly easier to identify when it is accented and in the word initial position than when it is unaccented or in the word medial position. This may be attributed to L1 transfer since an accented syllable has a high pitch and is lengthened in English.