2007 Volume 11 Issue 1 Pages 93-101
This paper examines how Korean learners of Japanese (beginners) perceive a geminate stop; the effect of pitch type and a consonant in the initial syllable following the t-closure. 16 nonsense words (reto, retto meto, metto, keto, ketto, teto, tetto) which have a contrast in the voiceless and the voiced consonants of the initial syllable, as well as in the pitch type (High-Low, Low High) containing /t/ singleton or geminate contrast are presented in a carrier sentence spoken at a normal speaking rate. It was found that (1) error rate of perceiving geminate words as singleton words (t-dropping) is higher than that of perceiving singleton as geminate (t-insertion). (2) error is higher as following; voiced+LH>voiced+ HL≧voiceless+HL>voiceless+LH. (3) error rate of t-insertion is higher in LH singleton words and that of t-dropping is higher in HL geminate words.
