Abstract
In standard Japanese, high vowels between voiceless consonants are regularly devoiced. In order to investigate various factors influencing vowel devoicing by Taiwanese learners of Japanese, a production experiment was carried involving isolated words and words in context with speakers differing in language proficiency. Comparison was done of the rate of devoicing in Taiwanese and Japanese speakers reading a fixed Japanese text. The native Japanese participants were grouped into speakers of Tokyo and Kinki dialects, respectively. The Taiwanese speakers were grouped according to their proficiency of Japanese: advanced and elementary Japanese. The results indicated that devoicing rates of advanced Taiwanese learners showed a pattern similar to the Kinki dialect speakers. Moreover, the devoicing rate for elementary learners was lower than that for advanced learners. The results suggest that vowel devoicing skills can be acquired as proficiency in the second language increases.
