2011 Volume 3 Pages 12-29
As there is no [ʥ] phoneme in the Korean language, it is said that many Korean Japanese learners cannot distinguish between syllables of the z series (“za-gyô on”) and those of the j series (“ja-gyô on”). This fact has been revealed mainly by studies using hearing tests.
The purpose of this paper is to clarify how the learners distinct z series sounds from j series sounds using ERPs (Event Related Potentials).
In our experiment, first, we conducted a hearing test to analyze the ability of Japanese native speakers and Korean Japanese learners to distinguish between [dsa] and [ʥa]. Next, the subjects listened to a set of Japanese natural speech sounds /za/ and /ja/ played through ERP equipment. The ERPs were recorded, and later analyzed in order to investigate how well the informants had recognized the sounds.
These results suggest (i) that even the Korean learners of Japanese who obtained relatively low scores in the hearing tests were able to distinguish the sounds through the differences in their acoustic qualities unconsciously, and (ii) that the other Korean students who obtained perfect scores like their Japanese counterparts used different strategies to discriminate these sounds.
