This study investigated the effect of self-monitoring activity on Korean L2 learners' perception and production of Japanese long and short vowels in word final position. Subjects were divided into two groups. The experimental group performed a self-monitoring task whereas the control group performed a traditional pronunciation learning task. Data from an identification test using words and from a perception test using stimuli were collected. Each subject's pronunciation was evaluated by native speakers and by acoustic analysis. The results indicated that self-monitoring activity facilitates modification of previous patterns of perception and production of the target sounds.

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This paper investigates the pitch accent system of Sino-Japanese words in Early Modern Kyoto Japanese. Specifically, the pitch accent system of four-mora Sino-Japanese written in two Chinese characters is discussed. The estimation of the accent patterns is based on Heike Mabushi, a music score of Heikyoku, musical storytelling with Japanese lute accompaniment. The main findings are as below. (i) H3 type (HHHL) and H1 type (HLLL) each accounts for 30 percent of 645 words in the corpus. H2 type (HHLL) and L2 type (LHLL) each represents another 15 percent. H0 type (HHHH) and L0 type (LLHH) account for the remaining 10 percent. (ii) H3 type becomes more frequent for the words with Go-on reading, whereas H1 is frequent for words with Kan-on reading. (iii) More than half of Go-on reading words exhibit the accent patterns that are formed by juxtaposition of the tones of two Chinese characters, i.e., Ping (fiat)-tone, Qu (departing)-tone, Ru (entering)-tone, or its regular variant. (iv) The words still used in contemporary Kyoto, when compared to the estimation of Early Modern accent in this study, tend to have changed into HO type accent, or less frequently, into H1 type.

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In Tokyo Japanese, bimoraic accented particles like /ma'de/ and /su'ra/ are believed to lose their lexical accent when they are coupled with accented content words like /kyo'Hto made/. The deletion of particle accent, however, does not occur regularly. There are cases where particles constitute independent accentual phrases of their own, thereby preserving their lexical accents like in /kyo'Hto ma'de/. This paper examines this prosodic phenomenon by analyzing the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ). Analysis of CSJ revealed that none of ten particles examined in this study showed perfectly regular accent deletion. It also turned out that there were four factors that favored independence of particles, viz., 1) semantic property of particles, 2) distance between preceding lexical accent and that of particles, 3) presence of BPM tones in the particles, and, 4) speaking style. Various analyses suggested consistently that it was the semantic property of particles that was the most influential. Particles of contrast and/or limitation (toritate nojoshi) like /ko'so/, /su'ra/, /sa'e/, /no'mi/ tend to retain their accent and prosodic independence much more frequently when compared to other particles including /na'do/, /ma'de/, /yo'ri/, /de'wa/, and /de'mo/.

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The dialect of the city of Kumamoto in Kyushu and its surrounding areas is said to lack lexical accent systems. Sentences uttered by 15 speakers were acoustically examined in order to identify the rules that characterize the sentence prosody in this variety of Japanese. Semantic restriction and focus were found to be the determining factors of intonational phrasing. The results also revealed that words have a tonal autonomy, with a rise at the beginning and a fall that may occur in any position of the word except for the beginning. This suggests that this dialect should be considered to have word accent ("indefinite" accent) contrary to the traditional view.

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The aim of this paper is to discuss the invisibility of the moraic nasal in Japanese by investigating the phonological factors that yield the unaccented pattern in medical terms. Firstly, I demonstrate that the unaccented pattern in medical terms that end in CiN# sequence occurs in phonologically predictable contexts. Secondly, I argue that the emergence of the unaccented pattern in medical terms has to do with the invisibility of the moraic nasal in word-final position. Lastly, I analyze the motivation for the invisibility of the moraic nasal by examining the literature on the phonetic property of the moraic nasal and the weight neutralization in word-final position in Japanese.

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The author proposes the discrimination between two kinds of "accent-changes"-one being changes of accent-pattern of individual words, the other being changes of rules that work when a morpheme-combining is needed. He observes that changes now going on in Tokyo-Japanese are more of rule changes than individual pattern changes.

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This study investigates the relationship between perception and production of Japanese vowels by Mandarin Chinese learning Japanese. Identification and production tests on Japanese long and short vowels in word final position were respectively carried out. The results showed that the length of vowels produced by some learners corresponded with perceptional boundaries of long and short vowels. Evaluation of their pronunciations performed by Japanese native speakers indicated that the subjects whose vowel length control responded with their perceptional boundaries acquired better assessment than the others. These findings suggest that proficient speakers must both perceive and produce long and short vowels accurately.

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