This research focuses on how and to what extent young informants of Hachijojima have acquired Tokyo accent. It is known that it is difficult to acquire pitch accent pattern for speakers of Non-Accent Dialect. But in Hachijojima, Tokyo accent is being acquired more as the dialect is more standardized. Kuno (1998) states that the young informants of Hachijojima are already able to recognize pitch pattern and that it is comparatively easy for them to acquire Tokyo accent. In this field work, 40 informants (age between 10 and 16, one of them 7) were interviewed and pronounced 200 items (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and sentences including them and conjugation of verbs and adjectives. Data shows that most of the informants can speak with Tokyo accent, but some of them are influenced by the traditional dialect. In case that informants are not familiar with the word, or asked to pronounce homonyms, some times they fail to pronounce with Tokyo accent.

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This study investigates how Japanese accentuation is produced by Japanese language learners and the Ibaraki dialect speakers of Japanese. Hypothetical model is proposed for the process of production of Japanese accentuation by both participant groups. Through the results of analyses, it is found that both participants seem to produce the same interlanguage (interdialect) strategies, perhaps because their target is the same Tokyo dialect accentuation. However, the learners seem to employ some other strategies than accent, which affect their production of correct accent in informal situation, whereas Ibaraki dialect speakers do not, since they are native speakers of Japanese who have acquired their target language except accentuation.

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In this study, we examined how preverbal infants segment words from fluent speech without any explicit cues. We investigated the development of speech perception in terms of language generality (innate ability) and language specificity (learning from input) by comparing stress cues in English and accent cues in Japanese. We applied the Headturn Preference Procedure to test infants' segmentation ability. Our results suggest: (i) 7-month-old infants do not segment words by using the flat accent pattern (Type 0) as a cue, which most frequently appears in three-mora words; (ii) 7-month-old infants do not use the high-low-low accent pattern (Type 1) as a cue, where the initial syllable of a word is prominent; (iii) the intensity level and the vowel duration rather than the pitch of words, specifically those of the phonotactic pattern [a+u], might be segmentation cues for Japanese infants. The prominence of the initial syllable of a word is possibly a language-general cue for word segmentation.

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Infants begin to learn various features of their native language before they speak. Prosody is one of those features that infants learn at a very early developmental stage and plays an important role in language acquisition. This paper reviews previous developmental studies on prosody perception and production, and discusses future subjects. The role of prosody is first described in language discrimination, speech discrimination, and word segmentation from fluent speech. The paper follows by focusing on acquisition of stress accent in English and pitch accent in Japanese.

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Experiments on accent perception were carried out for native speakers of Japanese dialects, namely, the Tokyo dialect (Standard Japanese) and the Kagoshima dialect. Real words with several types of synthesized accent patterns, including native and non-native accents, were used as experimental stimuli. The results showed that the Kagoshima children and adults accepted both the native Kagoshima accent and the Tokyo accent, while the Tokyo children and adults only accepted their native accent. Further analysis revealed that accent sensitivity was lower in the Kagoshima children than in the Kagoshima adults. These results suggest that the Kagoshima speakers, particularly the Kagoshima children, possess an insensitivity to the perception of accent. This finding supports previous results that point out incorrect accent production in the Kagoshima children.

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With regard to the accentuation of alphabetic acronyms in the Chuuooshiki (Central-type) Accent which distributes in the Kinki and Shikoku district, this paper clarifies the following points. (1)Unaccented patterns are used mainly by young people, and the use of these patterns is partly due to the influence of standard Japanese. (2)Patterns which belong to Teikishiki(low-beginning register) are used both by young and old people in the central part of the Kinki district. In the peripheral area Teikishiki patterns are rarely used. (3)The correlation between the speaker's familiarity with a word and the rate of use of Teikishiki patterns is not very obvious.

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The present paper describes the accent system of the Gwangju dialect in Jeollanam-do. The accent system can be classified into the following three groups: (a) the initial high and a row of lows for the rest, (b) the first two syllables high with the rest low, and (c) the initial low with the high second syllable. However, it is closely related to the initial segments, namely to whether it has an initial syllable with a long vowel, or with a tense, aspirated, s, or h consonant. Strong tendencies can be seen in which the words with a initial long vowel syllable belong to (a), and words with a tense, aspirated, s, or h consonant initial belong to class (b), with the rest of the words belonging to class (c). In this paper, the reason why Gwangju dialect has a three-pattern system to distinguish the three accentual distinctions for every syllable, despite the fact that the accent system has strong tendencies connected to initial segments, will be explained in detail. In addition, different generations show peculiar fluctuation between and predilection for some accent types.

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The Japanese interjection un has various phonetic features that indicate different meanings and functions. As a preliminary stage toward developing a precise analysis, I observed the use of un in a television drama in order to understand what kind of functionality and phonetic features it has in natural speech. Consequently, I determined three main categories of meaning for un: 1. speaker indicates the result of the processed information; 2. speaker indicates output information is being processed; and 3. non-processing related. The first category has five subcategories: affirmation (falling pitch), non-comprehension (sharply rising pitch), negation (falling-rising pitch), speaker indicates input of novel information (longer duration with gently rising pitch), and speaker indicates neutrality (flat pitch). The second category adopts longer duration and flat pitch, and the third one adopts flat pitch. In this paper, I will discuss these three categories and indicate their implication for future research.

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