This study explored sound symbolic values of particular syllable structure compositions, reduplicated forms and accent patterns. Through two experiments using nonce words, based upon a general working hypothesis that names that contain phonological and morphological structures that are characteristically found in Japanese child directed speech are judged to be appropriate for baby diaper names, we tested the following four specific hypotheses: a) a heavy-light (HL) sequence is more suitable for a baby diaper name than a light-light-light (LLL) sequence; b) a light-heavy (LH) sequence is less suitable than a light-light-light (LLL) sequence; c) reduplicated forms are more suitable than non-reduplicated forms; and d) accented words are more suitable than unaccented words. Not all these hypotheses were supported; instead, the results showed that names with various kinds of heavy syllables as well as those with accent were judged appropriate as a baby diaper name. The current results cannot solely be explained in terms of sound symbolic patterns that are found in the existing names, and thus suggest that sound symbolic knowledge involves abstract phonological generalizations concerning syllable weight and accentedness.

This paper presents several proposals on annotating second language (L2) learner speech, reflecting on the author’s involvement in developing an L2 English speech corpus of Japanese speakers “J-AESOP”. The paper recommends broad (phonological) rather than narrow (phonetic) transcription of L2 speech because an accurate transcription of interlanguage phones is probably possible only after detailed acoustic analysis. The paper also discusses how existing automatic annotation tools can be applied to L2 speech and how L2-specifc speech phenomena (e.g., epenthesis, deletion, mispronunciation, disfluency) can be dealt with.

This article illustrates current research in corpus-based L3-French/L1-Japanese interphonology. It uses one of the first annotated corpora of spontaneous speech of Japanese learners of French. Its goal is to identify persistent segmental ‘errors’ (or indices of ‘non-targetlike’ segments), through perceptual annotations of segmental substitutions at different levels of speech proficiency. Our results highlight the difficulty for Japanese learners in producing the French vowel /u/-[u] at all levels, among other segments. Since the task we use is close to what teachers and automatic speech recognition systems must handle, our pilot study paves the way for further research with comprehensively controlled data.

This study aims to develop a practical and straightforward oral reading evaluation scale for Japanese EFL learners. The oral reading method is widely used in English classes. Teachers need to give immediate feedback to improve our learners’ oral reading abilities in English classes. Thus, an understandable and reliable evaluation scale is needed for effective language teaching. Two evaluation methods—a rubric with three items (i.e., correctness, naturalness, and listenability) and a “rubric-based, binary-choice, boundary-definition (RBB) scale”—were developed for the study. The data from 35 Japanese university students showed that the RBB scale could reflect the components of the rubric.

A survey was conducted with 44 Japanese language teachers to clarify appropriate assessments and corrective feedback behaviors towards learners’ pronunciation. Results: (1) When measuring the appropriateness of corrective behaviors, “accuracy” assessments were linked to successfully determining if there was a deviation, “favorability” was used to determine the teacher’s assessment, and “naturalness” to determine whether pronunciation should be corrected. (2) Patterns with longer wrong intonations were assessed more negatively than length-of-pronunciation errors. (3) Having “Instruction Unnecessary” beliefs nudged teachers towards not assessing errors negatively or correcting them. “Instruction Necessary” beliefs showed separate tendencies towards evaluation and feedback.