This paper provides an overview of the research on the acquisition of phonology and prosody from the viewpoint of language universals. By way of introduction, I first sketch the traditional but still prevailing hypotheses proposed by Roman Jakobson six decades ago and attempt to evaluate these hypotheses in light of empirical data concerning, in particular, the acquisition of vowels, consonants and syllable structure. I then discuss the acquisition of prosody with main emphasis on that of the mora and the prosodic structure of words in Japanese. I will also point out in passing several interesting questions that remain unsolved.

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音韻獲得のメカニズムは言語普遍的であり,音素目録を形成する多くの言語普遍的な原理によって決定されるというJakobson(1941/1968)の主張は,現在の音韻獲得理論の基盤となっている。しかしながら,近年の多言語にわたる音韻獲得に関する研究結果から,言語普遍的な原理だけでは全ての言語の音韻獲得過程が説明できるわけではないことも明らかになってきた(e.g., Ingram, 1999; Vihman, 1993; Vihman et al., 1985)。本稿では日本語を獲得する幼児の舌阻害音の生成過程についての研究結果を英語と比較対照することにより,日英語における舌阻害音の音韻獲得順序の相違が両言語の個々の音とその音の組み合わせの頻度に帰依している可能性が高いことを示した。また,調音の難易度といった言語普遍的側面と言語によって異なる個々の音とその音の組み合わせの頻度という言語個別側面の双方を考慮した音韻獲得理論の必要性について論じた。

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In this paper, several studies about infants' ability to discriminate languages between birth and 4-5 months were reviewed. In the rhythmic class acquisition hypothesis, infants' initial sensitivity to rhythmic classes would allow them to specify the common rhythmic properties of their native rhythmic class, and from this they would develop an associated metrical segmentation procedure. In addition,several studies about American infants' ability to extract word-like units from fluent speech were reviewed. Finally, several studies about Japanese infants' sensitivity to the typical rhythm pattern based on morae of Japanese baby words were reviewed.

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本稿では音韻理論と音韻獲得論の発展史を発達継続性の問題を中心に述べる。継続性の問題とは言語の発達過程において音韻体系の根本的特性が保持される程度を示す。理論構築の観点からみると継続性の高い獲得過程の説明のほうが望ましいが,どの程度の継続性を獲得理論に組み込むことが出来るかは基盤となる音韻理論にも左右される。実際,SPEから自然音韻論,原理とパラメータ理論,最適性理論と4つの生成音韻理論をもとにした獲得モデルを時代順にみると徐々に継続性が高まっていく傾向が見受けられ,音韻理論と音韻獲得理論が相互的に発展した過程がうかがえる。しかし,このような研究の方向性に問題点がないわけではない。ここでは,1)幼児期現象のすべてが音韻理論で説明されるべきか,2)成人期音韻現象のすべてが幼児期体系と関連づけされるべきか,3)語彙表示の内容はどのように変化していくのかという三つの点を検討してみた。

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This paper reviews research papers published since 1990 on the acquisition of the Tokyo accent and intonation by foreign learners of Japanese. Intonation studies examined in this paper were mainly focused on the acquisition of sentence final pitch patterns for interrogative sentences in Japanese. As for accent acquisition studies, both production and perception studies were analyzed. With the surprising improvements of computer technology in recent years, it is expected that a great amount of progress could be done in research on the acquisition of accent and intonation in the future.

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The purposes of this paper are: 1) to examine the historical development of second language research in light of various theoretical hypotheses which have been posited to explain learners' errors, 2) to introduce some of the preceding phonetic research focusing on the segmental level within the framework of 'interlanguage', 3) to review the recent literature on phonetic research in the field of second language acquisition of Japanese segments, and 4) to discuss some of the problems associated with the segmental level. It is hoped that this study may help with the future development of teaching Japanese as a foreign language.

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In this paper, I first introduce some previous acoustical studies concerning Japanese special morae. Following this, I seek to review previous studies on the acquisition of special morae by Japanese language learners. The reviews are conducted from the viewpoint of both perception and production. Finally, I suggest research areas pertaining to second language speech perception and production as directions for future study.

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日本語と英語の相違は,可能な音節構造の複雑さ(英語の方が複雑)と,単語分割時に用いる最小韻律単位(英語は音節,日本語はモーラ)の二点においても説明されてきた。本研究では,日本人英語学習者とアメリカ人日本語学習者を対象に,学習者の音節構造認識,及び,そのような認識に習熟度が与える影響を検証した。調査では第二言語の単語をnoに言い換えてもらった(日本語の例:ねこ→/no-no/)。その結果,日本人英語学習者は,上級レベルでも50%以上のケースで英語の単独音節を複数に分割,また,分割単位としてモーラを用いることがわかった。一方,アメリカ人日本語学習者のデータでは,半数の初級者が50%以上のケースで日本語の特殊モーラを単独単位として認識,また,上級者全員の認識度がネイティブ・レベルに達していた。日本人英語学習者の方が長い期間にわたり母国語の影響を顕著に受ける傾向には複数の原因が考えられ,第二言語の音節構造認識の発達のメカニズムの複雑さが明らかになった。

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This study investigated both the extent of accentual paradigm (analogical) leveling observed in adjectives in Tokyo Japanese and the factors influencing the change based on spoken data from 36 speakers in their late teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s. Multivariate analyses showed that adjective accent variation was strongly conditioned by grammatical factors (e.g., inflectional forms, the following grammatical elements, and word frequency) and moderately affected by phonetic factors (e.g., the sonority hierarchy of the consonant of the syllable on which the accent falls, stem length, and vowel devoicing). In contrast, extralinguistic factors played almost no role in predicting the variation.

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The Seoul dialect of Korean has three types of plosives and africates: lax, tense and aspirated. Kim et al. (2002) pointed out that low F0 gives the cue of lax against tense and aspirated. In this paper I measured the height of F0 of syllables relative to the immediately preceding syllable in one-, two- and three-syllable-nouns (relative to the final syllable of the word preceding one-syllable nouns.) By this method, F0 variation of each utterance is neutralized and we can see clearly a high / low F0 difference on the first syllable: always lower than the preceding syllable if its onset is lax; always higher if its onset is tense or aspirated. Moreover, the height of the second and third syllables are determined by the height of the first syllable. The onset of the syllable, either nasal or vowel, is also lower, while the fricative-onset is higher, even though these consonants have no counterparts distinguished by F0 height. This suggests that the Seoul dialect has a non-distinctive tone pattern with a high / low F0 parameter on the first syllable of words.

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