The Role of Phonetics and Phonetic Databases in Japanese Speech Technology
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
2 Mora and Syllable
2 Mora and Syllable HARUO KUBOZONO 0 Introduction In his classical typological study Trubetzkoy (1969) proposed that natural languages fall into two groups, “mora languages” and “syllable languages,” according to the smallest prosodic unit that is used productively in that lan- guage. Tokyo Japanese is classified as a “mora” language whereas Modern English is supposed to be a “syllable” language. The mora is generally defined as a unit of duration in Japanese (Bloch 1950), where it is used to measure the length of words and utterances. The three words in (1), for example, are felt by native speakers of Tokyo Japanese as having the same length despite the different number of syllables involved. In (1) and the rest of this chapter, mora boundaries are marked by hyphens /-/, whereas syllable boundaries are marked by dots /./. All syllable boundaries are mora boundaries, too, although not vice versa.1 (1) a. to-o-kyo-o “Tokyo” b. a-ma-zo-n “Amazon” too.kyoo a.ma.zon c. a-me-ri-ka “America” a.me.ri.ka The notion of “mora” as defined in (1) is equivalent to what Pike (1947) called a “phonemic syllable,” whereas “syllable” in (1) corresponds to what he referred to as a “phonetic syllable.” Pike’s choice of terminology as well as Trubetzkoy’s classification may be taken as implying that only the mora is relevant in Japanese phonology and morphology. Indeed, the majority of the literature emphasizes the importance of the mora while essentially downplaying the syllable (e.g. Sugito 1989, Poser 1990, Tsujimura 1996b). This symbolizes the importance of the mora in Japanese, but it remains an open question whether the syllable is in fact irrelevant in Japanese and, if not, what role this second unit actually plays in the language. -
A Student Model of Katakana Reading Proficiency for a Japanese Language Intelligent Tutoring System
A Student Model of Katakana Reading Proficiency for a Japanese Language Intelligent Tutoring System Anthony A. Maciejewski Yun-Sun Kang School of Electrical Engineering Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 Abstract--Thls work describes the development of a kanji. Due to the limited number of kana, their relatively low student model that Is used In a Japanese language visual complexity, and their systematic arrangement they do Intelligent tutoring system to assess a pupil's not represent a significant barrier to the student of Japanese. proficiency at reading one of the distinct In fact, the relatively small effort required to learn katakana orthographies of Japanese, known as k a t a k a n a , yields significant returns to readers of technical Japanese due to While the effort required to memorize the relatively the high incidence of terms derived from English and few k a t a k a n a symbols and their associated transliterated into katakana. pronunciations Is not prohibitive, a major difficulty In reading katakana Is associated with the phonetic This work describes the development of a system that is modifications which occur when English words used to automatically acquire knowledge about how English which are transliterated Into katakana are made to words are transliterated into katakana and then to use that conform to the more restrictive rules of Japanese information in developing a model of a student's proficiency in phonology. The algorithm described here Is able to reading katakana. This model is used to guide the instruction automatically acquire a knowledge base of these of the student using an intelligent tutoring system developed phonological transformation rules, use them to previously [6,8]. -
LT3212 Phonetics Assignment 4 Mavis, Wong Chak Yin
LT3212 Phonetics Assignment 4 Mavis, Wong Chak Yin Essay Title: The sound system of Japanese This essay aims to introduce the sound system of Japanese, including the inventories of consonants, vowels, and diphthongs. The phonological variations of the sound segments in different phonetic environments are also included. For the illustration, word examples are given and they are presented in the following format: [IPA] (Romaji: “meaning”). Consonants In Japanese, there are 14 core consonants, and some of them have a lot of allophonic variations. The various types of consonants classified with respect to their manner of articulation are presented as follows. Stop Japanese has six oral stops or plosives, /p b t d k g/, which are classified into three place categories, bilabial, alveolar, and velar, as listed below. In each place category, there is a pair of plosives with the contrast in voicing. /p/ = a voiceless bilabial plosive [p]: [ippai] (ippai: “A cup of”) /b/ = a voiced bilabial plosive [b]: [baɴ] (ban: “Night”) /t/ = a voiceless alveolar plosive [t]: [oto̞ ːto̞ ] (ototo: “Brother”) /d/ = a voiced alveolar plosive [d]: [to̞ mo̞ datɕi] (tomodachi: “Friend”) /k/ = a voiceless velar plosive [k]: [kaiɰa] (kaiwa: “Conversation”) /g/ = a voiced velar plosive [g]: [ɡakɯβsai] (gakusai: “Student”) Phonetically, Japanese also has a glottal stop [ʔ] which is commonly produced to separate the neighboring vowels occurring in different syllables. This phonological phenomenon is known as ‘glottal stop insertion’. The glottal stop may be realized as a pause, which is used to indicate the beginning or the end of an utterance. For instance, the word “Japanese money” is actually pronounced as [ʔe̞ ɴ], instead of [je̞ ɴ], and the pronunciation of “¥15” is [dʑɯβːɡo̞ ʔe̞ ɴ]. -
Does Romaji Help Beginners Learn More Words?
Yoshiko Okuyama 355 CALL Vocabulary Learning in Japanese: Does Romaji Help Beginners Learn More Words? YOSHIKO OKUYAMA University of Hawaii at Hilo ABSTRACT This study investigated the effects of using Romanized spellings on beginner- level Japanese vocabulary learning. Sixty-one first-semester students at two uni- versities in Arizona were both taught and tested on 40 Japanese content words in a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) program. The primary goal of the study was to examine whether the use of Romaji—Roman alphabetic spellings of Japanese—facilitates Japanese beginners’ learning of the L2 vocabulary. The study also investigated whether certain CALL strategies positively correlate with a greater gain in L2 vocabulary. Vocabulary items were presented to students in both experimental and control groups. The items included Hiragana spellings, colored illustrations for meaning, and audio recordings for pronunciation. Only the experimental group was given the extra assistance of Romaji. The scores of the vocabulary pretests and posttests, the types of online learning strategies and questionnaire responses were collected for statistical analyses. The results of the project indicated that the use of Romaji did not facilitate the beginners’ L2 vocabulary intake. However, the more intensive use of audio recordings was found to be strongly related to a higher number of words recalled, regardless of the presence or absence of Romaji. KEYWORDS CALL, Vocabulary Learning, Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL), Romaji Script, CALL Strategies INTRODUCTION Learning a second language (L2) requires the acquisition of its lexicon. How do American college students learn basic L2 vocabulary in a CALL program? If the vocabulary is written in a nonalphabetic L2 script, such as Japanese, is it more efficient to learn the words with the assistance of more familiar Roman-alphabetic symbols? This experimental study explored these questions in the context of Japa- nese CALL vocabulary learning. -
Masterarbeit / Master's Thesis
MASTERARBEIT / MASTER’S THESIS Titel der Masterarbeit / Title of the Master’s Thesis “Dating the split of the Japonic language family. The Pre-Old Japanese corpus” verfasst von / submitted by Patrick Elmer, BA MA angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (MA) Wien, 2019 / Vienna 2019 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 066 599 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Masterstudium Indogermanistik und historische degree programme as it appears on Sprachwissenschaft UG2002 the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Melanie Malzahn, Privatdoz. Table of contents Part 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................... 8 1.1 The Japonic language family .............................................................................................. 9 1.2 Previous research: When did Japonic split into Japanese and Ryūkyūan .......................... 11 1.3 Research question and scope of study .............................................................................. 15 1.4 Methodology ................................................................................................................... 16 Part 2: Language data ................................................................................................ 19 2.1 Old Japanese ................................................................................................................... -
Introduction to Japanese Computational Linguistics Francis Bond and Timothy Baldwin
1 Introduction to Japanese Computational Linguistics Francis Bond and Timothy Baldwin The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief introduction to the Japanese language, and natural language processing (NLP) research on Japanese. For a more complete but accessible description of the Japanese language, we refer the reader to Shibatani (1990), Backhouse (1993), Tsujimura (2006), Yamaguchi (2007), and Iwasaki (2013). 1 A Basic Introduction to the Japanese Language Japanese is the official language of Japan, and belongs to the Japanese language family (Gordon, Jr., 2005).1 The first-language speaker pop- ulation of Japanese is around 120 million, based almost exclusively in Japan. The official version of Japanese, e.g. used in official settings andby the media, is called hyōjuNgo “standard language”, but Japanese also has a large number of distinctive regional dialects. Other than lexical distinctions, common features distinguishing Japanese dialects are case markers, discourse connectives and verb endings (Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyujyo, 1989–2006). 1There are a number of other languages in the Japanese language family of Ryukyuan type, spoken in the islands of Okinawa. Other languages native to Japan are Ainu (an isolated language spoken in northern Japan, and now almost extinct: Shibatani (1990)) and Japanese Sign Language. Readings in Japanese Natural Language Processing. Francis Bond, Timothy Baldwin, Kentaro Inui, Shun Ishizaki, Hiroshi Nakagawa and Akira Shimazu (eds.). Copyright © 2016, CSLI Publications. 1 Preview 2 / Francis Bond and Timothy Baldwin 2 The Sound System Japanese has a relatively simple sound system, made up of 5 vowel phonemes (/a/,2 /i/, /u/, /e/ and /o/), 9 unvoiced consonant phonemes (/k/, /s/,3 /t/,4 /n/, /h/,5 /m/, /j/, /ó/ and /w/), 4 voiced conso- nants (/g/, /z/,6 /d/ 7 and /b/), and one semi-voiced consonant (/p/). -
Phonotactically-Driven Rendaku in Surnames: a Linguistic Study Using Social Media
Phonotactically-DrivenRendakuinSurnames: ALinguisticStudyUsingSocialMedia YuTanaka 1. Introduction Like regular compound words, Japanese surnames with a compound structure can undergo a voicing alternation known as rendaku. Rendaku application in surnames is somewhat different from that in regular compounds, however; the voicing alternation is governed by avoidance of consonant sequences that are similar in terms of voicing and place. Although the peculiarity of rendaku in surnames has been noted in the literature (see Sugito, 1965 among others), no study has provided a full description or explanation of the patterns. The first aim of this study is thus to better describe the data. A corpus of rendaku in surnames is created using social media, which enables us to assess comprehensively and quantitatively the validity of proposed generalizations. The second aim of the study is to explain why rendaku applies in a different manner in names and in normal words. I propose that compound names are treated as if they are single stems and that the peculiar rendaku patterns in surnames can be attributed to stem-internal phonotactics, such as dispreferences for the occurrence of multiple voiced obstruents or sequential homorganic voiceless obstruents within stems. 2. Data: Rendaku in surnames 2.1. Strong Lyman’s Law? Rendaku, or sequential voicing (Martin, 1952), is a morphophonological process in Japanese whereby the initial obstruent of the second element of a compound becomes voiced,1 as shown in (1).2 (1) a. maki + susi ! maki-zusi ‘rolled-sushi’ b. ori + kami ! ori-gami ‘folding-paper’ Application of rendaku is variable, being affected by a number of factors including lexical idiosyncrasy (see Vance, 2015 for a comprehensive overview). -
L1 English Vocalic Transfer in L2 Japanese
L1 ENGLISH VOCALIC TRANSFER IN L2 JAPANESE by KENNETH JEFFREY KNIGHT (Under the Direction of Don R. McCreary) ABSTRACT This study looks at four factors that cause transfer errors in the duration and quality of vowel sounds in Japanese as spoken by native English speaking learners. These factors are: 1) words contain a contrastive long vowel, 2) words contain vowels in hiatal position, 3) words are English loanwords, and 4) words are written in Romanization. 34 students at the University of Georgia completed elicited imitation and reading aloud tasks. Results show that roughly 5% of all responses contained vocalic errors. Error rates were highest for minimal pairs that contrast only in vowel length. Similarities in orthography, word origin, and differences in phonological rules were shown to be significant factors in L2 Japanese vowel pronunciation error. A brief survey of the most widely used Japanese textbooks in the US reveals a lack of explicit instruction in vowel length contrasts and Japanese loanword adaptation. Increased explicit instruction in these areas as well as limited use of Romanization may greatly reduce the risk of L2 Japanese vowel pronunciation error. INDEX WORDS: Transfer; Interference; Japanese as a Foreign Language; English; Vowel; Duration; Second Language Acquisition L1 ENGLISH VOCALIC TRANSFER IN L2 JAPANESE by KENNETH JEFFREY KNIGHT B.A., Temple University, 1998 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2013 © 2013 Kenneth Jeffrey Knight All Rights Reserved L1 ENGLISH VOCALIC TRANSFER IN L2 JAPANESE by KENNETH JEFFREY KNIGHT Major Professor: Don R. -
World Braille Usage, Third Edition
World Braille Usage Third Edition Perkins International Council on English Braille National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped Library of Congress UNESCO Washington, D.C. 2013 Published by Perkins 175 North Beacon Street Watertown, MA, 02472, USA International Council on English Braille c/o CNIB 1929 Bayview Avenue Toronto, Ontario Canada M4G 3E8 and National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., USA Copyright © 1954, 1990 by UNESCO. Used by permission 2013. Printed in the United States by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress, 2013 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data World braille usage. — Third edition. page cm Includes index. ISBN 978-0-8444-9564-4 1. Braille. 2. Blind—Printing and writing systems. I. Perkins School for the Blind. II. International Council on English Braille. III. Library of Congress. National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. HV1669.W67 2013 411--dc23 2013013833 Contents Foreword to the Third Edition .................................................................................................. viii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... x The International Phonetic Alphabet .......................................................................................... xi References ............................................................................................................................ -
Loanword Accentuation in Japanese
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 11 Issue 1 Article 16 2005 Loanword accentuation in Japanese MASAHIKO MUTSUKAWA Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation MUTSUKAWA, MASAHIKO (2005) "Loanword accentuation in Japanese," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 11 : Iss. 1 , Article 16. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol11/iss1/16 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol11/iss1/16 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Loanword accentuation in Japanese This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol11/iss1/16 Loanword Accentuation in Japanese Masahiko Mutsukawa 1 Introduction Accentuation is one of the main issues in Japanese loanword phonology and many studies have been conducted. Most of the studies pursued so far, how ever, are on loanword accentuation in Tokyo Japanese, and loanword accen tuation in other dialects such as Kansai1 Japanese have been studied little. The present study analyzes the location of accent and the pitch pattern of accented English loanwords in both Tokyo Japanese and Kansai Japanese in the framework of Optimality Theory (OT; Prince and Smolensky, 1993). The major findings of this study are as follows. First, Tokyo Japanese and Kansai Japanese are the same in terms of accent assignment. The default accent of loanwords is the English accent, i.e. the accent on the syllable stressed in English. Second, Tokyo Japanese and Kansai Japanese are differ ent with regard to pitch pattern. The constraints *[HH and *[LL, which are members of the constraint family Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), play crucial roles in Tokyo Japanese, while the constraints *[LL and LH' are sig nificant in Kansai Japanese. -
Phonological Differences Between Japanese and English: Several Potentially Problematic
1 Title: Phonological Differences between Japanese and English: Several Potentially Problematic Areas of Pronunciation for Japanese ESL/EFL Learners Author: Kota Ohata Indiana University of Pennsylvania Bio Statement Kota Ohata earned his B.A. degree from Kyoto University of Foreign Studies in 1994, a M.A. in TESOL from West Virginia University in 1996. After a few years of EFL teaching back in Japan, he returned to the U.S. for the pursuit of doctoral degree in the area of applied linguistics. Recently Kota Ohata completed his dissertation and received a Ph.D. in Composition & TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. 2 Abstract In light of the fact that L2 pronunciation errors are often caused by the transfer of well-established L1 sound systems, this paper examines some of the characteristic phonological differences between Japanese and English. Comparing segmental and suprasegmental aspects of both languages, this study also discusses several problematic areas of pronunciation for Japanese learners of English. Based on such contrastive analyses, some of the implications for L2 pronunciation teaching are drawn. Introduction The fact that native speakers of English can recognize foreign accents in ESL/EFL learners’ speech such as Spanish accents, Japanese accents, Chinese accents, etc., is a clear indication that the sound patterns or structure of their native languages have some influence on the speech or production of their second language. In other words, it is quite reasonable to say that the nature of a foreign accent is determined to a large extent by a learner’s native language (Avery & Ehrlich, 1992). Thus, the pronunciation errors made by second language learners are considered not to be just random attempts to produce unfamiliar sounds but rather reflections of the sound inventory, rules of combining sounds, and the stress and intonation patterns of their native languages (Swan & Smith, 1987). -
DBT and Japanese Braille
AUSTRALIAN BRAILLE AUTHORITY A subcommittee of the Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities Inc. www.brailleaustralia.org email: [email protected] Japanese braille and UEB Introduction Japanese is widely studied in Australian schools and this document has been written to assist those who are asked to transcribe Japanese into braille in that context. The Japanese braille code has many rules and these have been simplified for the education sector. Japanese braille has a separate code to that of languages based on the Roman alphabet and code switching may be required to distinguish between Japanese and UEB or text in a Roman script. Transcription for higher education or for a native speaker requires a greater knowledge of the rules surrounding the Japanese braille code than that given in this document. Ideally access to both a fluent Japanese reader and someone who understands all the rules for Japanese braille is required. The website for the Braille Authority of Japan is: http://www.braille.jp/en/. I would like to acknowledge the invaluable advice and input of Yuko Kamada from Braille & Large Print Services, NSW Department of Education whilst preparing this document. Kathy Riessen, Editor May 2019 Japanese print Japanese print uses three types of writing. 1. Kana. There are two sets of Kana. Hiragana and Katana, each character representing a syllable or vowel. Generally Hiragana are used for Japanese words and Katakana for words borrowed from other languages. 2. Kanji. Chinese characters—non-phonetic 3. Rōmaji. The Roman alphabet 1 ABA Japanese and UEB May 2019 Japanese braille does not distinguish between Hiragana, Katakana or Kanji.