Japanese pitch accent and the English-speaking learner: A study of production, perception and teaching Kaoru Umezawa Submitted for the degree of PhD in Phonetics, University College London, 2001 ProQuest Number: U641889 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U641889 Published by ProQuest LLC(2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT The pitch accent system is a prominent and characteristic feature of spoken Japanese, and an important facto* in the intelligibility and acceptability of Japanese spoken by learners of the language. The aim of this thesis is to clarify some of the major problems in the acquisition of the pitch accent of Japanese (at an isolated word level) by English-speaking learners. Extensive data and analysis from both controlled experiments and actual classroom activity are presented. Some major charactmstics of Japanese pitch accent are described in Chapter 1, followed by Chapter 2 which presents a survey of how Japanese pitch accent is currently taught A questionnaire distributed to teachers of Japanese in the UK, Japan and Canada was used to gather information about the attitudes of teachers to pronunciation teaching and the practical problems encountered. The results show that pronunciation teaching in general, and pitdi accent teaching in particular, are often accorded low priority and are restricted from lack of time. The chapter also includes a systematic analysis of the methods and materials offered by a range of current textbooks and teachers' manuals. Chapter 3 deals with previous studies of second language acquisiti(XL Chapter 4 repots on an e^qxriment seeking common tendencies in the pitch accent errcxs made by advanced Enghsh-speaking learners. It is clear however that individual speakers seem to have their own favourite patterns which they impose on various target types; the absence of uniform trends indicates that straighfr(^ard interference from EngUsh cannot be an explanation for errors at this level. Chapter 5 reports an e?q)eriment conducted with English monolingual subjects to induce intoference fron English word-stress rules on Japanese-like words embedded in English; the results are in accordance with prediction, but remc^ from the errors made by subjects in the actual process of learning Japanese. Chapter 6 reports data gathered in teaching a cohort of 31 students over a period of eleven weeks in a British university. A range of language-laboratory tasks covered discrimination, identification, imitation and notation of pitch-accent patterns. Considerable differences m the relative difGculty of different tasks are revealed. Among major findings is the result that tasks depending on perceptual or imitative skills produce hig^ scores, while many of the learners' own production errors can be explained as lack of lexical knowledge. The thesis demonstrates that the difSculties faced by English-speaking learners are more conq>lex than has generally been supposed, and it is hoped that the thesis will lead to concrete and practical improvements in the teaching of pitch accent. Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mr Michael Ashl^, my supervisor at University College London^ for his patient and constant advice and positive encouragement throughout the lengthy period of time I spent to complete this research. My thanks should also go to all the members of staff of Phonetics section at Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, UCL, for their warm and patient support, especially. Professor John Wells, Mrs Jill House, Mr Y. M. Le Clezio, Mr Stephen Nevard, Dr Andrew Faulkner, and Mrs Molly Bennett. I would also like to thank all those who helped / participated in my experiment or questionnaire survey; Professor D.W.Anthony and all the staff at the Centre of Japanese Studies, in Cardiff Business School, University of Wales College of Cardiff, for giving me an opportunity to teach Japanese for a year and at the same time to collect precious data from the students. Ms Kyoko Yuri at that department later helped me to distribute and respond to my questionnaire. Mr Teruyuki Zushi at the Institute of International Education in London has also given me an opportunity to teach in the Japanese teachers’ training course at his institute from which I received many insights about the situation of teaching Japanese, and he later helped me with distributing the questionnaire. Mrs Miwako Kashiwagi at SOAS not only helped me with the questionnaire but also agreed to have an informal interview and explained about her original method of pronunciation teaching, 'pronunciation clinic*. Ms Yasuko Shirasu at King Alfred’s College Winchester also helped with the questionnaire and an interview. Ms Ruth Horie helped me distribuing the questionnaire at University of Victoria, in Canada. Professor Tanomu Kashima at Nagoya University also helped me with the questionnaire and gave an encouragement to my study. My special thanks go to Ms Ikumi Ozawa at the International Christian University, who gave me precious advice based on her long experience in teaching Japanese; helped me with distributing all the questionnaires in Japan; and with collecting many of the relevant research articles from Japan. I am most grateful to the Heiwa NaJkajima Foundation, who gave me the funding for my study in the UK for my first 2 years. I am also very grateful to the staff at International Lutheran Student Centre, where I stayed over a long period of time, for providing me with warm emotional support; without that warm and stable environment, I could not have achieved my goal. My deepest thanks go to all my fnends, especially. Dr Mervin Hutabaiat, Mrs Vickie Wong and Mr Micky Chan, Mr Tony Tiaboulsee and Mrs Valerie Dahl,who spent long hours helping me solve my computer problems. I am also grateful to Ms Chikako Hashimoto and everyone at St Gregorius Hause in Japan for their warm support. Lastly, I would like to thank my mother for being so patient and understanding about me studying abroad. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of tables......................................................................................................................8 List of figures ...............................................................................................................10 Introduction........................................................................................................................15 Chapter 1 Pitch accent in Japanese 1.1 General characteristics 1.1.1 Pitch accent amoung various accent systems of world languages ................. 19 1.1.2 Definition...................................................................................................21 1.1.3 Mora vs. syllable........................................................................................21 1.1.4 Pitch levels ................................................................................................... 22 1.1.5 Pitch types and characteristics ...................................................................23 1.1.6 Function........................................................................................................24 1.1.7 Pitch accent and intonation ........................................................................... 25 1.1.8 Tsuzuki-agari' (=continuous H) and Tsuzuki-sagari' (=continuous L) pitch accent in connected speech ................................................................. 26 1.2 Pitch accent and part of speech 1.2.1 Nouns...........................................................................................................27 1.2.2 Verbs............................................................................................................32 1.2.3 Adjectives .....................................................................................................32 1.3 Accent pattern in relation to word length .....................................................................33 1.4 Pitch accent with long syllables ...................................................................................36 1.5 Pitch accent marking system ....................................................................................... 37 1.6 Pitch accent in teaching J^anese 1.6.1 The importance of teaching pitch accent ........................................................40 1.6.2 How it can be taught ..................................................................................... 41 1.6.3 Some recent research on pronunciation teaching of Japanese ........................ 42 Chapter 2 Treatment of pitch accent in teaching Japanese as L2 2.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 44 2.2 Questionnaire 2.2.1 The design.....................................................................................................44 2.2.2 Subjects.........................................................................................................44 2.2.3 Results......................................................................................................45