The Perception and Production of Epenthetic Vowels in Non-native Clusters in Japanese: Phonetic and Phonological Influences A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics in the University of Canterbury by Wakayo Mattingley University of Canterbury 2016 Acknowledgements There are many people I would like to thank for helping me to come so far. The writing of this thesis was a challenging journey. Without those people who supported and encouraged me during the entirety of my research, I could not have completed my thesis. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors. To Professor Beth Hume, I would like to thank her for her constant support, continued encouragement and insightful discussions as my primary supervisor throughout the project. And also to my second supervisor, Dr Kathleen Hall, who helped me from Canada by attending Skype meetings and e-mailing, giving me immense support and a lot of invaluable feedback. I cannot thank you enough for the time and energy that both you spent for me. I would like to thank Dr Heidi Quinn and Dr Kevin Watson for encouraging me to keep going for the last few years. I would also like to extend sincere thanks to Dr Viktoria Papp for her help and advice along the way. I would like to thank Dr Lynn Clark, Professor Jen Hay, Jacqui Nokes, Emma Parnell, and especially Dr Péter Rácz for statistics support. I would also express my gratitude to the PhD students for supporting me as well as being great friends. Ksenia Gnevsheva taught me how to use E-prime and gave me a lot of advice while I was writing the thesis. Darcy Rose did proofreading for my poor English, also giving me many useful tips for data analysis and writing. Xuan Wang helped me a lot when I was confused with analysing data using R. They also listened to me when I need to talk and brought laughter to me during the hard times. Mineko Shirakawa gave me useful tips for every aspect. I would like also like to thank Kylie Fitzgerald, Masako Ishii, Dan Jiao, Matthias Heyne, Jihyun Lee, and Keyi Sun. Without their support, this study could not have been done. In addition, I would like to thank all the people at the Department of Linguistics and the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour at the University of Canterbury for giving me invaluable advice at the socio meeting and providing a helpful atmosphere during my research. I would also like to thank Tommy Shirakawa, an amazing speaker, who helped me to create the stimuli used in the experiment. I am grateful to CCEL and Wilkinson’s Language School who helped me by allowing me to recruit from among their students. I wish to sincerely thank all who participated in my research for your cooperation and people who ii introduced me the participants. Without their voluntary participation, this study could not have been done. I would like to thank my parents for their support and for encouraging me to pursue my long academic journey. Finally, I sincerely thank my husband, Steven Mattingley, for his understanding and encouragement for the last several years. None of the work would have been possible without your support and cooking! iii Abstract This thesis investigates the quality of epenthetic vowel that native speakers of Japanese tend to produce and perceive between unfamiliar sequences of consonants. Research on perceptual epenthesis in Japanese has revealed the high back [ɯ] to be the vowel commonly perceived in illicit consonant sequences. However, loanword studies suggest that there are three epenthetic vowels, which reflect phonotactic restrictions on certain consonant + vowel sequences. That is, the quality of epenthetic vowel is predictable from the preceding consonantal environment. In this study, I tested to what extent the response patterns in perceptual and production experiments are consistent with native phonotactics, and how phonetic properties of the listeners’ native language play a role in speech perception. This thesis first investigates the potential influence of the preceding consonant environment on perception and production of illicit consonant clusters. Second, the current study considers the effect of all vowel categories in Japanese, including allophonic variation of the Japanese high vowel [ɯ] — the high vowel undergoes devoicing when it occurs between voiceless obstruents — on the perception of illicit consonant sequences. This study thus integrates perceptual and production experimental work in an investigation of the contextual environments that contribute to predicting the quality of epenthetic vowels in Japanese. In the perception experiment, a same-different AX discrimination task was employed, in order to determine whether native speakers of Japanese are able to tell the difference between licit [VC1VC2V] (C=consonant, V=vowel) and illicit [VCCV] pairs (e.g., [apata]- [apta]) when they listen to pre-recorded pseudo-word stimuli. In each trial, participants were asked to judge whether a pair of stimuli were the same or different. The experiment enabled us to test whether Japanese listeners perceive an illusory vowel between consonants in an illicit sequence and whether the vowel percept differs according to a given phonological environment. The results show that to some extent, the preceding consonant does influence the vowel perceived, yet there is a bias toward perceiving [ɯ] in voiceless consonantal contexts, a result not predicted by the language’s phonotactic patterns. Additionally, it was found that the order that the stimuli were presented to subjects influences epenthesis in perception. Japanese listeners were less accurate in identifying whether members of a pair were same-different with the [aCVCa-aCCa] order than with the [aCCa-aCVCa] order. iv In the production experiment, a read-aloud task was employed. Speech production data was collected using the same pseudo-words as in the perception experiment though in this experiment the stimuli were presented to subjects orthographically. The results showed that for some preceding environments, the findings are relatively consistent with expectations based on the language's phonotactics, but this was not the case for all contexts. The results also revealed that there was variability across speakers as to which vowels they epenthesized after particular consonants. The current series of studies revealed that the quality of epenthetic vowels was not merely influenced by the phonotactics of the native language in speech perception and production. Instead, other factors interact in a complex way during speech perception and production. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ii Abstract ..................................................................................................................................iv List of Figures ........................................................................................................................viii List of Tables .........................................................................................................................x Chapter 1: Introduction ...........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Background ..........................................................................................................5 2.1 Japanese Phonology ..............................................................................................5 2.2 Previous Studies on Loanword Epenthesis in Japanese ......................................9 2.3 Studies of Perceptual Epenthesis .........................................................................11 2.4 Production Studies of Epenthesis.........................................................................15 2.5 Research Question and Predictions ......................................................................16 Chapter 3: Perception Experiment .........................................................................................18 3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................18 3.2 Methodology ........................................................................................................18 3.2.1Stimuli ...................................................................................................18 3.2.2 Acoustic Characteristics of the Stimuli ................................................20 3.2.3 Pairs of Words ......................................................................................24 3.2.4 Participants ...........................................................................................26 3.2.5 Overall Procedure ...............................................................................26 3.2.6 Procedure: AX Discrimination Task ....................................................27 3.2.7 Hypotheses and Predictions .................................................................29 3.2.8 Analysis ................................................................................................31 3.3 Results .................................................................................................................32 3.3.1 Discrimination Accuracy .....................................................................32 3.3.2 Discrimination Reaction Time .............................................................40