The Effect of Lexical Accent on Perceived Japanese Vowel Length: Evidence from Croatian

The study of language offers profound insights into human cognition and the origins of communication. Spatial demonstratives, like “this” or “that,” rank among the earliest documented words across languages and emerge early in children’s vocabularies.‍[1] They exhibit complex, multimodal dynamics, intricately tied to eye gaze and gestures, highlighting the interplay between verbal and non-verbal communication. These ancient terms frequently underpin a variety of figurative meanings, serving as foundational elements in language evolution. We are pleased to announce the release of the summer 2024 issue of Acta Linguistica Asiatica. This issue features six scientific articles and one book review, offering diverse perspectives on linguistic “this and that” concerning the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean languages. We extend our sincere gratitude to all contributors and reviewers whose scholarly dedication enriches our journal. The issue opens with the article “Integration and Autonomy in Japanese Converb Constructions: A Corpus Study” by Natalia SOLOMKINA, who examined morphological and syntactic connectedness in converb constructions using tests and corpus data. Results show morphological independence for most cases but syntax reveals a continuum of autonomy and unity, complicating categorization and highlighting the ongoing grammaticalization process. The article “The Use of Japanese Words Hito, Hitobito, and Hitotachi in L1 and L2 Written Compositions” by Divna TRIČKOVIĆ addresses the pluralization of nouns and differentiation of synonyms in teaching Japanese as a foreign language by analyzing three Japanese words for “people”. Using compositions from intermediate students and native speakers, the study reveals challenges in distinguishing singularity and plurality. It highlights the need for greater focus on teaching the plural forms 人々 hitobito and 人達 hitotachi. Following is the work by Dragana ŠPICA “The Effect of Lexical Accent on Perceived Japanese Vowel Length: Evidence from Croatian” in which the author examined how Japanese lexical accent influences Croatian listeners’ perception of Japanese vowel length. A test with varied pitch patterns and vowel positions showed that pitch patterns of words, the position of a long vowel, and participants’ Japanese knowledge all affect error rates. Yet another work that offers an insight into the Japanese language is entitled “Refusals in Japanese and Spanish: Pragmatic Transfer in L2”. In it, the author Ignacio PEDROSA GARCÍA compares refusal strategies of advanced Japanese learners of Spanish to those of native Spanish and Japanese speakers, focusing on pragmatic transfer in refusals to requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions. The analysis revealed that higher linguistic ability in Japanese learners correlated with increased pragmatic transfer, highlighting the interplay between cultural priming and response freedom. Next is the work on the Chinese language “The Nature and Structure of Reflexive Verb Constructions” by YANG Yongzhong. The author elucidates the internal structure, detailing the mechanisms by which they are constituted, with particular emphasis on the significant function of the reflexive pronoun. The whole reflexive verb construction can function either as the object in the specifier position of VP or move to the position of the light verb to function as the predicate. MOON Chang-Hak in his article “Direct Evidentials in Korean: From the Perspective of the Multi-Store Memory Model” clarifies Korean direct evidential markers using a multi-store memory model. Markers indicate “present perception-based knowledge” or “past acquisition-based knowledge” and align with memory processes like maintenance rehearsal, elaborative rehearsal, and long-term storage. Last but not least is the book review of the long-awaited linguistic monography on Korean language and linguistics in Slovene Uvod v korejski jezik in korejsko jezikoslovje. The review was written by Albina NEĆAK LÜK who describes the monography as a work that, by incorporating recent linguistic research to interpret Korean linguistic phenomena, goes far beyond traditional grammar and, by delving into general and sociolinguistic phenomena, aids readers in understanding Korean linguistic phenomena and similar issues in other languages. Editors and Editorial Board invite the regular and new readers to engage with the content, to question, challenge, and reflect. We hope you have a pleasant read full of inspiration and a rise of new research ideas inspired by these papers. Editors [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01697-4

A computer-assisted instruction (CAI) system for self-teaching to discriminate Chinese tones is available for public through the internet (http://chinesetone.org) in Japanese, English, and Chinese versions. The design and construction of this system has been reported previously (Hiki et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 120 (5, Pt. 2), 2006, 3168). This system utilizes the displays of the pitch pattern as visual cues in training. The following new functions of the visual displays have been added to the system recently: 1) Essential pitch patterns of 15 bisyllabic words, with every combination of the four tones in Standard Chinese, were drawn on the six whole tone musical scale. By displaying visually the corresponding essential pitch pattern along with the measured pitch pattern, it became easier for the beginners to perceive aurally the tonal characters, which underlay the measured pitch patterns; 2) The bisyllabic word lists comprising only voiced consonants were edited, and the measured pitch patterns not interrupted by unvoiced consonants were displayed visually. These speech samples were useful in the early stages of tone discrimination learning. It was also ascertained that the tone discrimination was stimulated by paying attention to musical pitch perception.

The role of pitch pattern in Japanese 24-month-olds’ word recognition

In training non-native speakers to perceive difficult second language (L2) phonetic contrasts, providing variation in speakers and phonetic contexts helps the formation of L2 categories [Pisoni and Lively, in Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience (1995), pp. 433–459. The present study tested the hypothesis that high stimulus variability in speaking rate would have positive effects for L2 learners. Native English speakers’ ability to identify Japanese vowel length was examined with three types of training: slow-only, fast-only, and slow-fast. Their perceptual abilities were measured with a pretest and posttest and compared with a control group that was not trained. Test stimuli were sentences containing Japanese disyllables spoken at three rates (slow, normal, fast). Participants were trained to identify the length of the second vowel of disyllables embedded in a sentence and they received immediate feedback. The pretest to posttest improvement of the slow-only (8.2%) and slow-fast (8.7%) training groups was significantly greater than the control group’s improvement (3.9%). However, the fast-only (7.7%) training group’s improvement did not significantly differ from the control group’s improvement. In addition, slow-fast training, unlike other training, had an advantage in performance on the fast rate stimuli. Implications for the variability theory will be discussed. [ Work supported by NSF Grant No. BCS0418246.]

Previous research has demonstrated that native English speakers can learn lexical tones in word context (pitch-to-word learning), to an extent. However, learning success depends on learners' pre-training sensitivity to pitch patterns. The aim of this study was to determine whether lexical pitch-pattern training given before lexical training could improve learning and whether or not the extent of improvement depends on pre-training pitch-pattern sensitivity. Learners with high and low pitch-pattern sensitivity were given training on lexical pitch patterns before lexical training. It was found that such training resulted in better learning than lexical training alone, primarily in learners with low pre-training pitch-pattern sensitivity. These data support the importance of considering individual aptitudes when developing training and also the notion of phonetic-phonological-lexical continuity in word learning.

This paper investigates the acoustic realization of lexical-level accent in Saisiyat, an endangered aboriginal language of Taiwan. Accent in Saisiyat usually falls on the ultimate syllable of content words. This phenomenon has been described in previous studies as either or Our measurements and analysis of various prosodic parameters of syllable rhyme (F0 height at onset, offset, peak, and valley, as well as pitch range, duration, slope, peak alignment, and intensity peak) suggest that accent in Saisiyat should be classified as pitch accent, because lexical accent is realized by means of specific F0 patterns, rather than duration and intensity. Thus, among three typological categories that have been proposed for languages (lexical tone, lexical stress, and lexical pitch accent), we propose that Saisiyat belongs to the category that has lexical pitch accent. 1. INTRODUCTION. (1) This paper investigates the acoustic realization of lexical level accent in Saisiyat, an endangered aboriginal language of Taiwan. Based on the results of this study, we propose that Saisiyat should be classified as a pitch accent language. Accent in Saisiyat content words is fixed on the final syllable, a property that it shares with certain other Taiwanese Austronesian languages. Yeh (2000) formulates the Saisiyat stress rule as follows: (2) V [right arrow] V [+stress] / _(C)# This rule, however, does not apply to function words or place names. (3) Zorc (1993) proposes a classification system for Austronesian languages based on their criteria for accent assignment. (4) According to this system, accent may be assigned on the basis of: (a) phonemic length and shortness; (b) phonemic accent (quantity or stress) as secondarily introduced, generally due to consonant loss, analogical leveling, or borrowing; (c) length contrasts in the ultima, resulting from compensation for the loss of a consonant; (d) phonemic length, as the result of coalescence (or crasis) of vowels, which does not correspond with stress (pitch accent); (e) phonemic length or shortness, retained sporadically as remnants of a preexisting system; (f) consonant length following a short vowel; (g) oxytone, with accent (with or without secondary vowel lengthening) falling regularly on the ultima; (h) paroxytone, with accent falling regularly on the penult; (i) proparoxytone, with accent falling regularly on a prepenultimate syllable; (j) PAn *e influences accent in a different way from the other vowels; (k) accent is used inflectionally, that is morphemic accent. Zorc categorized Tungho-Saisiyat (5) as belonging to category (d) and Saisiyat to category (g). This categorization of Saisiyat accent is congruent with previous observations that accent falls regularly on the ultimate syllable, and that vowel length does not affect pitch accent assignment. (6) No previous phonological description of accent/stress in Saisiyat has measured the acoustic properties of prominent syllables. The present study aims to provide a detailed acoustic analysis of Saisiyat accent by measuring the following parameters of syllable rhyme: F0 height at onset, offset, peak, and valley, as well as pitch range, duration, slope, peak alignment, and intensity peak. Analyzing these parameters will allow us to distinguish accented from unaccented syllables, as well as among the accents realized on different syllabic structures. The results of this study provide support for the classification of Saisiyat as a pitch accent language, because lexical accents are made prominent by means of specific F0 patterns rather than by means of duration and intensity. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: section 2 reviews definitions of pitch accent, describes the acoustic parameters to be investigated, and reviews the literature on the influence of accent and coda types on the realization of prominent syllables. …

This study investigates the rhythmic structures of music and speech, and the possible corresponding rhythmic patterns between the two domains in English vocal music. With fifteen English songs as samples, lexical stress of multi-syllabic words is compared with three musical dimensions—metrical stress, duration, and pitch respectively. It was found that in the chosen English songs, there is a good mapping between the metrical stress of music and the lexical stress of lyrics. In addition, the duration and the pitch patterns not only generally match the lexical stress patterns most of the time, but also serve to manifest the prominence of the primary lexical stress on one hand, and to reflect the weakness of the unstressed syllables on the other. In addition to a general good match in rhythm, this study also shows match differences within the three comparisons. Match degrees vary according to different meter patterns. Moreover, pitch takes priority over duration in their respective match with lexical stress of the lyrics. Finally, the primarily stressed syllables match duration and pitch patterns much better than the unstressed ones do.

Reviewed by: Introducción a la lingüística hispánica actual: Teoría y práctica by Javier Muñoz-Basols, et al. Manuel Díaz-Campos Muñoz-Basols, Javier, Nina Morena, Inma Taboada, y Manel Lacorte. Introducción a la lingüística hispánica actual: Teoría y práctica. London: Routledge, 2017. Pp. 546. ISBN 978-0-41563-157-0. Introducción a la lingüística hispánica actual: teoría y práctica is a book designed to introduce undergraduate students in Hispanic Linguistics to the theoretical and practical aspects of the analysis of language. The target audience of the book is undergraduate students in Hispanic Linguistics in the United States; however, the book can also be used to teach native speakers. Prior knowledge in the field of Linguistics is not necessary to fully understand the concepts presented in the text due to its introductory level. The book is organized in eight chapters plus an introduction and a bilingual glossary. Each chapter is supplemented with a section of exercises, suggestions for research projects, additional readings, and a list of concepts introduced in the chapters The introductory chapter covers basic content related to the introduction to language, communication, the comparison between animal communication and language, communicative functions, neurolinguistics, core evidence of linguistics, and current issues of contemporary linguistics. All these topics are meant to initiate students with the basic terminology of linguistics as well as the methodologies applied to the study of language. The authors offer a theoretical orientation towards generative approaches as one of the most representative frameworks in contemporary linguistics. The second chapter is concerned with the phonetics and phonology of Spanish. The chapter begins with a description of vowels and consonants in terms of their phonology, which means the structural relationships they have in Spanish. An inventory of phonemes and their description is presented. The chapter also includes a section on syllabification and phonological transcription. [End Page 335] The fourth section of the chapter is dedicated to an articulatory description of the sounds of Spanish. A practical section on phonetic transcription is also presented. The last section of the chapter is a short explanation of suprasegmentals with a focus on lexical accent and intonation. The third chapter is dedicated to the morphology of the Spanish language. The first section presents the basic concepts of the field distinguishing between different types of affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and types of words according to their structure. The authors then provide sections on derivational morphology, other procedures for the creation of new words, a description of grammatical categories, and inflectional morphology of nouns and verbs. Chapter 4 presents a general overview of Spanish syntax. The authors begin this chapter explaining four general principles which are descriptive of the creativity of language. Then, a description of the concept of grammatical phrases (syntagmas) is introduced. The chapter moves to describe the syntactic functions, the notion of argument and adjuncts, the x-bar theory, the distinction between compound sentences and simple sentences, and finally word order. In chapter 5, the authors provide an overview of semantics and pragmatics. The sections on semantics focus on the distinction between denotative and connotative meaning, semantic roles, lexical semantics, metaphors, and idiomatic expressions. The sections on pragmatics present an overview of deixis, speech acts, politeness research, and the study of irony and humor. The history of Spanish is described in chapter 6. A general introduction to diachronic linguistics is provided at the beginning of the chapter. The second section is concerned with the influences of pre-Romanic languages in the Iberian Peninsula. The third section focuses on the evolution of Latin until the first Spanish texts appear. The fourth section illustrates the particulars of two linguistic changes from Medieval Spanish to Contemporary Spanish. The two last sections provide examples of similarities between Romance languages as well as linguistic borrowing in Spanish. Chapter 7 is dedicated to dialectal variation in the Spanish-speaking world. The first section presents introduction to basic concepts of linguistic variability. The second section provides a description of three main dialectical areas of Peninsular Spanish (Castilian, Andalusian, and Canary). The third section offers a general perspective of dialectal (areas) of Latin America...

Recent research has demonstrated that learners of Japanese struggle producing correct Japanese pitch accent. The goal of the present study was to investigate the effect learners’ first language (L1) may have on accent acquisition following the introduction and use of a digital Japanese Pitch Accent Learning and Practice (PALP) program in two Japanese courses. The PALP program visually and aurally presents learners with pitch patterns and requires learners to select the correct pitch accent pattern for new vocabulary. Participants’ pitch accent abilities were assessed at the beginning and end of their courses. A mixed design ANOVA was conducted to analyze the effect of learners’ L1 on pitch accent acquisition. Results evince a significant interaction effect between participant group (treatment/control) and L1 (Chinese/English), F(1, 24) = 10.09, p < .01 (η2 = .30). Specifically, English L1 participants in the treatment group considerably outperformed the control group English L1 participants. However, the Chinese L1 participants in both groups performed at approximately equal levels. These results suggest the existence of an L1 influence on pitch accent acquisition.

Introduction Individuals with visual impairments may use long canes for estimating distances and detecting gaps, obstacles, and texture patterns. The study presented here investigated whether length perception with canes is influenced by cane material. Methods Visually impaired, sighted-blindfolded, and sighted individuals (n = 30 for each group) participated in this study. Each group was divided into three subgroups (with 5 females and 5 males each) according to cane material. The canes (length = 80 cm, diameter = 1.5 cm) were made of wood, polyethene plastic, or aluminum. The participants were required to judge whether comparison stimuli were shorter than, equal to, or longer than the standard stimulus. Two sessions (for horizontal or vertical lines) were carried out on consecutive days. Results Cane material was not a significant factor influencing accuracy, F(2, 79) = 2.47, p = .091, and difference threshold, F(2, 79) = 2.01, p = .14, in length perception for the three groups of participants, but cane material interacted with orientation of stimuli, F(2, 79) = 3.24, p = .044. There were significant group differences for accuracy, F(2, 79) = 9.6, p <.001, and difference threshold, F(2, 79) = 8.8, p < .001, revealing that participants with visual impairments were better at discriminating length than sighted-blindfolded participants. Discussion Our results provide evidence that length perception with canes is not significantly influenced by cane material. The significant group differences for accuracy and difference threshold indicate that assessing visually impaired participants may be more adequate in studies aimed at investigating aspects related to long canes. Implications for practitioners Orientation and mobility (O&M) instructors can report that there is experimental evidence that cane material is not a significant factor in conveying spatial (length) information, although some evidence suggests that it is a significant factor in conveying tactile information such as the roughness of surface textures.

This paper proposes a method to detect the pros‐odic phrase for speaker‐independent continuous speech. The method uses continuous adjustment of a pitch pattern with the learning accent pattern (pitch template). The accent phrase with one accent cue and its corresponding pitch pattern are considered correlated. Distinctive pitch templates are obtained by classifying the pitch patterns corresponding to the accent phrase with the help of clustering.Since pitch patterns of continuous speech are connected to these pitch templates, prosodic phrase segmentation can easily be done by One‐Stage DP matching of the pitch pattern with pitch templates. The method can also be applied to unspecified speakers whose average pitch frequency differs from each other by sliding the pitch template along the vertical axis during the matching.The ATR continuous speech database (10 speakers, 503 sentences) is used for the experiments. For eighc templates, about 65 percent of the automatic prosodic phrase segmentations were correct and the experiment was successful in detecting about 83 percent of the prosodic phrase boundaries.

Non-native speech acquisition involves more than statistical tracking of speech cues. This study explores how surprisal (i.e., prediction-error) drives speech sound acquisition, replicating and extending Nixon's (2020) error-driven learning framework. We examine surprisal in the learning of Southern-Min tone contrasts and extend the experiment to Japanese vowel length and Mandarin fricatives and affricates, representing both suprasegmental and segmental contrasts. A total of 146 native English-speaking participants (51 learning Japanese, 41 Mandarin, 54 Southern-Min) participated in one of two stimuli presentation orders: discriminative (speech-soundthen image) or non-discriminative (image then speech-sound). This study makes two key contributions: First, it replicates Nixon's (2020) framework by expanding the generalizability of error-driven learning across different speech contrasts. Second, it includes a methodological extension by incorporating eye-tracking to operationalize surprisal, providing real-time insights into cognitive processes during training. Results show that surprisal, particularly in low-frequency items, facilitates learning in the discriminative condition. These findings challenge the view that speech-sound learning is purely statistical and suggest that eliciting surprisal enhances the learning of challenging speech contrasts, such as Japanese vowel length, Mandarin fricatives, and Southern-Min tones, with broader implications for the acquisition of non-native speech sounds (Burnham, 2013; Kim, 2023).

Speech perception patterns are strongly influenced by one's native phonology. It is generally accepted that native English listeners rely primarily on spectral cues when perceiving vowels, making limited use of duration cues because English lacks phonemic vowel length. However, the literature on vowel perception by English listeners shows a marked bias toward American English, with the phonological diversity among different varieties of English largely overlooked. The current study investigates the perception of Japanese vowel length contrasts by native listeners of Australian English, which is reported to use length to distinguish vowels unlike most other varieties of English. Twenty monolingual Australian English listeners participated in a forced-choice experiment, where they categorized Japanese long and short vowels as most similar to their native vowel categories. The results showed a general tendency for Japanese long and short vowels (e.g., /ii, i/) to be categorized as Australian English long and short vowels (e.g., /i:, ɪ/ as in "heed," "hid"), respectively, which contrasts with American English listeners' categorization of all Japanese vowels as tense regardless of length (e.g., /ii, i/ as both "heed") as reported previously. Moreover, this duration-based categorization was found not only for Australian English categories that contrast in duration alone (e.g., /ɐ:, ɐ/ as in "hard," "hud") but also for those that contrast in both duration and spectra (e.g., /o:, ɔ/ as in "hoard," "hod"), despite their spectral mismatch from the corresponding Japanese vowels (e.g., /aa, a/ and /oo, o/). The results, therefore, suggest that duration cues play a prominent role across all vowel categories-even nonnative-for Australian English listeners. The finding supports a feature-based framework of speech perception, where phonological features like length are shared across multiple categories, rather than the segment-based framework that is currently dominant, which regards acoustic cues like duration as being tied to a specific native segmental category. Implications for second and foreign language learning are discussed.

This paper investigates accent assignment in “hybrid” accent systems, i.e. systems in which word accent location is not fully predictable on phonological grounds alone, but requires, in addition, reference to morphological information. The focus is here on the proper treatment of morpheme-specific exceptions in such systems. Following the Scales-and-Parameters theory (Vaxman 2016b, 2018a, 2019), I analyze the accent-attracting capacity of morphemes in terms of diacritic weight (rather than lexical accent). In hybrid systems, accent is assigned with reference both to syllable weight and to the diacritic weight of exceptional morphemes, ordered on a single weight scale. In this way, the accentual competition between the two is effectively captured. Based on this proposal, the theory is shown to account, in a uniform manner, for regular and exceptional accent patterns in the hybrid system of Standard Eastern Mari (Uralic).

Peripheral and central structures along the auditory pathway contribute to speech processing and learning. However, because speech requires the use of functionally and acoustically complex sounds which necessitates high sensory and cognitive demands, long-term exposure and experience using these sounds is often attributed to the neocortex with little emphasis placed on subcortical structures. The present study examines changes in the auditory brainstem, specifically the frequency following response (FFR), as native English-speaking adults learn to incorporate foreign speech sounds (lexical pitch patterns) in word identification. The FFR presumably originates from the auditory midbrain and can be elicited preattentively. We measured FFRs to the trained pitch patterns before and after training. Measures of pitch tracking were then derived from the FFR signals. We found increased accuracy in pitch tracking after training, including a decrease in the number of pitch-tracking errors and a refinement in the energy devoted to encoding pitch. Most interestingly, this change in pitch-tracking accuracy only occurred in the most acoustically complex pitch contour (dipping contour), which is also the least familiar to our English-speaking subjects. These results not only demonstrate the contribution of the brainstem in language learning and its plasticity in adulthood but also demonstrate the specificity of this contribution (i.e., changes in encoding only occur in specific, least familiar stimuli, not all stimuli). Our findings complement existing data showing cortical changes after second-language learning, and are consistent with models suggesting that brainstem changes resulting from perceptual learning are most apparent when acuity in encoding is most needed.