Japanese Accent Research Articles

The interrogative intonation in the Kunigami dialect of Okinoerabu, Ryukyu

AbstractCross-linguistically, intonation patterns for yes/no questions rise in many languages. However, there are multiple reports of interrogative sentences with falling intonation in Japanese dialects. It is said that five types of interrogative intonation exist in Japanese dialects: rising, where the end of the sentence always rises; falling 1, where the end of the sentence always falls; falling 2, where the interrogative appears morphologically in the sentence, and the sentence falls; complement, where tone in the sentence falls if the interrogative morphologically appears and rises if it does not; and gradual rise, where the tone gradually rises until the end of the sentence. However, the Kunigami dialect does not adhere to these patterns. In Kunigami yes/no questions, the tone falls if an interrogative morphologically appears but reveals a distinctive intonation from a declarative sentence if it does not. Therefore, in the case of Kunigami, the interrogative intonation typology should not be reconstructed on the basis of absolute rise or fall but on the basis of contrast with a declarative sentence.

The effect of fo fall, downstep, and secondary cues in perceiving Japanese lexical accent.

Lexical pitch accent in Japanese is primarily realized as a steep fall in fo from an accented syllable into the following one. In addition, when a phrase that contains an accented syllable is followed by another phrase, the following phrase undergoes downstep, a compression of the fo range. Furthermore, while their acoustic identity is not yet clear, secondary cues to Japanese pitch accent are known to exist. The present study examined how speakers of Tokyo Japanese used acoustic information from these three sources in perceiving lexical pitch accent in Tokyo Japanese. Listeners heard stimuli in which the acoustic cues related to accent were independently manipulated and were asked to identify if a word presented sentence-medially was a final-accented word or its unaccented counterpart. Results found that listeners' judgments of words were most consistent with the presence or absence of downstep. That is, listeners identified that the preceding phrase contained an accented word when the following phrase was downstepped. Listeners also used the fo fall to determine if the word in question was a final-accented word or an unaccented word. Secondary cues to pitch accent were most weakly related to listeners' identification of accent.

The diachronic origins of Lyman's Law: evidence from phonetics, dialectology and philology

Modern Japanese has a set of morphophonemic alternations known collectively as rendaku that involve initial consonants in second elements of compounds, as in /jama+dera/ ‘mountain temple’ (cf. /tera/ ‘temple’). An alternating element like /tera/ ~ /dera/ has an initial voiced obstruent in its rendaku allomorph and an initial voiceless obstruent in its non-rendaku allomorph. Lyman's Law blocks rendaku in a second element containing a medial voiced obstruent. This paper gives three arguments that Lyman's Law originated as a constraint prohibiting prenasalisation in consecutive syllables. First, constraints on similar consonants in close proximity generally apply not to voicing but to features with phonetic cues that are more spread out, such as prenasalisation. Second, in some Japanese dialects with prenasalised voiced obstruents, rendaku cannot occur if it would result in adjacent syllables containing these marked consonants. Third, phonographically attested Old Japanese compounds are consistent with a constraint on adjacent syllables.

Standard Language as a Role Language in Real-life Japanese and Fiction

The aim of this paper is to determine to what extent and from which perspectives standard language (hyōjungo) can be regarded as a significant representative of role languages (yakuwarigo). In common perception, standard language is usually contrasted to Japanese dialects (hōgen) and common language (kyōtsūgo) and described as an abstract, conventional, and imposed pattern of language. Accordingly, as a speech style, it is often perceived with more reserve. As a norm of language, it is also often considered as barely existing in real-life speech or restricted to written or formal styles only. However, the research into the models of fictitious speech patterns of the characters of popular TV series, animations, and comic books displays a significant influence of standard language on depicting specific types of roles and poses the characters perform in the plot. The analysis of selected dialogues reveals that the primary function of standard language as a role language is to emphasize the contrast between, especially, normality and extraordinariness, regularity and irregularity, seriousness and jocularity, maturity and immaturity, schemata and deviations from them. However, in this paper, the scope of functioning of hyōjungo as a role language is not only restricted to pop-cultural, fictitious forms. It can be easily noticed also in the dialogues in the textbooks used for Japanese language education. In the case of the materials for beginners, the language is unified and limited to standard addressative forms only, and any possible varieties or registers of Japanese are barely applied. In this regard, standard language can be considered as a role language or, more precisely, a model language of Japanese learning. This model function is motivated by its “reliability” feature, which is based on the fact that standard language exists in real-life Japanese to play the significant role of offering interlocutors the mutual feeling of comfort of sharing the same behavioral and linguistic schemata.

Automatic Geminate Insertion Algorithm for Japanese Audio Data

Generally, it is quite difficult for Japanese language learners to acquire Japanese special morae, namely, geminate, syllabic nasals and long vowels compared to independent morae. Among these three special morae, geminate is particularly difficult, and it takes much longer to fully acquire both production and perception of it. Especially for learners of Chinese native speakers, previous studies has shown that both production and perception of geminate are difficult in terms of the fact that not only no geminate is found in Chinese language, but also the phonological interaction between Japanese accent and Chinese tones. However, in the field of Japanese speech acquisition, research has not making progress because of a major problem, that is, researchers themselves manually create the acoustic experiment stimuli. Therefore, in this study, as a method to solve this problem, we propose an algorithm that automatically inserts geminate into the audio data used in Japanese speech acquisition research. This algorithm automates the insertion of geminate by performing three processes in order: mora extraction by noise removal, matching of original audio data and extracted mora, and insertion of soundless duration and geminate. The algorithm makes it possible to remove the noise, which is -50 dBFS and continues for 10ms or more, and replace it with soundless duration instead, allowing Japanese native speakers to percept it as geminate. The accuracy was equivalent as a result of comparing the data that was manually modified by a phonology researcher with the data that was generated by the algorithm. The result shows that the algorithm can be a practical solution for the automation of geminate insertion.

Лексико-грамматические особенности японских диалектизмов в текстах сказок (на материале диалекта префектуры Ямагата)

This article addresses scientific issue of the modern Japanese dialects. Aim of the research is to identify lexical and grammatical features of the Japanese dialectisms of the Yamagata Prefecture in texts of folklore fairy tales. The paper is novel in that it is the first to consider aspects of using lexical and grammatical dialectisms by the material of fairy tales, which serve as a means of transmitting the people’s ideas about the surrounding world and reflect distinctness of the national worldview. As a result of the research, it was found that dialectisms use in fairy tale texts is contingent on communicants’ social characteristics, on the one hand, and on semantic, stylistic and functional characteristics of the dialectisms themselves, on the other hand.

The Utilization of the "Tsutaeru Hatsuon" Online Media in Learning Japanese Accents and Intonations

This study reveals the analysis of the online media's role, "Tsutaeru Hatsuon", to improve Japanese language learners in mastering and to apply Japanese phonetics, especially in accents and intonation. This study uses primary data in the form of respondents' answers to questions in the website "Tsutaeru Hatsuon", which was conducted twice, namely pre-test and post-test, and secondary data in the form of responses questionnaires. Respondents in this study were 64 Japanese language education students at Semarang State University, class of 2019. The results showed that the post-test scores increased than the pre-test scores. In Japanese intonation material, respondents who answered questions correctly on all questions increased by 23%, while in accent material, respondents who answered questions correctly on all questions increased by 31%. Thus, it can be concluded that there is an improvement in the respondent's ability to understand Japanese intonation and accent after using the "Tsutaeru Hatsuon" website. According to respondents, the questionnaire answers showed that the website "Tsutaeru Hatsuon" is easy to understand and use. Moreover, the material is easy to understand, and the explanation is very detailed, which is equipped with sound files and learning videos. It is beneficial for learners to be able to understand Japanese accents and intonations directly.

Representing the moraic nasal in Japanese: evidence from Tōkyō, Ōsaka and Kagoshima

This article reconsiders the nature and representation of the moraic nasal <N> in Japanese dialects, which is largely assumed to be a consonantal mora (Ito 1987, Vance 2008, Labrune 2008) or a variable segment (Yoshida S. 1996, 2003; Yoshida Y. 1999). I examine phonological processes and phonetic descriptions of the Tōkyō, Ōsaka and Kagoshima varieties of Japanese and show that previous representations do not capture all of the facts. I propose that N is best represented variously as a nasal consonant, a syllabic nasal or a nasal vowel depending on the dialect. I frame this account within the theory of Strict CV (Lowenstamm 1996) and I present new representations for N, taking into account segmental and prosodic behaviour of this segment. The overarching contribution is an analysis where the tonal status of N in Japanese dialects is directly derived from the status of nuclear positions that N is associated to or adjacent to, without reference to feature sensitive rules.

The etymology of Korean ssal ‘uncooked grain’ and pap ‘cooked grain’

Abstract In this paper, I will provide etymological explanations for the two Korean words for ‘grain’: ssal ‘uncooked grain’ and pap ‘cooked grain.’ The word ssal ‘uncooked grain’ is a loanword from Middle Chinese bu-sat ‘Bodhisattva,’ linking the Buddhist holy figure to the type of food that has a sacred status in Korean culture. The support for this claim comes from the fact that (i) grains were sometimes associated with the Buddha’s body in Korea, and (ii) certain dialects of Japanese have also referred to rice—undoubtedly the most favored type of grain—as bosatsu ‘Bodhisattva’ or buppō-sama ‘Lord Buddha Dharma.’ Moreover, pap ‘cooked grain’ is most likely derived from the baby-talk term for ‘food,’ because cross-linguistically, baby-talk terms for ‘food’ or ‘to eat’ tend to be similar to /papa/ or /mama/, some of which shifted into the adult-talk term for food or a common type of food.

TAKEDA Kōko: Grammatical Forms of Predicates in the Tohoku Dialects of Japanese

TAKEDA Kōko: Grammatical Forms of Predicates in the Tohoku Dialects of Japanese

Chūya Nakahara jako twórca japońskiego sonetu: perspektywy przekładu

Chūya Nakahara as the author of Japanese sonnet: Translation perspectives This article offers a reflection – against the historical and literary background of the epoch – on Chūya Nakahara’s work (1907–1937), who was the precursor of the Japanese syllabicaccentual verse (particular of the sonnet). Comparative analysis of his poem Mata kon haru (Spring comes again) and its Polish translation (included in the only Polish anthology of contemporary Japanese poetry entitled Cherries bloomed in winter) aims at shedding light on how difficult was the adaptation of the sonnet to the Japanese language. The OJAD (Online Japanese Accent Dictionary) service seems to offer a new promise for the research practice, proving that the intonation cadence may be treated similarly as feet in the poetry written in European languages.

On the Reconstruction of Japanese Accents

On the Reconstruction of Japanese Accents

Japanese Dialects for Expressing Symptoms in Palliative Care: A Nationwide Questionnaire Survey of Palliative Care Specialists

【目的】緩和ケア医が苦痛の評価を行う上で知っておくことが必要と考える方言を収集する．【方法】2020年2月から4月に緩和医療専門医・認定医762名を対象とした全国質問紙調査を実施した．緩和ケア医が苦痛の評価を行う上で知っておくことが必要と考える方言とその意味を自由記述で質問し，症状別に分類した．【結果】有効回答492名（64.8%）．233名（47.4％）が方言として116語を挙げ，苦痛を表現する方言は101語であった．「倦怠感・特定できない苦痛・全体的な調子の悪さ」（N=62），「疼痛」（N=13），「呼吸器・循環器症状」，「精神症状」（各N=8），「消化器症状」，「神経・筋・皮膚症状」（各N=5）であった．【結語】緩和ケア医が苦痛の評価を行う上で知っておくことが必要と考える方言とその意味が明らかになった．苦痛の適切な評価のために，苦痛を表す様々な方言があることを理解することが必要である．

Multi-dialect Neural Machine Translation for 48 Low-resource Japanese Dialects

Multi-dialect Neural Machine Translation for 48 Low-resource Japanese Dialects

Our Language—Linguistic Ideologies and Japanese Dialect Use in L1/L2 Interaction

This study uses conversation data and ethnographic interviews to examine the role of meta-talk in speaker legitimacy for L2 Japanese speakers. Autoethnographic analysis of conversation data demonstrates how an L2 speaker is co-constructed (jointly positioned) as a (non)legitimate speaker of Japanese Dialect. The researcher, an L2 Japanese speaker, recorded Japanese conversations with L1 interlocutors, namely, her L1 Japanese spouse and in-laws. Two contrasting cases of L2 Japanese Dialect use are examined. In the first case, L1 interlocutors respond to the L2 speaker’s dialect with meta-talk about “our language,” co-constructing the L2 speaker as a non-legitimate dialect user. In the second case, the L2 speaker’s dialect use is affirmed when the L1 interlocutor uses similar dialect; no meta-talk occurs. The conversation data is supplemented with ethnographic interview data which underscores the prevalence of meta-talk. Meta-talk reveals speakers’ beliefs about legitimate speakerhood in which “our language” does not include L2 speakers. Conversely, the absence of meta-talk affirms the L2 speaker’s dialect use and depicts dialect as a shared form of “our language.” This study contributes to understanding linguistic ideologies, demonstrates how language ownership and speaker legitimacy manifest in Japanese interactions, and adds to research examining Japanese Dialect use by L2 speakers.

«JAPANESE» CONTEXT OF KAZUO ISHIGURO’S NOVELS

The literary-artistic world of the novels of a British novelist of Japanese origin Kazuo Ishiguro in the context of Eastern culture and Japanese literary traditions has been analyzed in the article. The features of Japanese culture that have been reflected in the writer’s works have been considered; the historical conditions of formation and development of the mentality of the Japanese have been studied; the differences between the Western and Eastern worldviews have been identified; the psychological portraiture of the characters and existential motives in the works of the author have been analyzed. The relevance and perspective of the study is determined by insufficient study and coverage of the literary-artistic world of Ishiguro’s novels through the prism of Japanese culture within Ukrainian literary criticism. The writer is one of the outstanding representatives of cross-cultural literature, and the national component is very important for him. Despite the «international» character of his novels, the presence of «Japanese accent» is obvious even if nothing resembles Japan at first sight. In his works Ishiguro combines East and West, Western European and Japanese worldview systems and literary traditions. The author’s first two novels, «A Pale View of Hills» and «An Artist of the Floating World», refer to the so-called «Japanese» prose. They reflect the image of Japan and the Japanese, confirming the stereotypes that have formed in the minds of people in the West. The influence of the Eastern literary tradition is vividly noticeable in other novels of K. Ishiguro as well. The Japanese element of the image of the characters – their way of thinking, doings and feelings – is manifested appealing to the philosophy of Confucianism and Buddhism and the implementation of the basic principles of the samurai code of honour. The «Japanese» themes of loneliness, obligation, service and willingness to sacrifice are dominant in the works of the author. At the same time, Ishiguro managed to create a generalized metaphor for human life and to show universal values – devotion, kindness, the right to express one’s own personality – that are manifested regardless of external circumstances, nationality, age or social status of the characters.

ANALYSIS ON OSAKA DIALECTS VERBS AND NOUNS (STUDY OF STRUCTURE AND MEANING)

This research focuses on the structure and meaning of the sentence of Osaka Dialect and the standard Japanese itself. Osaka dialect is the most widely recognized on of Japanese dialect. An understanding or application of the Osaka dialect can be considered important so that when tourists, or who want to work or study in Osaka can understand the different structures and meanings that exist in standard Japanese and Osaka dialect, so as to avoid misunderstanding or miscommunication that is might happen. The method used in this research is descriptive analysis, which describes the structure and meaning on Osaka Dialects sentence. The data that were used in this research was obtained from a Japanese movie named 8UPPERS. Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that Osaka Dialect tends to shorten and obliterate the sound from the verb of standard Japanese. For example, the sound in standard Japaneses word chigau shortens into chau in Osaka Dialect, meaning œwrong, œdifferent, and œisnt that right?. There were also changes on standard Japaneses sentence ending word such as ~nda and ~nanda, that turns into ~nen and ~yanen. Changes can also be seen on standard Japaneses past form of sentence ending word, ~tanda or ~ta to ~ten in Osaka Dialect. The ~naide form changes to ~ntoite in Osaka Dialect. The sound in present form of sentence ending word such as ~teiru also change to ~toru. There were also differences between the ~n and ~hen form that equals to ~nai form and the n form which came from ru. Change of sound can also be found on the ~shimatta form, which turns into ~shimota in Osaka Dialect.

韓国語統営方言と日本語東京方言のアクセントの対照研究

韓国語統営方言と日本語東京方言のアクセントの対照研究

Development and Operation Result of Japanese Accent Perception Test Based on E-learning System

Main purpose of this study is to find and build a model of Japanese accent perception practice at Japanese lessons in regular classrooms and those based on utilization of network and multimedia. Until now, Japanese phonetic researchers and teachers had to spend a disproportionate amount of time and effort to conduct experiments or test, and to develop the means to process resulting data of the experiments conducted. With the proposed [AJ-phonetic Test] system, accent tests are conducted online. In this respect, Japanese learners can take part in the phonetics experiment in a time and location convenient to them. Also, researchers and teachers can work on the obtained data by using the database available. Moreover, AJ-phonetic test feedbacks provide not only test results but also a more comprehensive data analysis. Results of the 12-year operation of AJ-phonetic test in Korea proved to have a positive effect on students as well as teachers. This paper present general guidelines necessary to conduct the AJ-phonetic test. Firstly, in case of Korean learners of Japanese, a separate set of words accentless pitch and those with accent pitch is needed because the two sets present different difficulty levels for a learner. Secondly, as the number of moras in a word affects the difficulty, we introduced dummy words, which proved successful in controling the level of difficulty and increasing learning effect. Besides, dummy words worked well as a substitute for low tone (frequency) long words as well for long words in general. Thirdly, since there are only few cases with a distinctive long-short opposition in Korean, Korean learners of Japanese have difficulties recognizing accents in words with special moras. Such words therefore need special attention. Finally, the ability of Korean learners of Japanese to recognize accent in Japanese words differs based of the learners’ native dialects. Best results were obtained by learners from the Jeonla-do region, followed by those from Gyeongsang-do region, while learners from Seoul had most difficulties in recognizing the accent. From all the above findings we conclude that Japanese accent education is highly necessary, and that in the process of education, both Japanese accent characteristics as well as learners’ native dialects should be considered.

Foreword

Any scientific discipline undoubtedly encounters different challenges in their development over time. However, with the rise of modern technologies, such challenges expanded to new dimensions.
 In linguistics, corpus studies have already proven their advantages, and many researchers and other users enjoy the richness of different corpora, spreading enthusiasm and courage to treat linguistics interdisciplinarily. At the same time, minority languages and poorly studied languages are also gaining researchers' attention. Modern technologies further motivated different translation tools, which globalize the world with an enormous speed and seems to dicrease the relevance of language study and foreign language learning. However, the needs for interest in languages remain high. Though perhaps in a different form.
 This issue comprises the above ideas in five articles.
 Mayuri L. DILIP and Rayesh KUMAR coauthored the article “Clitic or Agreement Restriction in Santali: A Typological Analysis”, in which they investigated the syntactic configuration of pronominal number marking in Santali, the third most-spoken Austroasiatic language, from syntactic, morphological and prosodic perspective.
 The following article “Contextual factors and language: an analysis of order placements” was written by Andrej BEKEŠ. It tackles Japanese in a specific social context, namely written ordering requirements on a crowdsourcing website, and reports negative correlation between the level of added value of such requirements and the quality of linguistic expression, comparing it to the Grice’s maxims of conversation.
 ITO Hideaki's article “Orthoepic Competence Descriptors in Japanese Language Education: CEFR Levels B1 to C2” overviews the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and the JF Standard for Japanese-Language Education to discuss the benefits of their merging. In particular, the author re-examines CEFR descriptors for levels B1 to C2 in a non-alphabetically transcribed Japanese, which have not yet been attempted, and combine them with the results for levels A1 and A2 to present descriptors for levels A1 to C2 in overall.
 KIM Yu Young in his article “Development and Operation Results of Japanese Accent Perception Test Based On e-learning System” introduced the [AJ-phonetic Test] system, an online tool for practicing perception of Japanese word accent, presented its benefits through a longitudinal study on Korean learners of Japanese. 
 Finally, Miha PAVLOVIČ wrote an article entitled “Grammar Errors by Slovenian Learners of Japanese: Corpus Analysis of Writings on Beginner and Intermediate Levels”. In it he first presents how to construct such a corpus, and then presents his analysis of grammar errors that a collection of 182 written texts written by Japanese learners contained. 
 Editors and Editorial Board wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration.
 
 ALA editorial board