Standard Japanese Research Articles

Comparative study of perception of Japanese dialectal accent in children

This paper reports the acquisition course of perception of Japanese dialectal accent. We carried out an experiment of accent perception for native speakers of Japanese dialects, namely, Tokyo dialect (Standard Japanese) and Kagoshima dialect. Then we compared results between the two dialects. Experimental stimuli were real words with several types of synthesized accent patterns. Results revealed that the Kagoshima children and adults accepted both the native Kagoshima accent and the Tokyo accent, whereas the Tokyo children and adults accepted only the native Tokyo accent. These results suggest that the Kagoshima speakers had insensitivity to the perception of accent. In our previous studies, the Kagoshima children showed different characteristics of accent production from the Tokyo and Kyoto children: the Tokyo and Kyoto children acquired their native accent correctly, whereas the Kagoshima children failed to produce it. [Shirose et al., J. Cognit. Sci. 2(1), 33–44 (2001)]. The insensitivity of accent perception of both Kagoshima adults and children might be one factor contributing to results of accent production. These intriguing parallels of accent perception and production will be discussed inclusively.

Prosodic levelling during language shift: Okinawan approximations of Japanese pitch‐accent1

This article demonstrates how the language death process potentially contributes to the emergence of a new dialect. A sociolinguistic survey of the prosodic phonology of Japanese spoken in Yaeyama, Okinawa shows that the obsolescence process of Okinawan has resulted in a new dialect of Japanese. First, Okinawan is undergoing processes typical of language death, including increased variability and the elimination of phonological contrasts at the prosodic level. These processes are also occurring in the incoming language, Japanese. Second, these processes have influenced the acquisition of the prosody of Standard Japanese, resulting in a new prosodic system. Third, a positive attitude towards the local variant of Japanese is prevalent among the younger members of the community, particularly the working‐class males. These results suggest that a local prosodic system is emerging, resulting in a new dialect of Japanese.

The perception of Mandarin tone contrasts: A cross-linguistic study

Previous studies of the perception of tone continua found that Mandarin listeners perceive tones more categorically than French listeners, whose performance is essentially psychophysically motivated. In this study, we examined native-language effects on the perception of Mandarin tone continua by Cantonese, Thai, and Japanese listeners. Cantonese distinguishes six tones: high-rising, low-rising, low-falling, and high-, mid-, and low level. Thai has five tones: rising, falling, and high-, mid-, and low level. Standard Japanese has a word pitch accent with at most one LH and one HL pitch movement per word. Listeners of these languages were tested on three Mandarin tone continua constructed from natural utterances within carrier sentences. Listeners were run on AXB identification and discrimination tests on isolated syllables. Japanese, Thai, and Cantonese listeners, in that order, perceived tones increasingly categorically. Cantonese and Thai listeners were more sensitive to tone-contour differences than Japanese listeners, although less than Mandarin listeners. The Cantonese and Thai data show that both phonological and phonetic properties of the native language affect the perception of the non-native Mandarin tones. The findings are compared with prior cross-linguistic research, and discussed with reference to the suprasegmental phonological differences across languages.

Maintaining the Redox-Balance Intact: Gosha-Jinki-Gan but Not Insulin Activates Retinal Soluble Guanylate Cyclase in Diabetic Rats

Strategies to prevent hyperglycemia-induced cytotoxic reactive oxygen species in the retina include the prevention of free radical production, activation of radical-scavenging capacities and inhibition of aldose reductase. This study examined the effect of the standardized Japanese herbal extract product gosha-jinki-gan (GJG) in comparison to insulin treatment in the rat retina. Diabetes was induced in male Wistar rats by single injection of streptozotocin (50 mg/kg i.p.). At 6 and 12 weeks, eyecups were removed for immunohistochemistry. At 12 weeks, lipid peroxidation (tested with the antiacrolein antibody, Ab5F6) was enhanced significantly in the untreated diabetic group. This effect was absent in both treatment groups, notably in the outer retina. A similar result was obtained for nitrotyrosine overproduction. As an early treatment effect, GJG – but not insulin – enhanced soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) activation (using the function-sensing antibody, MoAb 3221). GJG not only reduces nitroxidative stress and lipid peroxidation in the retina, it also ameliorates glucose metabolism within the cells. We propose that the high glucose turnover in the insulin-treated model disturbs the intracellular redox equilibrium, one result of which might be the impaired sGC activation.

Japanese language instruction and the question of ‘‘correctness’’

All Japanese language instructors experience the fact that their own language use in the classrooms differs significantly from their regular way of speaking, and attribute the differences to the fact that they use more ‘‘correct’’ Japanese in the classrooms. The concept of ‘‘correctness’’ which is based on Standard Japanese (Hyōjungo), however, often leads the instructor not only to overcorrect the Japanese usage of their students but also to overlook the fact that their own usage includes forms they do not tolerate in their students’ speech. This apparent contradiction gives us an opportunity to reconsider the very concept of ‘‘correctness’’ instead of just assigning high priority to correctness at the expense of ignoring normal speech performance. By presenting a number of examples of Japanese constructions that are treated as mistakes in the classroom but observed relatively frequently among native speakers including myself, the notion of ‘‘correctness’’ is critically examined with regard to its significance for Japanese language instruction. The relationship between Hyōjungo and correctness as well as that of the codified norms and language change are discussed, special attention being given to the effects of the written norm on speech. On the basis of these considerations, this article argues for an awareness change toward a new notion of correctness with latitude. Some concrete didactic strategies are put forth to introduce this notion into the JFL classroom.

A Brief Review of General Biology of Kinorhyncha, with Proposed New Standard Japanese Names for the Species from Japan

A Brief Review of General Biology of Kinorhyncha, with Proposed New Standard Japanese Names for the Species from Japan

Language Planning and Language Ideology in the Ryūkyū Islands

The Ryūkyū Islands were assimilated into the Japanese nation state in 1879, and Standard Japanese started to spread. Pressure for Standard Japanese language became particularly fervent during the national mobilization campaign, which started in 1939. Following the battle of Okinawa in 1945, the Ryūkyū Islands were separated from Japan and placed under U.S. trusteeship. Although Americans sought to foster Ryūkyūan independence and considered developing Ryūkyūan as a national language, the spread of Standard Japanese continued unabatedly until reunification with Japan in 1972. American attempts to encourage the use of Ryūkyūan notwithstanding, natural intergenerational transmission ceased after 1950. The weakening language loyalty after 1945 must be accounted for by language ideologies concerning Japanese and Ryūkyūan; any successful reverse language shift must take this into account.

Geographical Factors of Communication on the Basis of Usage Rate of the Standard Japanese Forms and Railway Distance

Geographical Factors of Communication on the Basis of Usage Rate of the Standard Japanese Forms and Railway Distance

そしゃく時のこう合接触からみた全部床義歯のこう合

Few reports describe the functional superiority of full balanced occlusion to that of lingualized occlusion. Recently, a bilateral balanced scheme has been much more generally applied than a unilateral balanced scheme in lingualized occlusion as well as in full balanced occlusion. Occlusal contacts on the non-chewing side occur earlier than on the chewing side;in the order of second molar, first molar, and then premolars. The contact on the balancing side contributes to the prevention of denture dislocation and guidance from eccentric positions to the centric occlusal position during mastication. Therefore, bilateral balanced occlusion was shown to be effective for denture stability during mastication with complete dentures. Today's typical edentulous patients have greater mean age than in the past, and thus are seen with severe alveolar bone resorption, thin mucosa and sometimes abnormalities of the maxillomandibular relation. Their occlusal positions are often unstable and changeable after insertion of complete dentures. Because lingualized occlusion allows for easier accommodation and correction, lingualized occlusion is more suitable for such cases than full balanced occlusion, which requires a strict occlusal relationship. In light of the standard Japanese diet, there is some doubt about why lingualized occlusion might be suitable for Japanese edentulous patients in terms of the sense of mastication. A method of evaluating the sense of mastication needs to be established.

Leo Pasifika: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics (review)

Reviewed by: Leo Pasifika: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics John Lynch Steven Roger Fischer and Wolfgang B. Sperlich, eds. 2000. Leo Pasifika: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics. Auckland: The Institute of Polynesian Languages and Literatures. xii + 392 pp. Paper. Price $NZ 55.00 ($US 28.00). The first three conferences in this series having been held in Vanuatu, Fiji, and New Zealand, the fourth convened in the tiny self-governing territory of Niue. (The fifth was held in Australia in January of this year—2002.) [End Page 248] Following a preface by the first editor, a foreword by the second (who was also the convenor of the conference), and a welcome address in Niuean by Atapana Siakimotu (Niue Consul-General in New Zealand), the volume consists of Andrew Pawley's keynote address followed by twenty-five other papers arranged alphabetically by author's surname. The papers fall into the following categories: comparative-historical linguistics, eight papers; descriptive studies on Oceanic languages (discourse, syntax, phonology, language and culture, etc.), ten papers; language survival/revival and the status of Oceanic languages, five papers; pidgins/creoles, two papers; and other (pottery), one paper. Perhaps as a result of the location of the conference, there was a very strong Polynesian bias, with 18 out of the 26 papers being on Polynesian topics. It is obviously impossible to discuss all twenty-six papers in this brief review. I will try instead to highlight a few general themes that I feel are of interest, and to discuss briefly some individual contributions to these themes. One theme that is obvious even from a perusal of the table of contents is the current plight of the Niuean language. Census figures from the mid-1990s showed about 2,000 Niueans living on Niue compared with about 20,000 living in New Zealand (Head, 142).1 The language is being swamped by English, especially in New Zealand, but also on Niue, though there are efforts being made in both places to foster its use (Taonefoou Falesima and Lisa Fuemana-Foa'i). All of the Niuean contributors express pride in their language, and some also in being bilingual (Jocelyn Tauevihi), but the sheer volume of papers on this same theme suggests that the Niuean language may be destined for oblivion unless current attitudes and practices change. Language contact is another theme found in quite a few papers. Wolfgang Sperlich disposes of a number of suggestions made by other writers that there is a Samoic and/or Eastern Polynesian substratum in Niuean. Darrell Tryon's sketch of Ngatikese Pidgin is brief but interesting, making available data on this little-known Pacific pidgin. Another even less well-known contact language, Bonin English, is the subject of a paper by Daniel Long. He discusses the influence of Pacific languages on a contact variety of English used (alongside Standard English, Standard Japanese, and Ogasawara Japanese) in the Bonin or Ogasawara islands of Japan, to the north of the Marianas. Bonin English seems to have borrowed significantly from Polynesian languages, but also shows many characteristics of other Pacific pidgins/ creoles (e.g., stop = 'stay', postverbal yet = 'still', been + verb = past tense, etc.). I question, though, his statement that one would not expect an l/r contrast as a result of contact with Pacific languages (Long, 213): although this might be true of contact with Polynesian languages, there was also contact with Micronesian and Western Austronesian languages (Long, 202), as well as with one or more varieties of Pacific Pidgin English, the majority of which show an l/r contrast. As is usual with these conferences, there is a strong comparative-historical component. Andrew Pawley's keynote address on taxonomies has a distinct historical perspective. He tries to define the referents in Proto-Oceanic (POC) of the reconstructions *manuk, *ikan, and *sisi[q], whose meanings are quite variable in [End Page 249] daughter languages—for example, reflexes of *manuk range from 'bird' or 'bird + other flying creatures' in some languages to 'any living creature except humans' in others (and even including humans in at least one language).2 As well as being an exercise in terminological reconstruction, however, Pawley...

Differences in Glottal Opening Pattern between Tokyo and Osaka Dialect Speakers: Factors Contributing to Vowel Devoicing

In Japanese, high vowels /i/ and /u/ are often devoiced when they are preceded and followed by voiceless consonants. The phenomenon is called vowel devoicing. The frequency of its occurrence is high in dialects of eastern Japan including standard (Tokyo) Japanese and low in dialects of western Japan including Osaka dialect. It has been claimed that consonants, but not vowels, are pronounced more carefully in eastern dialects compared to western dialects, which results in higher frequency of vowel devoicing. This paper examines whether the glottal opening gesture of voiceless consonants differs between those Tokyo speakers who consistently show vowel devoicing and Osaka speakers who do not show vowel devoicing. The results indicated that the duration of glottal opening for /k/ in voiced CV syllables was significantly longer for Tokyo speakers than for Osaka speakers. For Tokyo speakers, duration and maximum size of the glottal opening in devoiced /kite/ are significantly larger than /k/ in voiced syllables. This difference cannot be explained by the simple addition of the glottal gestures of [k] and [t]. Furthermore, the difference in vowel length between /i/ and /e/ was related, at least in part, to the difference in the amount of the airflow passing through the vocal tract about the time the stop closure was released.

Articulatory function in patients who have undergone glossectomy with use of an artificial graft membrane

The purpose of this study was to investigate, by assessing speech intelligibility, the long-term usefulness of an artificial bilayer membrane as a mucosal substitute after glossectomy. Artificial membranes were grafted in 8 patients with intraoral defects after glossectomy. Five patients served as a control group and received only standard closure by suture after glossectomy. Speech intelligibility was evaluated by means of a standardized Japanese speech intelligibility test 6 months or more after the operation. The postoperative courses of all 13 patients were uneventful. Intelligibility scores of those who received grafts were better than those of the control group in the overall score, the glossal sounds score, and the rear portion sounds score. The artificial membrane was useful for the glossectomy as a long-term mucosal substitute, as well as for the short-term.

Converging toward the interlocutor: Sentence-final forms in Japanese conversations

Japanese is widely known as a language with distinctive feminine and masculine styles. The use of sentence-final forms is one of the areas where the gender-based differences are most explicit (Tsujimura 1996). Okamoto and Sato (1992) examined Japanese sentence-final forms in women's speech across generations and found that younger speakers used less stereotypical feminine forms. Using a similar coding system as Okamoto and Sato's (1992), we categorized the sentence-final forms as 1) strongly feminine, 2) moderately feminine, 3) neutral, 4) moderately masculine, and 5) strongly masculine. Our study departs from previous studies in two ways. First, we examined speech of male speakers as well as females. Second, we separated single sex and cross sex interactions to investigate the influence of the addressee. The corpus consists of twelve dyads in natural settings. The participants, who spoke standard Japanese, were ages 24 to 35. Our data indicate that the sex of the interlocutor affects speech style: both women and men employed different styles in the single sex conversations and the cross sex conversations. We will discuss gender-based differences and similarities in the speech of Japanese women and men, and how the speakers converge to the “gendered” style of the interlocutors. Finally, a discussion of the findings and implications for future gender-based studies of Japanese sentence-final forms will be addressed.

Incremental Relevance Feedback in Japanese Text Retrieval

The application of relevance feedback techniques has been shown to improve retrieval performance for a number of information retrieval tasks. This paper explores incremental relevance feedback for ad hoc Japanese text retrievals examining, separately and in combination, the utility of term reweighting and query expansion using a probabilistic retrieval model. Retrieval performance is evaluated in terms of standard precision-recall measures, and also using “number-to-view” graphs. Experimental results, on the standard BMIR-J2 Japanese language retrieval collection, show that both term reweighting and query expansion improve retrieval performance. This is reflected in improvements in both precision and recall, but also a reduction in the average number of documents which must be viewed to find a selected number of relevant items. In particular, using a simple simulation of user searching, incremental application of relevance information is shown to lead to progressively improved retrieval performance and an overall reduction in the number of documents that a user must view to find relevant ones.

Cross-Sectional Study on the Relationship between Smoking or Smoking Cessation and Trait Anxiety

Objective. The relationships between trait anxiety, or anxiety proneness, and smoking and between trait anxiety and smoking cessation, among an adult population were investigated.Methods. The subjects were 2,669 male Japanese personnel working for a Japanese government agency. Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire on smoking and smoking cessation status and other habits. Trait anxiety was evaluated with the trait anxiety part of the standardized Japanese version of the Spielberger State–Trait Anxiety Inventory. Trait anxiety is regarded as the long-term, more endogenous general type of anxiety. Odds ratios of the single 2 × 2 table were calculated and a logistic regression analysis was used to adjust for age.Results. After adjusting for age, high trait anxiety did not increase the risk of smoking and was not related to success in abstaining from smoking. More subjects with high trait anxiety had planned to stop smoking (adjusted odds ratio: 1.39, P = 0.01) but did not actually succeed in doing so.Conclusion. The present study did not support the hypothesis that high trait anxiety increased the risk of having a smoking habit and that high trait anxiety increased the chance of abstaining from smoking. However, the study did show that high trait anxiety was related to the planning of smoking cessation, but not to actually giving up the smoking habit.

Linguistic Minorities and Education in Japan

The increasing visibility and assertiveness of language minorities in Japan now pose a serious issue for government policy which has hitherto been committed to the historical ideology of a monoracial and monolingual state. Language education policy in Japan is currently predicated upon the need for ‘internationalisation but nowhere does internationalisation include support, or at least encouragement, for community and indigenous languages, or regional dialects. Nowhere is there official acknowledgment that in the public school system, there are languages and language varieties other than standard Japanese, nor that schools might benefit from recognition of ‘Other’ languages. It is well‐known that the idea of a diverse Japan has been systematically avoided by the so‐called Nihonjinron theories, an ethnocentrist body of writings which purports to value cultural difference whilst emphasising the uniqueness of ‘being Japanese’. This ideology is becoming increasingly challenged as many local communities, urban and rural, re‐evaluate their changing composition in the light of cultural diversity. Community languages may include Korean, Ainu, new immigrant languages, Japanese Sign Language and others. However, the notion of contemporary Japan as somehow ‘multilingual’ still remains radically controversial and contested in descriptions such as Government white papers and approved school textbooks. There is a need for a new paradigm regarding the languages of Japan and there are signs that a new and progressive one is emerging.

Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, and: Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (review)

Reviewed by: Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity, and: Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb Sharalyn Orbaugh Tomi Suzuki. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996. 248 pp. John Whittier Treat. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. xvii + 487 pp. In the 1880s a Japanese writer, translator, and critic named Tsubouchi Shoyo proposed that the term “shosetsu” be adopted as the standard Japanese translation for the modern literary form described by the English word “novel” or the French “roman.” In his influential essay “Shosetsu shinzui” (“The Essence of the Novel”), Tsubouchi explained the salient characteristics of this unfamiliar Western form to his Japanese readership and enthusiastically promoted “the novel” as the most effective vehicle for the expression of modern life. Thereafter writers and critics took their understanding of this form, gained primarily from attempts to translate English, French, German, and Russian novels into Japanese, and used that understanding to experiment with the writing of original shosetsu. By the turn of the century the nature and significance of the shosetsu was no longer problematized; writers had domesticated the form and had even devised a new literary language to accommodate the expression of a particularly Japanese modernity. Through the 1970s English-language scholarship on Japanese literature reproduced the assumption of an unproblematic equivalency between the novel and the shosetsu, almost invariably with the concomitant [End Page 538] critical denigration of Japanese “novels,” which were seen as lacking in plot, character development, and dramatic incident. This continuing critical discomfort with the Japanese “novel” is perhaps not surprising; although based on (the 19th century Japanese understanding of) the Anglo-European “novel,” the modern literary form shosetsu remains stubbornly and provocatively different from its Western model. Since the 1980s there have been several English-language studies that explored the shosetsu as a separate form, to be read on its own cultural terms. Tomi Suzuki’s Narrating the Self joins this critical conversation, focusing on a sub-set of the form called the “shi-shosetsu” (or, in an alternate reading, “watakushi-shosetsu”), often translated as “I-novel.” The shi-shosetsu may be narrated in first- or third-person but is usually assumed to be a transparent depiction of the author’s own life and thoughts, devoid of irony. Japanese critics have often argued that this subset of the shosetsu is in fact the most significant and the most “truly Japanese” of modern Japanese literary forms. Recent Western studies (such as those by Edward Fowler and Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit) have worked to identify the defining formal characteristics of the shi-shosetsu, particularly as it differs from the novel, both to recuperate it from the defamation of previous Eurocentric criticism and to offer response to Japanese-language critical discussion of the form. Hijiya-Kirschnereit, for example, argues convincingly that there were women writers of shi-shosetsu, contrary to the usual Japanese critical assertion that it was a form employed by men only. Suzuki’s study positions itself explicitly in relation to these recent publications on the shi-shosetsu: her project is to counter the notion of the shi-shosetsu as “an inherent literary genre with identifiable textual features”; she sees it rather as “a historically constructed dominant reading and interpretive paradigm.” Although the issues discussed in this book are identical to those that have configured earlier studies—authenticity, phonocentrism, the autonomous subject, and the development of a modern language, among others—Suzuki takes a historiographic approach, identifying the various moments when the idea of shi-shosetsu was created and then recruited to substantiate retroactively particular arguments about these issues. Although Tayama Katai’s Futon (1907) is frequently cited as the origin-text of the shi-shosetsu, the category was not created until at least two decades later, in the service of a critical debate about the value of Japanese literature [End Page 539] in comparison with Western forms. As Suzuki explains, significant debate over the shi-shosetsu surfaced twice more: around 1935 and immediately after World War II. She traces the circumstances that produced and defined these debates—both in the contexts of literary and social history—and then discusses...

FACTORS AFFECTING CAPTURE OF MALE RED PINE CONE BEETLES, CONOPHTHORUS RESINOSAE HOPKINS (COLEOPTERA: SCOLYTIDAE), IN PHEROMONE TRAPS

AbstractThe monoterpenes (±)-α-pinene, (1S)-(−)-β-pinene, (R)-(+)-limonene, and myrcene did not enhance the catch of red pine cone beetle, Conophthorus resinosae, in traps baited with the female sex pheromone, (±)-trans-pityol. Traps placed in the upper half of the tree’s crown caught significantly more beetles than those hung from the tree’s trunk 2 m above ground. No significant differences in trap catches were found among standard yellow Japanese beetle trap tops and those painted red, green, blue, white, black, or yellow.

The dynamics of honorific behavior in a rural community in Japan

When honorifics in Japanese are broadly divided into old honorifics and modern honorifics, one of the greatest differences we find is in patterns of honorific behavior. Today, the transition to relative honorifics has been completed in standard Japanese, but in regional communities there are dialects in which absolute honorifics can still be found.In this paper, the A. examines specifics of the transition from absolute honorifics to relative honorifics by examining one dialect community which is in the midst of such a transition.

Standard Japanese names for families of bryophytes

Standard Japanese names for families of bryophytes