Accuracy and Stability in English Speakers' Production of Japanese Pitch Accent.
Becky Muradás-Taylor
PMID 34227413WHAT IT FOUND
More Japanese experience did not improve English learners' Japanese pitch accent.
Accuracy and stability were low for both groups, and no learner produced accurate and stable accent types for most words.
Key findings
01More Japanese experience did not increase accuracy or stability of produced Japanese pitch accent types.
02Across all 21 learners, 43% of words were accurate, 40% were stable, and 18% were both accurate and stable.
03Learners varied widely in stability, from 3% to 77%, but varied little in accuracy, from 32% to 52%.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 21 English-speaking learners of Japanese, with 13 less-experienced and 8 more-experienced learners, so it may not detect a small experience difference. It did not test a therapy, a clinical population, or patients with speech-language disorders. The words were read aloud from cards, not produced in spontaneous conversation. The participants were not asked whether they knew the words they produced. The study used Standard Japanese as the reference, so it does not cover all Japanese dialects. The sample was limited to L1 English speakers studying Japanese, so it may not apply to other first languages or to learners with different training.
Declared interests
The author reports financial support from Nagoya University Scholarships for Outstanding Graduate Students, a Japan Student Services Organisation Honors Scholarship for Privately Financed International Students, a Daiko Foundation Ryugaku Gakugei Scholarship, and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, grant number 4181. No competing-interest statement is given in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that Japanese pitch accent cannot be learned or that training cannot help. This study tested only 21 English-speaking learners of Japanese reading real words, and it did not test an intervention.