Perception and production of Japanese vowel length contrast (L2) by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (L1)

• Grant number: 18/14753-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2019
• End date: December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Plinio Almeida Barbosa
• Grantee: Luan Augusto Fazolin
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Length is a contrastive aspect in the Japanese language, and occurs both in consonantal and in vowel segments - differentiating, e.g., /kita/, "arrived", "came" from /kit:a/, "cut", "sliced" and opposing /meSi/, "food" and /me:Si/, "business card". Given the importance of phonetic and phonological categories development for the effective use of a language, the present study seeks to broaden the understanding of this phenomenon in terms of foreign language learning, contributing to the refinement of one of the main models in the area, Perceptual Assimilation Model for L2 (PAM-L2). To this end, we will investigate the perception and production of Japanese (L2) vocalic durational contrast - that is, the contrast between /i, e, a, u, o/ and /i:, e:, a:, u:, o:/ - by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (L1) who are also learning Japanese as a foreign language. The perception test will consist of exposing the participants to sentences like "ima kara A to iimasu" (now I will say A), where A will be the target word to be discriminated, with the participant having to judge between having heard the word A, B or neither - and A and B is a minimum pair whose contrast parameter is the quantity. For the production test, the readings of the same sentences will be recorded, and will later be judged by native Japanese speakers. From the possibilities generated by PAM-L2 and PAM, it is expected that the durational contrast will be assimilated as a Single Category (SC) or Category-Goodness (CG). In order to verify any difference in averages of duration, consistency between the judges, and the relation between production and perception, a mixed-model ANOVA or a non-parametric equivalent test, an inter-rater reliability test, and a correlation test will be respectively applied.(AU)