Deep throat as a source of information

Heldner M, Wagner P, Włodarczak M. Deep throat as a source of information. In: Abelin Å, Nagano-Madsen Y, eds. Proceedings FONETIK 2018. Göteborg: University of Gothenburg, Department of Languages and Literatures Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science; 2018

東京と大阪の談話におけるあいづちの種類とその運用

音声言語研究所／ヨテボリ大学音声言語研究所Institute for Speech Communication Research / University of GothenburgInstitute for Speech Communication Research日本語の談話におけるあいづちの種類やその運用の実態を把握するために,東京(山の手,下町)および大阪(船場,河内)で収録された中・高年者による座談の音声資料に現れたあいづちを分析し,考察を行った。まず両方言であいづちとして使われたことばを調べ,一見多様にみえるあいづちの表現形式には反復による類型規則に従うものが多いこと,またその規則性は,基本周波数曲線(ピッチ曲線)にも認められることを明らかにした。次に,反復形を持つあいづちの表現形式は東京と大阪の両地域において違いがなく,表現形式にみられる方言差,地域差,男女差,丁寧度の差などは,「アソーデスカ」系のような反復形を取りにくいあいづちにみられた。あいづちの種類に関しては,ほとんどの話者が8～11種のあいづち系を持ち,それを親疎の関係や男女差などの要因により使い分けていることが明らかになった。In this paper, we investigated characteristics of back channel items in Japanese by analysing four dialogues by native speakers of the Tokyo and Osaka dialects. The dialogues, each of which has four speakers, were recorded by researchers of the National Language Research Institute. Some sociolinguistic factors such as intimacy and the speaker\u27s sex had been taken into consideration in organizing the groups. From the analysis of approximately 3 hours of recording, nearly 3000 back channel items were extracted. They were classified into 11 classes according to forms as the main criterion. Furthermore, the items belonging to the 11 classes were divided into two main categories: (1) those that can form reduplicated counterparts and (2) those that do not usually reduplicate. Regularities of the intonational patterns of the items which belong to category 1 are also shown in their fundamental frequency contours. Neither the patterning of the reduplicated forms nor their intonation patterns differed between Tokyo and Osaka. The frequency analysis revealed that the majority of the back channel items in Japanese belong to category 1. Forms which reflect dialectal and sociolinguistic factors were concentrated in the items in category 2, which appeared to be more substantial utterances. All the speakers were found to possess 8-11 classes of back channel items, while the exact rules of their usage were controlled by sociolinguistic factors such as intimacy, formality, and the speaker\u27s sex

New Approach to Teaching Japanese Pronunciation in the Digital Era - Challenges and Practices

Pronunciation has been a black hole in the L2 Japanese classroom on account of a lack of class time, teacher\u2019s confidence, and consciousness of the need to teach pronunciation, among other reasons. The absence of pronunciation instruction is reported to result in fossilized pronunciation errors, communication problems, and learner frustration. With an intention of making a contribution to improve such circumstances, this paper aims at three goals. First, it discusses the importance, necessity, and e ectiveness of teaching prosodic aspects of Japanese pronunciation from an early stage in acquisition. Second, it shows that Japanese prosody is challenging because of its typological rareness, regardless of the L1 backgrounds of learners. Third and finally, it introduces a new approach to teaching L2 pronunciation with the goal of developing L2 comprehensibility by focusing on essential prosodic features, which is followed by discussions on key issues concerning how to implement the new approach both inside and outside the classroom in the digital era

Perception and Production of L2 Mandarin Tones by Swedish Learners

 This study presents the results of perception and production of L2 Mandarin tones in mono- and di-syllabic words by Swedish learners at the beginner level. Although studies of perception and production on Mandarin tones are many, those by speakers of lexical-pitch accent language such as Swedish are still very limited. The result reveals both discrepancy and agreement between perception and production. Swedish learners perform best in discriminating a level tone (T1) from contour tones (T2, T3, T4) both in perception and production. Discrepancy between perception and production was noted for T3. In perception, the identification of T3 was second best after the level tone (T1), but the production of T3 was found to be difficult