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Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers

Japanese has one liquid phoneme /r/, realized usually as an apico-alveolar tap [ɾ] and sometimes as an alveolar lateral approximant [l]. English has two: rhotic /r/ and lateral /l/, with varying phonetic realizations centered on the postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠] and on the alveolar lateral approximant [l], respectively. Japanese speakers who learn English as a second language later than childhood often have difficulty in hearing and producing the /r/ and /l/ of English accurately.

A restaurant sign in Japan showing confusion associated with /r/ and /l/ sounds in English

Phonetic differences edit

The Japanese liquid is most often realized as an alveolar tap [ɾ], though there is some variation depending on phonetic context.[1] /r/ of American English (the dialect Japanese speakers are typically exposed to) is most commonly a postalveolar central approximant with simultaneous secondary pharyngeal constriction [ɹ̠ˤ] or less commonly a retroflex approximant [ɻ].[2] /l/ involves contact with the alveolar ridge as well as some raising of the tongue dorsum (velarization), especially when syllable-final.[3]

Perception edit

Evidence from Best & Strange (1992) and Yamada & Tohkura (1992) suggests that Japanese speakers perceive English /r/ as somewhat like the compressed-lip velar approximant [w͍] and other studies[4] have shown speakers to hear it more as an ill-formed Japanese /r/. Goto (1971) reports that native speakers of Japanese who have learned English as adults have difficulty perceiving the acoustic differences between English /r/ and /l/, even if the speakers are comfortable with conversational English, have lived in an English-speaking country for extended periods, and can articulate the two sounds when speaking English.

Japanese speakers can, however, perceive the difference between English /r/ and /l/ when these sounds are not mentally processed as speech sounds. Miyawaki et al. (1975) found that Japanese speakers could distinguish /r/ and /l/ just as well as native English speakers if the sounds were acoustically manipulated in a way that made them sound less like speech (by removal of all acoustic information except the F3 component). Lively et al. (1994) found that speakers' ability to distinguish between the two sounds depended on where the sound occurred. Word-final /l/ and /r/ with a preceding vowel were distinguished the best, followed by word-initial /r/ and /l/. Those that occurred in initial consonant clusters or between vowels were the most difficult to distinguish accurately.

Bradlow et al. (1997) provide evidence that there is a link between perception and production to the extent that perceptual learning generally transferred to improved production. However, there may be little correlation between degrees of learning in perception and production after training in perception, due to the wide range of individual variation in learning strategies.

Production edit

Goto (1971) reports that Japanese speakers who cannot hear the difference between /r/ and /l/ may still learn to produce the difference, presumably through articulatory training in which they learn the correct places and manners of articulation required for the production of the two sounds. In this sense, they learn to produce /r/ and /l/ in much the same way a deaf person would. Although they have only a single acoustic image corresponding to a single phoneme intermediary between /r/ and /l/, they can determine they are producing the correct sound based on the tactile sensations of the speech articulators (i.e. tongue, alveolar ridge, etc.) coming into contact with each other without any auditory feedback or confirmation that they are indeed producing the sound correctly.[5]

Variations in acquisition edit

There is some indication that Japanese speakers tend to improve more on the perception and production of /r/ than /l/.

Aoyama et al. (2004) conducted a longitudinal study that examined the perception and production of English /l/, /r/, and /w/ by adults and children who were native speakers of Japanese but living in the United States. Over time, the children improved more on English /r/ than English /l/.

Similarly, Guion et al. (2000) found that Japanese speakers who received training in distinguishing English sounds improved more on /r/ than on /l/. They suggest that English /l/ is perceived as more similar to Japanese /r/ than English /r/ is, and hence it is harder for Japanese speakers to distinguish Japanese /r/ from English /l/ than Japanese /r/ from English /r/.

Kuzniak & Zapf (2004) found differences between the second and third formants in /r/ and /l/ of a native Japanese speaker and a native English speaker. The results showed that the Japanese speaker had a hard time producing an English-like third formant, especially that which is required to produce an /l/.

Effects of training edit

There have been a number of experiments in training Japanese subjects to improve their perception of /r/ and /l/.

Lively et al. (1994) found that monolingual Japanese speakers in Japan could increase their ability to distinguish between /l/ and /r/ after a 3-week training period, which involved hearing minimal pairs (such as 'rock' and 'lock') produced by five speakers, and being asked to identify which word was which. Feedback was provided during training, and participants had to listen to the minimal pairs until the correct answer was given. Participants performed significantly better immediately after the 3-week training, and retained some improvements when retested after 3 months and after 6 months (although there was a decrease in recognition ability at the 6-month test). Reaction time decreased during the training period as the accuracy went up. Participants could "generalize" their learning somewhat: when tested they could distinguish between new /l/ and /r/ minimal pairs, but performed better when the pairs were said by one of the five speakers they had heard before rather than by a new speaker.[6]

Lively, Logan & Pisoni (1993) also found that subjects who were trained by listening to multiple speakers' production of /r/ and /l/ in only a few phonetic environments improved more than subjects who were trained with a single talker using a wider range of phonetic environments.

McClelland, Fiez & McCandliss (2002) argue that it is possible to train Japanese adults to distinguish speech sounds they find difficult to differentiate at first. They found that speech training results in outcomes indicating a real change in the perception of the sounds as speech, rather than simply in auditory perception.

However, it is not clear whether adult learners can ever fully overcome their difficulties with /r/ and /l/. Takagi & Mann (1995) found that even Japanese speakers who have lived 12 or more years in the United States have more trouble identifying /r/ and /l/ than native English speakers do.

Examples edit

There are numerous minimal pairs of words distinguishing only /r/ and /l/. For their study, Kuzniak & Zapf (2004) used the following ones:

  • right/light
  • red/led
  • road/load
  • arrive/alive
  • correct/collect
  • crime/climb
  • bread/bled
  • froze/flows

The Japanese adaptation of English words is largely non-rhotic, in that English /r/ at the end of a syllable is realized either as a vowel or as nothing and therefore is distinguished from /l/ in the same environment. So store and stole or stall, for example, are distinguished as sutoa and sutōru, respectively.

See also edit

References edit

Bibliography edit

  • Aoyama, Katsura; Flege, James Emil; Guion, Susan; Akahane-Yamada, Reiko; Yamada, Tsuneo (2004), "Perceived phonetic dissimilarity and L2 speech learning: the case of Japanese /r/ and English /l/ and /r/", Journal of Phonetics, 32 (2): 233–250, doi:10.1016/S0095-4470(03)00036-6
  • Best, Catherine; Strange, W. (1992), "Effects of phonological and phonetic factors on cross-language perception of approximants", Journal of Phonetics, 20 (3): 305–330, doi:10.1016/S0095-4470(19)30637-0, S2CID 18874416
  • Bloch, B. (1950), "Studies in colloquial Japanese IV: Phonemics", Language, 26 (1): 191–211, doi:10.2307/410409, JSTOR 410409
  • Boyce, S.; Espy-Wilson, C. (1997), "Coarticulatory stability in American English /r/", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101 (6): 3741–3753, Bibcode:1997ASAJ..101.3741B, doi:10.1121/1.418333, PMID 9193061
  • Bradlow, A.; Pisoni, D; Yamada, R.A.; Tohkura, Y (1997), "Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: IV. Some effects of perceptual learning on speech production", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101 (4): 2299–2310, Bibcode:1997ASAJ..101.2299B, doi:10.1121/1.418276, PMC 3507383, PMID 9104031
  • Delattre, P.; Freeman, D.C. (1968), "A dialect study of American R's by x-ray motion picture", Linguistics, 44: 29–68
  • Flege, J.E.; Takagi, Naoyuki; Mann, Virginia (1996), "Lexical familiarity and English language experience affect Japanese adults' perception of /r/ and /l/", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 99 (2): 1161–1173, Bibcode:1996ASAJ...99.1161F, doi:10.1121/1.414884, PMID 8609300
  • Goto, Hiromu (1971), "Auditory perception by normal Japanese adults of the sounds "l" and "r""", Neuropsychologia, 9 (3): 317–323, doi:10.1016/0028-3932(71)90027-3, PMID 5149302
  • Guion, Susan; Flege, James Emil; Akahane-Yamada, Reiko; Pruitt, JC (2000), "An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: The case of Japanese adults' perception of English consonants", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 107 (5 Pt. 1): 2711–2724, Bibcode:2000ASAJ..107.2711G, doi:10.1121/1.428657, PMID 10830393
  • Hallé, Pierre A.; Best, Catherine T.; Levitt, Andrea (1999), "Phonetic vs. phonological influences on French listeners' perception of American English approximants", Journal of Phonetics, 27 (3): 281–306, doi:10.1006/jpho.1999.0097
  • Kuzniak, Kinnaird; Zapf, Jennifer (2004), (PDF), Indiana University Linguistic Club Working Papers, 4, archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-06-12
  • Lively, Scott; Logan, John; Pisoni, David (1993), "Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: II. The role of phonetic environment and talker variability in new perceptual categories", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94 (3 Pt 1): 1242–1255, Bibcode:1993ASAJ...94.1242L, doi:10.1121/1.408177, PMC 3509365, PMID 8408964
  • Lively, Scott; Pisoni, D.B.; Yamada, R.A.; Tohkura, Y.I.; Yamada, T (1994), "Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: III. Long-term retention of new phonetic categories.", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 96 (4): 2076–2087, Bibcode:1994ASAJ...96.2076L, doi:10.1121/1.410149, PMC 3518835, PMID 7963022
  • Logan, John; Lively, Scott; Pisoni, David (1991), "Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: a first report", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 89 (2): 874–886, Bibcode:1991ASAJ...89..874L, doi:10.1121/1.1894649, PMC 3518834, PMID 2016438
  • McClelland, J.L.; Fiez, J.A.; McCandliss, B.D. (2002), "Teaching the /r/-/l/ Discrimination to Japanese Adults: Behavioral and Neural Aspects", Physiology & Behavior, 77 (4–5): 657–662, doi:10.1016/S0031-9384(02)00916-2, PMID 12527015, S2CID 16651818
  • Miyawaki, Miyawaki; Strange, W.; Verbrugge, R.R.; Liberman, A.M; Jenkins, J.J.; Fujimura, O. (1975), "An effect of linguistic experience: the discrimination of [r] and [l] by native speakers of Japanese and English", Perception and Psychophysics, 18 (5): 331–340, doi:10.3758/BF03211209
  • Takagi, Naoyuki (1995), "Signal detection modeling of Japanese learners' /r/-/l/ labeling behavior in a one-interval identification task", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97 (1): 563–574, Bibcode:1995ASAJ...97..563T, doi:10.1121/1.413059, PMID 7860833
  • Takagi, Naoyuki; Mann, Virginia (1995), "The limits of extended naturalistic exposure on the perceptual mastery of English /r/ and /l/ by adult Japanese learners of English", Applied Psycholinguistics, 16 (4): 379–405, doi:10.1017/S0142716400066005, S2CID 141515188
  • Vance, T. (1987), An introduction to Japanese phonology, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press
  • Yamada, Reiko; Tohkura, Y. (1992), "The effects of experimental variables on the perception of American English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners", Perception and Psychophysics, 52 (4): 376–392, doi:10.3758/BF03206698, PMID 1437471
  • Zawadzki, P.A.; Kuehn, D.P. (1980), "A cineradiographic study of static and dynamic aspects of American English /r/", Phonetica, 37 (4): 253–266, doi:10.1159/000259995, PMID 7443796, S2CID 46760239

perception, english, japanese, speakers, japanese, liquid, phoneme, realized, usually, apico, alveolar, sometimes, alveolar, lateral, approximant, english, rhotic, lateral, with, varying, phonetic, realizations, centered, postalveolar, approximant, alveolar, l. Japanese has one liquid phoneme r realized usually as an apico alveolar tap ɾ and sometimes as an alveolar lateral approximant l English has two rhotic r and lateral l with varying phonetic realizations centered on the postalveolar approximant ɹ and on the alveolar lateral approximant l respectively Japanese speakers who learn English as a second language later than childhood often have difficulty in hearing and producing the r and l of English accurately A restaurant sign in Japan showing confusion associated with r and l sounds in English This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA For the distinction between and see IPA Brackets and transcription delimiters Contents 1 Phonetic differences 2 Perception 3 Production 4 Variations in acquisition 5 Effects of training 6 Examples 7 See also 8 References 9 BibliographyPhonetic differences editFurther information Pronunciation of English r and Japanese phonology The Japanese liquid is most often realized as an alveolar tap ɾ though there is some variation depending on phonetic context 1 r of American English the dialect Japanese speakers are typically exposed to is most commonly a postalveolar central approximant with simultaneous secondary pharyngeal constriction ɹ ˤ or less commonly a retroflex approximant ɻ 2 l involves contact with the alveolar ridge as well as some raising of the tongue dorsum velarization especially when syllable final 3 Perception editEvidence from Best amp Strange 1992 and Yamada amp Tohkura 1992 suggests that Japanese speakers perceive English r as somewhat like the compressed lip velar approximant w and other studies 4 have shown speakers to hear it more as an ill formed Japanese r Goto 1971 reports that native speakers of Japanese who have learned English as adults have difficulty perceiving the acoustic differences between English r and l even if the speakers are comfortable with conversational English have lived in an English speaking country for extended periods and can articulate the two sounds when speaking English Japanese speakers can however perceive the difference between English r and l when these sounds are not mentally processed as speech sounds Miyawaki et al 1975 found that Japanese speakers could distinguish r and l just as well as native English speakers if the sounds were acoustically manipulated in a way that made them sound less like speech by removal of all acoustic information except the F3 component Lively et al 1994 found that speakers ability to distinguish between the two sounds depended on where the sound occurred Word final l and r with a preceding vowel were distinguished the best followed by word initial r and l Those that occurred in initial consonant clusters or between vowels were the most difficult to distinguish accurately Bradlow et al 1997 provide evidence that there is a link between perception and production to the extent that perceptual learning generally transferred to improved production However there may be little correlation between degrees of learning in perception and production after training in perception due to the wide range of individual variation in learning strategies Production editGoto 1971 reports that Japanese speakers who cannot hear the difference between r and l may still learn to produce the difference presumably through articulatory training in which they learn the correct places and manners of articulation required for the production of the two sounds In this sense they learn to produce r and l in much the same way a deaf person would Although they have only a single acoustic image corresponding to a single phoneme intermediary between r and l they can determine they are producing the correct sound based on the tactile sensations of the speech articulators i e tongue alveolar ridge etc coming into contact with each other without any auditory feedback or confirmation that they are indeed producing the sound correctly 5 Variations in acquisition editThere is some indication that Japanese speakers tend to improve more on the perception and production of r than l Aoyama et al 2004 conducted a longitudinal study that examined the perception and production of English l r and w by adults and children who were native speakers of Japanese but living in the United States Over time the children improved more on English r than English l Similarly Guion et al 2000 found that Japanese speakers who received training in distinguishing English sounds improved more on r than on l They suggest that English l is perceived as more similar to Japanese r than English r is and hence it is harder for Japanese speakers to distinguish Japanese r from English l than Japanese r from English r Kuzniak amp Zapf 2004 found differences between the second and third formants in r and l of a native Japanese speaker and a native English speaker The results showed that the Japanese speaker had a hard time producing an English like third formant especially that which is required to produce an l Effects of training editThere have been a number of experiments in training Japanese subjects to improve their perception of r and l Lively et al 1994 found that monolingual Japanese speakers in Japan could increase their ability to distinguish between l and r after a 3 week training period which involved hearing minimal pairs such as rock and lock produced by five speakers and being asked to identify which word was which Feedback was provided during training and participants had to listen to the minimal pairs until the correct answer was given Participants performed significantly better immediately after the 3 week training and retained some improvements when retested after 3 months and after 6 months although there was a decrease in recognition ability at the 6 month test Reaction time decreased during the training period as the accuracy went up Participants could generalize their learning somewhat when tested they could distinguish between new l and r minimal pairs but performed better when the pairs were said by one of the five speakers they had heard before rather than by a new speaker 6 Lively Logan amp Pisoni 1993 also found that subjects who were trained by listening to multiple speakers production of r and l in only a few phonetic environments improved more than subjects who were trained with a single talker using a wider range of phonetic environments McClelland Fiez amp McCandliss 2002 argue that it is possible to train Japanese adults to distinguish speech sounds they find difficult to differentiate at first They found that speech training results in outcomes indicating a real change in the perception of the sounds as speech rather than simply in auditory perception However it is not clear whether adult learners can ever fully overcome their difficulties with r and l Takagi amp Mann 1995 found that even Japanese speakers who have lived 12 or more years in the United States have more trouble identifying r and l than native English speakers do Examples editThere are numerous minimal pairs of words distinguishing only r and l For their study Kuzniak amp Zapf 2004 used the following ones right light red led road load arrive alive correct collect crime climb bread bled froze flowsThe Japanese adaptation of English words is largely non rhotic in that English r at the end of a syllable is realized either as a vowel or as nothing and therefore is distinguished from l in the same environment So store and stole or stall for example are distinguished as sutoa and sutōru respectively Gallery of English language signs in Japan nbsp A sign at Yodobashi Camera confuses the words frame and flame nbsp At a gift shop in Otaru nbsp At a bar in Sapporo nbsp At an Irish Pub in SapporoSee also editEnglish phonology Engrish Lallation disambiguation Non native pronunciations of English Rhotacism and lambdacismReferences edit Halle Best amp Levitt 1999 283 citing Bloch 1950 and Vance 1987 Halle Best amp Levitt 1999 283 citing Delattre amp Freeman 1968 Zawadzki amp Kuehn 1980 and Boyce amp Espy Wilson 1997 Halle Best amp Levitt 1999 283 For example Flege Takagi amp Mann 1996 and Takagi 1995 Goto 1971 Lively et al 1994 Bibliography editAoyama Katsura Flege James Emil Guion Susan Akahane Yamada Reiko Yamada Tsuneo 2004 Perceived phonetic dissimilarity and L2 speech learning the case of Japanese r and English l and r Journal of Phonetics 32 2 233 250 doi 10 1016 S0095 4470 03 00036 6 Best Catherine Strange W 1992 Effects of phonological and phonetic factors on cross language perception of approximants Journal of Phonetics 20 3 305 330 doi 10 1016 S0095 4470 19 30637 0 S2CID 18874416 Bloch B 1950 Studies in colloquial Japanese IV Phonemics Language 26 1 191 211 doi 10 2307 410409 JSTOR 410409 Boyce S Espy Wilson C 1997 Coarticulatory stability in American English r Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101 6 3741 3753 Bibcode 1997ASAJ 101 3741B doi 10 1121 1 418333 PMID 9193061 Bradlow A Pisoni D Yamada R A Tohkura Y 1997 Training Japanese listeners to identify English r and l IV Some effects of perceptual learning on speech production Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101 4 2299 2310 Bibcode 1997ASAJ 101 2299B doi 10 1121 1 418276 PMC 3507383 PMID 9104031 Delattre P Freeman D C 1968 A dialect study of American R s by x ray motion picture Linguistics 44 29 68 Flege J E Takagi Naoyuki Mann Virginia 1996 Lexical familiarity and English language experience affect Japanese adults perception of r and l Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 99 2 1161 1173 Bibcode 1996ASAJ 99 1161F doi 10 1121 1 414884 PMID 8609300 Goto Hiromu 1971 Auditory perception by normal Japanese adults of the sounds l and r Neuropsychologia 9 3 317 323 doi 10 1016 0028 3932 71 90027 3 PMID 5149302 Guion Susan Flege James Emil Akahane Yamada Reiko Pruitt JC 2000 An investigation of current models of second language speech perception The case of Japanese adults perception of English consonants Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 107 5 Pt 1 2711 2724 Bibcode 2000ASAJ 107 2711G doi 10 1121 1 428657 PMID 10830393 Halle Pierre A Best Catherine T Levitt Andrea 1999 Phonetic vs phonological influences on French listeners perception of American English approximants Journal of Phonetics 27 3 281 306 doi 10 1006 jpho 1999 0097 Kuzniak Kinnaird Zapf Jennifer 2004 An acoustical analysis of a Japanese speaker s production of English r and l PDF Indiana University Linguistic Club Working Papers 4 archived from the original PDF on 2006 06 12 Lively Scott Logan John Pisoni David 1993 Training Japanese listeners to identify English r and l II The role of phonetic environment and talker variability in new perceptual categories Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 94 3 Pt 1 1242 1255 Bibcode 1993ASAJ 94 1242L doi 10 1121 1 408177 PMC 3509365 PMID 8408964 Lively Scott Pisoni D B Yamada R A Tohkura Y I Yamada T 1994 Training Japanese listeners to identify English r and l III Long term retention of new phonetic categories Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 96 4 2076 2087 Bibcode 1994ASAJ 96 2076L doi 10 1121 1 410149 PMC 3518835 PMID 7963022 Logan John Lively Scott Pisoni David 1991 Training Japanese listeners to identify English r and l a first report Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 89 2 874 886 Bibcode 1991ASAJ 89 874L doi 10 1121 1 1894649 PMC 3518834 PMID 2016438 McClelland J L Fiez J A McCandliss B D 2002 Teaching the r l Discrimination to Japanese Adults Behavioral and Neural Aspects Physiology amp Behavior 77 4 5 657 662 doi 10 1016 S0031 9384 02 00916 2 PMID 12527015 S2CID 16651818 Miyawaki Miyawaki Strange W Verbrugge R R Liberman A M Jenkins J J Fujimura O 1975 An effect of linguistic experience the discrimination of r and l by native speakers of Japanese and English Perception and Psychophysics 18 5 331 340 doi 10 3758 BF03211209 Takagi Naoyuki 1995 Signal detection modeling of Japanese learners r l labeling behavior in a one interval identification task Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97 1 563 574 Bibcode 1995ASAJ 97 563T doi 10 1121 1 413059 PMID 7860833 Takagi Naoyuki Mann Virginia 1995 The limits of extended naturalistic exposure on the perceptual mastery of English r and l by adult Japanese learners of English Applied Psycholinguistics 16 4 379 405 doi 10 1017 S0142716400066005 S2CID 141515188 Vance T 1987 An introduction to Japanese phonology Albany NY State University of New York Press Yamada Reiko Tohkura Y 1992 The effects of experimental variables on the perception of American English r and l by Japanese listeners Perception and Psychophysics 52 4 376 392 doi 10 3758 BF03206698 PMID 1437471 Zawadzki P A Kuehn D P 1980 A cineradiographic study of static and dynamic aspects of American English r Phonetica 37 4 253 266 doi 10 1159 000259995 PMID 7443796 S2CID 46760239 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Perception of English r and l by Japanese speakers amp oldid 1208414204, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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