Vowel length categorization in Arabic and Japanese: Comparison of native and non-native Japanese perception

Abstract

This study examined the perception of short and long vowels in Arabic and Japanese by native (NJ) and non-native (NNJ) speakers of Japanese. Both Arabic and Japanese use duration contrastively. The aim was to examine whether and how the listeners’ differential knowledge of Japanese might influence the processing of short and long vowels in an unknown language, Arabic, as well as Japanese. Of particular interest was the effect of NNJ's emerging length categories resulting from second/foreign language learning experience on their cross-language perception. Ten Japanese vowels (five short, five long) were used as response categories. On average, the NJ listeners categorized the Japanese vowels more accurately than did the NNJ listeners (91 vs. 84%), in particular, long vowels (94% for NJ and 82% for NNJ), but the between-group difference did not reach statistical significance. However, qualitative differences were observed between the two groups in the way they responded to Arabic and Japanese vowels. This may be related to the distributional characteristics of Japanese vowels, which is that long vowels are much less frequent than short vowels, prompting the NNJ, but not the NJ, listeners to select the short category over the long counterpart when in doubt. As a result of this distributional imbalance, the NNJ listeners may have developed a more robust representation for short than for long vowels in Japanese. Both NJ and NNJ listeners assimilated Arabic vowels to a wide range of Japanese vowels, suggesting perceptual confusion.

Keywords:

• Cross-language speech perception
• Vowel length
• Non-native Japanese learners
• Categorization

Acknowledgements

This manuscript was partially prepared when I was affiliated as Research Associate with the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL), Colgate University. I thank the members of EALL, in particular, Yukari Hirata, for generously accommodating me during my Outside Studies Program. This research was funded by the Macquarie University Research Development Grant (Ref No. 9200900585). I thank Professor Yoshito Hirozane (Mejiro University), Ms Nejimeh Habib, and Mr Chris Callaghan (Macquarie University) for their help with various aspects of this project. I also thank participants who represent diverse language backgrounds. I am indebted to the editors of Speech, Language and Hearing and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.