Research
Current Projects
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Japanese voicing contrast (L1 Production)
The acoustic cues of Japanese voicing contrast seem to have been changing. If that is the case, which acoustic cues do they enhance when they need to disambiguate minimal pairs of voicing contrast? I have started this study so that I can use the insights from the results for the L2 perception study (see below).
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Iwamoto, K., Kawaoto, L., & de Jong, K. J. (under revision) Maximizing voicing contrast in modern Tokyo Japanese across the word-initial and intervocalic position and pitch contexts: The effect of phonological focus on pre-voicing, aspiration, and f0 cue.
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Japanese voicing contrast (L2 Perception)
The effect of the lexical function of pitch in L1 on cue weighting strategies for L2 segmental contrast.
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Iwamoto, K., & Darcy, I. (in press). Native speakers’ redundant acoustic cue may be learners’ treasure: Can pitch be repurposed? Proceedings of the 14th annual Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference. West Lafayette, Indiana, United States.
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Previous Projects
M.A. Thesis (University of Mississippi)
This study compared two word types & two L1 groups:
[Word type]
1. Loanword (e.g., track)
2. Non-loanword (e.g., trash)
[L1 group]
1. Japanese
2. Mandarin Chinese
The Loanword type words exist as loanwords in Japanese, whereas the Non-loanword type words do not. On the other hand, from the perspective of L1 Mandarin speakers, there is no difference between the two word types in terms of phono-lexical representations because Mandarin often adopts loanwords based on their meaning, not sounds.
(1) Vowel epenthesis was observed for both word types by both L1 groups. This was expected because both L1s do not allow consonant clusters.
(2) For L1 Mandarin group, there was no significant difference in the duration of epenthetic vowels between the two word-types.
(3) However, for L1 Japanese group, there was a significant difference between the two word types. The duration was significantly longer in the Loanword type than the Non-loanword type.
The results suggest that the status of loanwords and non-loanwords are different in mental lexicon. Hence, the difference in the status seems to induce a difference in production.
(See PPT here)
