Processing of Intonation Patterns in Japanese

Accent and intonation in foreign language instruction tend to be treated in a haphazard manner for two reasons: lack of research analysis that can be applied to the second language acquisition (SLA) situation; and absence of pedagogical materials that effectively train learners on this aspect of the target language. Japanese language instruction at all levels will benefit from both deductive and inductive instructions on accent and intonation at the level of utterance and discourse. Such a seemingly challenging task can be accomplished by using a computerized exercise that involves the effects of various accent and intonation patterns. The experimental study presented in this dissertation examined the processing of three types of prosodically marked syntactic and pragmatic contrasts by native and non-native speakers of Japanese. Three results are salient. First, there was a statistically significant difference between the performance of native and non-native speakers in both the discrimination and the interpretation tasks. Second, while non-native speakers performed equally well in the discrimination task regardless of their proficiency, their performance in the identification task was strongly predicted by their proficiency. Finally, native speakers of the Tokyo dialect and speakers of other dialects performed differently on the interpretation task. As an extension of the investigation, I propose ways to make the topic of accent and intonation a part of the curriculum at all levels of instruction. I will also demonstrate a computer program currently being developed to help Japanese students improve their communicative effectiveness by directing their attention to the effects of variation in accent and intonation patterns. Advisors/Committee Members: Noda, Mari.