1. Project Name: Exploration of Interaction between Auditory Phonetics and Phonology
2.Outline of the Project:
This project seeks to advance the methodology of auditory experimentation in field situations (outside labs) in order to further our understanding of auditory phonetic facts of a wide variety of languages, which in turn serve as basic materials for studying the interaction between areas covered by phonology and auditory phonetics.
3.Core Member in Charge: Nakagawa, Hiroshi
4.Collaborating Researchers:
Sano, Hiroshi; Mochizuki, Hajime; Furihata, Masashi; Suzuki, Reiko; Ueda, Hiromi; Hikita, Go (all of the above from GSACS); Kim, Ae-Ja (Doctoral Student, TUFS); Yanagimura, Yu (Doctoral Student, TUFS); Takahashi, Yasunori (Doctoral Student, TUFS); Hayato Aoi (Doctoral Student, TUFS); Tahara, Hiroki (Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific University); Hara, Mayuko (Osaka University); Igarashi, Yosuke (Hiroshima University)
5.Progress:
Project activities include the following:
Meeting for planning project goals, roles of the members, and schedules
Preliminary experiments on Indonesian vowel sounds (recording/editing of the stimuli, conducting experiments [Tokyo, Osaka, Paris], tallying the results, calculating perceptual distances, presentation of the result at Indonesia Society [Hara, Mayuko; Furihata, Masashi])
Acoustic analysis of Laotian tones (recording, acoustic analysis, normalization through statistical processing, description of the tone melodies and formation of a hypothesis on perceptual cues, presentation at a meeting of the Phonetic Association [Yanagimura, Yutaka])
Auditory experiments of the ‘Voicing+Pitch’ type plosives in Japanese by speakers of two Korean dialects (recording/editing of the stimuli of the Tokyo dialect, creation of the stimuli sounds, conducting the experiments [Tokyo, Seoul, Pusan], tallying the results and calculating the perceptual distances, submitting a paper for review [Kim, Ae-Ja]
Processing the results of auditory experiments in |Gui and ||Gana [Nakagawa, Hiroshi]. Five workshops/study sessions were held at TUFS on methodologies of phonetic stimuli recording and editing, conducting experiments, and tallying the results.
Planned activities have been completed by the end of Fiscal Year 2008. The research is presently extended and continuing as another project organized by Hirosi Nakagawa supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI 20242008).
The achievement of this project also includes publication of a booklet for acoustic-phonetic data analysis, titled Introduction to Acoustic Phonetic Data Analysis with Praat. The booklet is a handy introductory textbook, which is designed for a 1-semester course of acoustic phonetic research for beginners of the graduate level. It provides readers with basics for acoustic phonetic data analysis focusing on segments by using various illustrations such as waveforms, spectrograms, spectral slices, and vowel space plotting in terms of formants 1 and 2. The booklet has been used not only for the course for which it is originally designed, but also for other occasion, such as classes of the undergraduate level, and a workshop for young linguists at ILCAA.
6.Accomplishments
Kim, Ae-Ja, "Auditory recognition of Japanese plosives by Korean native speakers." Language/area and culture studies, 14, Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. 2008.
Nakagawa, H., "Integration of clicks and non-clicks." TUFS Essays, 75, Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. 2007. pp87-96.
Hara, Mayuko and Furihata, Masashi, "Implication of findings in auditory experimental phonetic research to phonetic training." Presented at Japan Indonesia Society 2007 Meeting (Nanzan Training Center, November 10, 2007)
Yanagimura, Yu, "Acoustic phonetic description of tones in Laotian Vientiane dialect". Presented at the 316th Meeting of Japanese Phonetic Society. (December 8, 2007)
Aoi, Hayato Introduction to Acoustic Phonetic Data Analysis with Praat. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (1st edition March 2011, revised edition September 2011)