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Abstract

Colleges of Computer Sciences and Science (Psychology)
Northeastern University Boston, MA
Topics Concerning Japanese and English Bilinguals

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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the existing literature concerning speech segmentation, categorical perception, and some other issues concerning bilinguals of English and Japanese. It will touch on some of the differences in the two languages and how they affect learning the L2. The paper will start by providing background information about some of the two languages and some of the current issues involved in speech processing. The paper will then delve into the most current research, what the issues are, how it was done, and the results they have found. It will then go on to discuss the possible future directions of this research and end with references.

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Debord’s text is concise, economical, poetic, provocative, and difficult. As Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri describe it in their notes to Empire as Quoting Hardt & Negri: “…Debord recognized this spectacle as the destiny of triumphant capitalism. Despite their important differences, such authors offer us real anticipations of the path of capitalist development.” And continuting in their notes: “[The Spectacle], which is perhaps the best articulation, in its own delirious way, of the contemporary consciousness of the triumph of capital.”delirious.¹ His work contains many references to Hegel and Marx. He uses words and phrases defined in other Situationist texts, and expects the reader to be familiar with them. This is to be expected, as he demands much from the reader, and had written for a small audience of “fifty or sixty people” who were well versed in the history of the western philosophical tradition.

4. Segmentation in non-native languages

An important area of study concerning bilingual speech segmentation is how non-native speakers segment their second language (L2). This is a spoiler!. If non-native speakers 摆let itbai烂rotlan can use any of the non-native language rhythmic, prosodic, lexico-syntatic, and syntactic segmentation processes, then they will have a much easier time segmenting the L2. The ability to learn a non-native segmentation process would be beneficial to any bilingual as it would facilitate comprehension of the L2. Research into brain plasticity for learning non-native language processes would directly benefit the existing body of knowledge².

In short, while it is possible-though not particularly easy-for a foreigner to acquire Japanese citizenship, it is not possible for an immigrant or the children of immigrants to “become Japanese” the way such people can “become American.” The way you get to be Japanese is the same way you get to be Zulu or Shona in Africa: you have to be born into the tribe. For that is what the people of Japan-or at least more than 97 percent of them-really are: members of a single great tribe united not just by common citizenship or common language but by common bloodlines, common racial memory and common tribal codes, so of which stretch back into prehistory.³

In a study of brain plasticity and non-native lexical and segmentation processes, Sanders et al. in 2002 came up with interesting methods for probing non-native speakers to see if learning the L2 early in life or later in life would effect the ability to learn non-native lexical and segmentation processes. This study would research various language subsystems such as lexico-semantic, syntactic, and prosodic information processing. Using the earlier proposed theories that each language uses different methods of speech segmentation (English: Stress-based, French: Syllable-based, Japanese: Mora-based) they tried to find if non-native speakers used lexico-syntactic information processes when segmenting a non-native language (Sanders et al., 2002). Four groups were obtained to study this hypothesis, a group of native English speakers as a control group (E), early English Japanese native speakers (JE), early English Spanish native speakers (SE), late English Japanese native speakers (J), and a group of late English Spanish native speakers (S). “If non-native speakers fail to use rhythmic segmentation cues other than the rhythmic cues relevant to their L1, native speakers of Japanese (mora-timed) and Spanish (syllable-timed) would not be expected to use stress pattern as a segmentation cue when listening to English. Alternatively, native Japanese and native Spanish speakers might differ in their abilities to use stress pattern as a segmentation cue in English.” (Sanders et al., 2002).

For this experiment they created 5 groups of 3 sentences each. The 5 groups were “Strong stress, initial position (SI), strong stress, medial position (SM), weak stress, initial position (WI), weak stress, medial position (WM), and target absent (TA).” (Sanders et al., 2002). Each group contained 3 sentences each of which were a semantic, syntactic or acoustic target sentence. The semantic words were normal English sentences, the syntactic sentences replaced all open-class words with non-words, and the acoustic words only retained the original prosody. Participants were asked to listen to a target, and then were asked to press one button if that target was heard in the beginning of the sentence, another button if it was heard in the middle, and the third button if it was not heard. Results indicated that “the fact that both groups of late-learners were able to use the lexical information supports the hypothesis that the lexico-semantic system remains relatively plastic beyond the age of 12.” (Sanders et al., 2002). These results support the idea that late learners can learn non-native language processes later in life, which is a reassuring fact for late-bilinguals, however “No group of non-native speakers used syntactic information to the same extent as native speakers.” (Sanders et al., 2002). These results, as well as other indicate that syntactic information processes are not as easily learned later in life (Sanders et al., 2002). An interesting finding was how both early and late learners of English Japanese-natives were able to use some segmentation cues that are seemingly effective in both English and Japanese; “this study could either indicate that both groups were applying a Japanese segmentation cue that happens to co-occur with stress in English or that both groups had enough exposure to English to learn a new segmentation cue.” (Sanders et al., 2002). Overall the findings of this study show that both lexical and semantic segmentation subsystems retain the “ability to change to a greater degree than do syntactic subsystems” (Sanders et al., 2002).

Code

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Markup

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CSS

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JavaScript

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}

Bibliography

Footnotes

1. Quoting Hardt & Negri: “…Debord recognized this spectacle as the destiny of triumphant capitalism. Despite their important differences, such authors offer us real anticipations of the path of capitalist development.” And continuting in their notes: “[The Spectacle], which is perhaps the best articulation, in its own delirious way, of the contemporary consciousness of the triumph of capital.”
   Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 0674251210. (Pp. 188/444). ↩

2. This footnote can have multiple paragraphs.

   Another paragraph. ↩

3. This is a foonote. ↩