Vowel devoicing happens in Japanese when the high vowel is between voiceless consonants. The aim of this study is to investigate the lexical representation of vowel devoicing. A long-term repetition-priming experiment was conducted. Participants shadowed words containing either a devoiced or a voiced vowel in three priming paradigms, and their shadow responses were analyzed. It was found that participants produced the phonologically appropriate allophone most of the time based on the consonantal environments. Shadowing latencies for the voiced stimuli were faster than for the devoiced stimuli in the environment where the vowel should be voiced; while, no significant RT difference was observed between the two forms in the environment where vowel devoicing was expected. In addition, a priming effect between the devoiced and voiced stimuli emerged only in the devoicing environment. The results suggest that since vowel devoicing is very common in spoken Japanese, the devoiced form may be stored in the lexicon. The results also suggest a link between the two forms in the lexicon and a direct access between an input and a lexical representation without going through intermediate levels that usually cost extra processes.
BürkiA.ErnestusM.FrauenfelderU. H. (2010). Is there only one “fenêtre” in the production lexicon? On-line evidence on the nature of phonological representations of pronunciation variants for French schwa words. Journal of Memory and Language, 62, 421–437.
2.
ConnineC. M. (2004). It’s not what you hear but how often you hear it: On the neglected role of phonological variant frequency in auditory word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 1084–1089.
3.
ConnineC. M.BlaskoD. G.TitoneD. A. (1993). Do the beginnings of spoken words have a special status in auditory word recognition?Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 193–210.
4.
ConnineC. M.PinnowE. (2006). Phonological variation in spoken word recognition: Episodes and abstractions. The Linguistic Review, 23, 235–245.
5.
CutlerA.OtakeT.McQueenJ. M. (2009). Vowel devoicing and the perception of spoken Japanese words. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 1693–1703.
6.
CutlerA.van OoijenB.NorrisD.Sánchez-CasasR. (1996). Speeded detection of vowels: A cross-linguistic study. Perception and Psychophysics, 58, 807–822.
7.
DahanD.MagnusonJ. S. (2006). Spoken-word recognition. In TraxlerM. J.GernsbacherM. A. (Eds.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 249–283). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Academic Press.
8.
EddingtonD.ElzingaD. (2008). The phonetic context of American English flapping: Quantitative evidence. Language and Speech, 51, 245–266.
9.
FujimotoM. (2005). Boin museikaji no kootoochoosetsu: Museikano sukunai Oosaka hoogen washano baai [Glottal opening pattern in devoiced tokens by an Osaka dialect speaker]. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan, 9, 50–59.
10.
GaskellG. M.Marslen-WilsonW. D. (1996). Phonological variation and inference in lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 144–158.
11.
GaskellG. M.Marslen-WilsonW. D. (1998). Mechanisms of phonological inference in speech perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 380–396.
12.
GoldingerS. D. (1996). Words and voices: Episodic traces in spoken word identification and recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 1166–1183.
13.
GoldingerS. D. (1997). Perception and production in an episodic lexicon. In JohnsonK.MullennixJ. W. (Eds.), Talker variability in speech processing (pp. 33–66). San Diego: Academic Press.
14.
GoldingerS. D. (1998). Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. Psychological Review, 105, 251–279.
15.
GoldingerS. D.AzumaT. (2003). Puzzle-solving science: The quixotic quest for units in speech perception. Journal of Phonetics, 31, 305–320.
16.
GoldingerS. D.PisoniD. B.LoganJ. S. (1991). On the nature of talker variability effects on recall of spoken word lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17, 152–162.
17.
GowD. W. (2001). Assimilation and anticipation in continuous spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 133–159.
18.
GowD. W. (2003). Feature parsing: Feature cue mapping in spoken word recognition. Perception and Psychophysics, 65, 575–590.
19.
HanM. S. (1962). Unvoicing of vowels in Japanese. In Phonetic Society of Japan (Ed.), The Study of Sounds, 10, 81–99.
20.
HiroseH. (1971). The activity of the adductor laryngeal muscles in respect to vowel devoicing in Japanese. Phonetica, 23, 156–170.
21.
InozukaH.InozukaM. (2003). Nihongo onseigaku no shikumi [System of Japanese phonetics]. Tokyo, Japan: Kenkyuusha.
22.
JohnsonK. (1997). Speech perception without speaker normalization. In JohnsonK.MullennixJ. W. (Eds.), Talker variability in speech processing (pp. 145–165). San Diego: Academic Press.
23.
JusczykP.LuceP. A. (2002). Speech perception and spoken word recognition: Past and present. Ear & Hearing, 23, 1–40.
24.
KlattD. H. (1989). Review of selected models of speech perception. In Marslen-WilsonW. (Ed.), Lexical representation and process (pp. 169–226). London, UK: MIT Press.
25.
KondoM. (2005). Syllable structure and its acoustic effects on vowels in devoicing environments. In van de WeijerJ.NanjoK.NishiharaT. (Eds.), Voicing in Japanese (pp. 229–246). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
26.
KubozonoH. (1999). Nihongo no onsei [Japanese phonetics]. Tokyo, Japan: Iwanami shoten.
27.
LoCastoP.ConnineC. M. (2002). Rule-governed missing information in spoken word recognition: Schwa vowel deletion. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 64, 208–219.
28.
MaekawaK.KikuchiH. (2005). Corpus-based analysis of vowel devoicing in spontaneous Japanese: An interim report. In van de WeijerJ.NanjoK.NishiharaT. (Eds.), Voicing in Japanese (pp. 205–228). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
29.
Marslen-WilsonW. D. (1985). Speech shadowing and speech comprehension. Speech Communication, 4, 55–73.
30.
Marslen-WilsonW. D. (1987). Functional parallelism in spoken word-recognition. Cognition, 25, 71–102.
31.
Marslen-WilsonW. D.GaskellG. (1992). Match and mis-match in lexical access [Abstract]. International Journal of Psychology, 27, 61.
32.
Marslen-WilsonW. D.WarrenP. (1994). Levels of perceptual representation and process in lexical access: Words, phonemes, and features. Psychology Review, 101, 653–675.
33.
Marslen-WilsonW. D.ZwitserloodP. (1989). Accessing spoken words: On the importance of word onset. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 15, 576–585.
34.
MartinS. E. (1987). The Japanese language through time. New Haven: Yale University Press.
35.
MassaroD. W.OdenG. C. (1995). Independence of lexical context and phonological information in speech perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 1053–1064.
36.
McClellandJ. L.ElmanJ. L. (1986). The TRACE model of speech perception. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 1–86.
37.
McLennanC. T.LuceP. A.Charles-LuceJ. (2003). Representation of lexical form. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29(4), 539–553.
38.
McLennanC. T.LuceP. A.Charles-LuceJ. (2005). Representation of lexical form: Evidence from studies of sublexical ambiguity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(6), 1308–1314.
39.
McQueenJ. M. (2007). Eight questions about spoken-word recognition. In GaskellM. G. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 37–53). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
40.
NakamuraM. (2003). The articulation of vowel devoicing: A preliminary analysis. Phonological Studies, 6, 49–58.
41.
OgasawaraN.WarnerN. (2009). Processing missing vowels: Allophonic processing in Japanese. Language and Cognitive Processes, 24, 376–411.
42.
OstreicherH. J.SharfD. J. (1976). Effects of coarticulation on the identification of deleted consonant and vowel sounds. Journal of Phonetics, 4, 285–301.
43.
PierrehumbertJ. (2001). Exemplar dynamics: Word frequency, lenition and contrast. In BybeeJ. L.HopperP. (Eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure (pp. 137–157). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
44.
PierrehumbertJ. (2002). Word-specific phonetics. In GussenhovenC.WarnerN. (Eds.), Laboratory Phonology7 (pp. 101–139). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
45.
PisoniD. B. (1990). Effects of talker variability on speech perception: Implications for current research and theory. In FujisakiH. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1990 International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 1399–1407). Kobe, Japan.
46.
PisoniD. B. (1992). Talker normalization in speech perception. In TohkuraY.Vatikiotis-BatesonE.SagisakaY. (Eds.), Speech perception, production, and linguistic structure (pp. 143–151). Tokyo, Japan: Ohmsha Press.
47.
PisoniD. B. (1997). Some thoughts on “normalization” in speech perception. In JohnsonK.MullennixJ. W. (Eds.), Talker variability in speech processing (pp. 9–32). San Diego: Academic Press.
48.
PisoniD. B.LuceP. A. (1987). Acoustic-phonetic representations in word recognition. Cognition, 25, 1–52.
49.
RanbomL. J.ConnineC. M. (2007). Lexical representation of phonological variation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 273–298.
50.
SakuraiS. (1985). Kyootsuugo no hatsuon de chuui subeki kotogara [Issues on pronunciation of Standard Japanese]. In Nippon Hoso Kyokai (Ed.), Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Jiten (pp. 128–134). Tokyo, Japan: Nippon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai.
51.
SnoerenN. D.SeguíJ.HalléP. A. (2008). Perceptual processing of partially and fully assimilated words in French. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34, 193–204.
52.
Studdert-KennedyM. (1974). The perception of speech. In SebeokT. A. (Ed.), Current trends in linguistics: Vol. XII (pp. 2349–2385). The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton.
53.
VanceT. J. (1987). An introduction to Japanese phonology. Albany: State University of New York Press.
54.
VanceT. J. (2008). The sounds of Japanese. New York: Cambridge University Press.
55.
YoshiokaH. (1981). Laryngeal adjustments in the production of the fricative consonants and devoiced vowels in Japanese. Phonetica, 38, 236–251.
56.
YoshiokaH.LöfqvistA.HiroseH. (1982). Laryngeal adjustments in Japanese voiceless sound production. Journal of Phonetics, 10, 1–10.
57.
YuenC. L.-K. (2000). The perception of Japanese devoiced vowels. Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 36, 531–547.
