A Study on Perceptual Training of Mandarin Tone 2 and Tone 3 by Japanese Learners

摘要

日本人学習者にとって中国語における声調の学習はかなり困難である.四つの声調の中で，第二声と第三声が最も扱いにくい.声調の区別ができるような知覚トレーニング法を開発するために，日本人学習者にとって発話時の声調発声はどれくらい困難なのか，日本人による声調の知覚パターンは中国人話者に比べてどのような違いがあるのか，区別が難しい二つの声調を識別するために最も影響があるのはどの音響特性なのか，どのような知覚トレーニング法が有効なのかといったjs問題設定に基づいて研究を行った.まず，はじめに日本人学習者が発話した二音節語の声調を分析した.次に，日本人と中国人による二つの声調の知覚パターンを調べた.最後に，7日間にわたる知覚トレーニングとして，最初の二日間に適応トレーニングを実施し，残りの5日間で高変動知覚トレーニングを行った.実験の結果，日本人と中国人のそれぞれの声調の生成と知覚パターンについて明らかになり，今回試みたトレーニング法が日本人学習者における声調を区別する能力の改善に有効であることを示した.%In the process of Mandarin learning, lexical tones have presented great difficulty to Japanese learners. Among the four basic tone categories, Tone 2 and Tone 3 show to be the most problematic. In order to develop a perceptual training paradigm that can help them to develop perceptual ability to distinguish the tones, we have carried out a series of three studies to answer the following questions: how difficult do Japanese learners produce the tones in connected speech? How different are Japanese tone perception patterns from those of native Chinese speakers? Which acoustic cue is most influential for perceptual identification of the two confusing tones? What kind of perceptual training procedure is effective? The first study checked tones in disyllable words produced by Japanese learners, the second one investigated perception patterns of the two tones by Japanese and Chinese people, and the third tested a hybrid perceptual training paradigm lasting 6 days: an adaptive training in the first two days and a high-variability training in the following four days. Results of these studies not only improved our knowing about tone production and perception patterns with respect to Japanese and Chinese speakers, but also showed the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid perceptual training paradigm which achieved a significant improvement of tone distinguishing ability by Japanese learners.