English Syllable-Internal Structure of Japanese
Children living in Hawaii: A Pilot Study
Judy Yoneoka
Abstract
English is commonly considered to have a syllable-internal structure of onset
vs. rime (O-R), whereas the structure of Japanese is assumed to be head-coda (H-C).
The purpose of this study is to pursue the question of the extent to which Japanese
children learning English after age 6 are able to use English onset-rime structure in
performing English tasks.
Two tasks used previously to determine the presence of syllable-internal
onset-rime structure in American adults (Tremain 1983) were replicated with 11
Japanese children living in Hawaii in order to determine the extent of their awareness
of O-R structure vs. the effects of transfer of the H-C structure of their native language.
To obtain comparable data, 10 native English children were similarly tested.
Results showed that the Japanese children were more apt to use a head-coda
strategy for both tasks than were American children. On the other hand, the majority of
their responses (almost 56% used an O-R syllable division when it was required by the
task for a successful response. In addition, two of the US children showed a preference
for H-C responses in the task which allowed free choice. The issue of onset consonant
cluster breakage was also explored, with the somewhat surprising result that Japanese
children tended to break initial CCs less than did the American children.
1. Introduction
The syllable and the phoneme are both acknowledged subunits of word
structure and language-specific units of timing, but the question of' whether there is an
intermediary division between these two structural units is a current subject of debate
in linguistics as well as psychology. Phonologists generally divide the syllable into three
parts: onset, nucleus and coda (see Fig. 1a), but there is no consensus as to whether
these parts have heirarchical structure, and if so, what kind. Some phonologists agree
that a syllable-internal onset-rime distinction exists for English (see Fig. 1b). However,
an alternative syllable-internal structure of onset + nucleus (hereafter referred to as
"head") vs. coda (Fig. 1c) has been proposed for the Japanese language (Yoshiba 1981,
Katada 1990). This structure is claimed to reflect the moraic phonology patterns of the
language. 1
The difference in syllable-internal structure for English and Japanese leads to
several research questions: At what age is language-specific syllable-
internal structure internalized? Does it transfer to other languages? Is there a critical
period for such internalization? In the present study, I aim to explore the effect of
Japanese syllable-internal (H-O structure on children studying ESL in Hawaii.
Specifically, how much are these children able to use the English O-R syllable structure
to accomplish English tasks, and to what extent is the H-C structure of Japanese
transferred?
2. Previous studies
Tremain (see 1987 for discussion and review) has reported extensively on
experiments using novel word games to determine underlying syllable structure, in
which the subjects had to learn (e.g.) to break CCVCC syllables according to different
"rules". Her results evidenced a clear-cut syllable-internal division between the onset
and the rime in the minds of English speaking adults, and she postulates that the
recognition of this syllable-internal structure develops after syllable recognition and
before phonemic awareness.
In contrast, Japanese children have been shown to have relative difficulty
doing tasks which require separating onsets from rimes. In one study, Mann (1986)
found that Japanese 1st graders have a meta-awareness of mora (i.e. head and coda)
nearing 100 %, roughly comparable to their US peers' syllable awareness scores of 90 %
(see Table 1). On the other hand, they had little or no awareness of either onsets or
individual phonemes (as compared to 70 % of their American counterparts). This result
demonstrates that they have not internalized a mechanism which would allow them to
separate C from V in a Japanese head. However, Mann also found that Japanese
childrens' phonemic awareness ability develops with age, reaching the 70% level of the
American 1st graders between 3rd and 4th grade.
But this surface ability of older Japanese children to "distinguish phonemes"
tends to be based more on ability to work creatively with the tools of the Japanese
language than with actual awareness of the segments per se. For instance, Table I
shows that most 4th - 6th graders were successful in performing Mann’s initial
phoneme elision tasks (.e.g. /ka sa/ -/a sa/ 2). However, many of the 6th graders reported
using a strategy of lengthening the vowel of the first kana character (/ka sa/ - /ka: sa/),
converting the length into a separate kana (/ka: sa/ - ka a sa/). , and then dropping the
original character (/ka a sa/ - /a sa/). In addition, the majority of 4th graders reported a
second strategy of replacing the appropriate kana with the single vowel kana that
appears at the beginning of the same row in the syllabary chart (i.e. for /ka/, the bare
vowel kana representing /a/). The use of this latter strategy is evidenced in the fact that,
as shown in Table 1, a higher percentage of correct responses was consistently obtained
for the phoneme /k/ than for /S /. This is assumed to be due to the fact that the character
for /ka/ is positioned directly next to /a/ in the syllabary chart, but the character for / S i/
is farther removed from /i/.
It is important to note that neither of these strategies show any level of
phonemic awareness at all, but rather an ability to creatively manipulate the written
forms of Japanese. In addition, both strategies indicate that they are analyzing the
syllable according to the CV mora structure of Japanese, which corresponds to the
head-coda distinction rather than the onset-rime distinction discussed above for English.
Then, if the developmental process of syllable - onset/rime - phonemic awareness as
proposed by Treiman is found to be true for Japanese children as well, it is likely that
the middle stage will be a head/coda awareness rather than onset/rime awareness as in
English.
3. The present study: purpose and method
In this pilot study, two experiments replicating ones performed by Treiman
with American adults (1983) were performed with 11 Japanese and Japanese-American
children in January, 1996. These children were all born and raised in Japan, and had
been living in Oahu, Hawaii for a period of 5 months to 3 years. A11 were native
speakers of Japanese, and somewhat fluent in English. In addition, ten American
children also living in Oahu were tested for comparison. The 21 children ranged in age
from 5-11 years, although the tasks were found to be too difficult for the 5-6-year-olds,
and their data were omitted from the analysis. Each child was tested individually in
sessions which lasted approximately 10 minutes, and responses were recorded on
audiotape.
In light of the differences between American vs. Japanese childrens'
approaches to syllable-internal structure (onset/rime vs. head/coda respectively), the
following hypotheses were made:
1. American children will show a clear onset-rime structure.
2. Japanese children will tend to break syllables between the onset/nucleus
and coda, even in an English task.
The Japanese mora has (OV structure and does not allow consonant clusters. In English,
however, it is commonly assumed that consonant clusters in onsets are perceived as
units and preserve their integrity. These facts lead to a third hypothesis:
3. When presented with an onset made up of consonant clusters, Japanese
children will be more inclined to break up consonant clusters than
American children, as the mora structure of Japanese requires an
epenthetic vowel between the CCs.
In the present study, three age groups could be determined on the basis of
comparable results: 1) 5-6 year olds, 2) 7-8 year olds and 3) 8-11 year olds. The first
group (2 Japanese, 3 American) seemed not to understand the task requirements, and
thus were eliminated from the data. The 7-8 year olds showed understanding but
developed incorrect strategies, and the 8-11 year olds were able to give relative
approximations of correct responses. The data of the two latter groups are presented in
the results section.
In addition, 2 of the Japanese children were eliminated from the data, as it was
determined that their first extended exposure to English was before they were 5 years
old, the age at which onset-rime awareness is typically considered to develop. With
these adjustments in the data, 7 children were left in each group, and their average
ages turned out to be identical (9.4).
The two experiments differed in that Experiment 1 required the use of an
onset-rime break for successful completion of the task, of inserting the segment /æz/ in
the "middle" of a (C)CVC nonsense word, making (C)CæzVC. This experiment was
performed to observe if there were appreciable differences in the abilities of the two
groups of children to correctly use the onset-rime (O-R) division for the task. On the
other hand, Experiment 2 involved blending of two 1-syllable words into one, and
allowed the children the choice of using either an O-R or H-C (head-coda) strategy. Here,
the preferred strategies of the American and Japanese children were compared. Each
experiment and the results thereof are described in detail below.
3. 1. 1 Experiment 1
The first task involved insertion of the segment /æz/ after the onset of a
nonsense syllable with English structure and phonology, e.g./bok/ → /bæzok/. Children
were tested individually, and each session began with a training period of 4 CVC
training words followed by a series of 20 syllables with various characteristics. 10 of
these syllables had initial consonant clusters in order to test whether the integrity of
the onset would be respected. 5 syllables had onsets consisting of one initial phoneme
represented orthographically by a digraph (e.g. "shog"/ʃag/), included to test whether
children who divided onsets were using a spelling strategy or not. The remaining 5
syllables had monographic CVC structure, and served as controls. This task was
performed by Treiman (1983, 1985) with both adults and 8-year-old children, and the
former were found to perform with a higher success rate (66 to 89%) than the latter (28
to 50% correct). Unfortunately, the 50 to 72 % incorrect responses of the 8-year-olds
were not analyzed or discussed in that study, as it would have been informative to
compare the errors with those made by the Japanese children in the present study. In
addition, as already mentioned for this study, the age 8 seems to mark a sort of critical
period for successful responses to both tasks.
3. 1. 2. Results of Experiment 1
In experiment 1, data was analyzed as to whether syllable breaks occurred
before or after the vowel, resulting in either the onset/rime (/bok/ → /bæzok/) or
head/coda (/bok/ - /boæzk/) structure. The latter option produces responses which have
an illegal syllable-internal structure for English; thus it was expected that the majority
of children would use the O-R strategy. Indeed, onset-rime breaks accounted for over
990/0 of the American children's data, and for 55.71% of the Japanese data. However,
H-C breaks also occurred in 23% of the Japanese responses, as opposed to 0% or
American children (see Table 2). This indicates that, whereas American children seem
to lack a consciousness of anything like a break between head and coda, the Japanese
children do have such a consciousness, quite likely as a result of interference of the
mora structure of their native language. This consciousness plays a role in providing an
alternate strategy for manipulating English syllables.
Regarding consonant clusters (cf. Table 3), the general tendency for both
groups was to keep consonant clusters intact, and contrary to expectations, this
tendency was somewhat higher in the Japanese group than the American group (91% vs.
70%). Judging from the data, one reason for this may be that as the Japanese children
use a head-coda strategy almost 1/4 of the time, they break the syllable AFTER the
vowel. This indicates not only that they accept the integrity of the initial English
consonant cluster, but also that they do NOT tend to insert an epenthetic vowel between
the consonants as was originally hypothesized.
Interestingly, the data also suggest that at least for some American children
(notably, Jenny, Ted, Kirk and Terry in our experiment), the integrity of the consonant
cluster onset in English is not as clear-cut as it has been made out to be. Also, it should
be noted that all children were using sound instead of spelling strategies, as none of the
5 test syllables with digraph onsets were ever broken up (i.e. / ʃag/ not become
/sæzhag/).
3. 2. 1 Experiment 2
The second experiment consisted of ten CVC nonsense syllable pairs, which
were given to the child with instructions to "take the first part of the first funny word
and the last part of the last one, and smush them together", combining them into a
single syllable (e.g. /lav/+/dum/→?). This experiment only partially replicates Treiman' s
1983 test, in which adults blended CCVCC syllables according to various rules. Results
of that test found that adults learned the game more quickly and successfully when the
rule involved onset-rime breakage (i.e. CC-VCO than any other type (C-CVCC, CCV-CC,
CCVC-O.
The simplification to CVC syllables and to one simple rule ("smush the two
words together into one syllable") was made because the task, which involves both
phonemic analysis and reblending, was found to be much more difficult for younger
children than that of Experiment I (in this study, none of the children under 8 were able
to give anything close to an appropriate 1-syllable response). Thus it was judged that
the addition of consonant clusters and various "rules" would only further complicate the
task, perhaps to the point of invalidating its main purpose of testing onset-rime vs.
head-coda consciousness.
It was theorized that American children should tend to divide the syllables
between the onset and rime, i.e. l-av and d-um, and respond with /1um/. On the other
hand, children with a Japanese language background should tend to divide between the
head and coda, i.e. la-v and du-m, and thus respond with /lam/. Two or three pairs of
nonsense syllables with a single possible response (e.g. /bok/+/gon/ → /bon/) were
practiced as training models before beginning the series of 10 nonsense syllable pairs
which made up the experiment.
3. 2. 2 Results of Experiment 2
As can be seen in Table 3, both groups used O-R as well as H-C division
strategies in their responses. However, the tendency was much stronger for Americans
to use O-R than H-C (47% to 22%) whereas the percentages for the Japanese were
almost equal (25.7% vs. 24.3%). On the whole, American children were better at
producing an acceptable 1-syllable response using one of the two strategies (almost 70%
of the responses were correct) than were the Japanese children (approx. 50% correct).
The latter produced incorrect 2-syllable or 1-syllable responses (e.g. CV-C where the
latter C was the first consonant of the second stimulus word) approximately half of the
time. This may reflect a generally higher sensitivity towards what constitutes a syllable
in the US children, again perhaps due to interference from the Japanese mora structure
on the Japanese childrens' concepts of "syllable".
However, individual variation accounted for much of the data (see Table 4).
Note especially that the two younger American children almost
exclusively used an H-C strategy in preference to O-R. One may wonder as to whether
this unexpected result reflects a lower age limit at which the O-R division may be
successfully used with respect to this task. In contrast to this, the younger Japanese
children were not able to come up with any correct strategy quickly enough (Tadashi' s 2
H-C responses were the final two of the set). Instead, they used either a CV/CVC
pattern (Tadashi 5, Yumi 4) or a CVC/C pattern (Tadashi 2. Yumi 6). Both of these,
although incorrect, reflect a trend towards H-C division.
The older Japanese children as a group showed no special preference towards
either O-R or H-C, although individual differences are quite clear. Ken and Morio
preferred O-R, Sadaji and Eiji H-C (in Sadaji's case, this applied to the first stimulus
word only: 7 of his responses were CV/C, with the latter C being the first C of the second
stimulus word), and Masaya responses were mixed. The response patterns did not seem
to reflect relative exposure to English: Ken had been in America for three years, but
Morio only one; Eiji for three, but Sadaji and Masaya for only 6 months. The ambiguity
of these results suggests the advisability of readministering this test with a larger
number of participants.
4. Discussion and conclusion
The first hypothesis, that Americans would use an O-R strategy, was upheld in
both Experiment 1 and 2. Especially in Experiment 1, in which an O-R division was
required to produce the correct response, American children made no attempt at all to
use an H-C division. However, in the free choice Experiment 2, H-C responses were seen
in addition to O-R responses, especially in the two younger American children. As noted
in the results section for Experiment 2, this may be interpreted to mean that the
O-R strategy for this task is not available for younger children. This possibility is only
speculation at this point, and should be tested with a much larger group of participants.
The second hypothesis, that Japanese children tend to break syllables between
the head and coda even in an English task, was only partially upheld. In Experiment 1,
although the majority of the Japanese childrens' responses were O-R, they also showed
a definite trend towards producing O-C responses (23.57%), and in the free-choice
Experiment 2, as many Japanese children tended to prefer the O-R strategy as did the
H-C. This may be due to the fact that the test language was English, and the children
who used O-R had more of a sense of English syllable patterning than those who did not.
It is also possible that, had the test been performed with phonemes belonging only to
the Japanese phoneme inventory, the trend towards H-C responses would have been
stronger.
However, this still does not account for the use of H-C strategies by the two
younger American children. As mentioned above, perhaps there is a cognitive factor
involved which makes using an O-R strategy difficult for younger children. This
cognitive factor may be present in Japanese children as well, and coupled with the
familiarity of the Japanese H-C syllable-internal structure, may have caused some of
the older Japanese children to tend to use the latter strategy.
The third hypothesis, that Japanese children would be more inclined to break
up consonant clusters than American children, was disproven by the results of the first
experiment. In fact, the trend was just the opposite: whereas the US children broke up
CCs 24% of the time, the Japanese children did so only 6% of the time. The American
data is somewhat surprising, considering the general assumption of the integrity of the
English onset in phonology. On the other hand, the Japanese data is explained by the
fact that the O-C strategy of necessity requires the onset to be kept intact, and that the
frequent use of the "head" by the Japanese children precluded the tendency to break the
initial CCs. Thus, this data does not disconfirm the third hypothesis in its entireity; it
only shows that Experiment I was not a suitable one to test the hypothesis, because of
the influence of the H-C strategy.
These pilot experiments raise several issues for further research. First, as
noted in the discussion and seen especially in Table 4, the individual variation in
strategies seen in both Japanese and American children (the latter possibly based on
age) should be further studied and accounted for. The question of interaction of factors
such as age, development of intrasyllabic and phonemic awareness, and general
cognitive development with the ability to perform this type of task should also be
studied, with attention to the possibility of critical lower age limits for successful task
management.
In addition, the effects of environment have not been taken into consideration
here, but they should be mentioned. How do the results of Japanese children living in
Oahu, Hawaii, a multicultural, multilingual environment, differ from Japanese
children living in more monolingual environments in either America or Japan? Also,
how much do changes in education and environment affect the relative acquisition or
non-acquisition of the onset-rime division in English and the head-coda division in
Japanese, and are there critical age periods which can be determined? It is hoped that
future studies will shed light on some of these questions.
Notes
1. The mora refers to a unit of phonological length representing a "short syllable", ie.
either a nucleus or a coda. In Japanese, the nucleus is a vowel, and the coda may be
either fV/, /N/ or /Q/ (=the first segment of a geminate consonant)
2. Spaces within the phonemic representations represent boundaries of the kana
orthographic characters.
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