Acoustic Prosodic Parameters in Japanese and Slovene: Accent and Intonation

The study investigates realizations of the three acoustic parameters, duration, fundamental frequency and intensity, in relation to accent and intonation in Japanese and Slovene. Ten native speakers of each language pronounced nonsense words of different accentual patterns placed within the declarative-interrogative intonational context. Results of the acoustic analysis reveal clear differences in behavior of the three parameters under various conditions, and suggest the following phonological differences between the two languages: 1. Prosodic features realizing accent and intonation differ, 2. Interaction between accent and intonation differs, and 3. Prosodic features function uniformly within different units of successive segments, the so-called prosodic units. However, looking into the overall characteristics of the acoustic signal, certain similarities are also observed. The study anticipates that the above phonological differences, especially those realized as phonetic similarities represent a great difficulty in acquisition of L2 prosody, and specific examples of a possible L1 interference are provided.