LINGUIST List 6.1290

Thu Sep 21 1995

Qs: Intonation in dialects, 2nd Lang Acq

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Stefan Kaufmann, Intonation in Dialects
2. (Christiane Bongartz, Query second language acquisition and morphology/syntax interface

Speakers of different Japanese dialects tend to characterize the speach
of other dialects as "soft/effeminate/whiny" (an Ashiya woman about men in
Tokyo) or as "rude/curt" (a Tokyo man about Osaka men; both p.c.)
I want to try and find out whether such judgements have any regular measurable
acoustic correlate (I do NOT mean the accent which is, of course, different.)
For this, I could use help in three respects:

1. Anybody who agrees or doesn't agree with the above statements or has
similar subjective impressions about other Japanese dialects, or knows
places in magazines, novels or Manga where such a feeling is articulated is
asked to tell me about it.

2. Where can I find published acoustic data from various Japanese
dialects? I am especially interested in average values and dynamism of
fundamental frequency and amplitude, vowel duration and intonational
contours in general; since I'm not quite sure yet what exactly I'm looking
for, anything that might be relevant is important.

3. Do you know of good literature on the acoustic correlates of subjective,
impressionistic judgements of intonation? Not necessarily as applied to
Jaapanese; other languages are fine as well. My references are somewhat
scarce at the moment, and there is probably more out there than I know,
especially in Japanese.

I would appreciate any help. I will give a summary, and if I come up with
something, I can summarize the results for those who are interested.

		Thank you very much.

**********************************
Stefan Kaufmann
Grad. Student, Linguistics
Georgetown University
kaufmansgusun.acc.georgetown.edu
(703)243-6811
**********************************

Within the context of a doctoral colloquium, I am currently developing a
research project on second language acquisition and the nature of
interlanguage systems. The acquisition of word formation processes in the
second language and the acquisition of syntactic structures in that language
seem to be related. Who knows of references/research investigating this?
Theoretical explorations of the relation between word formation processes
(e.g. on compound argument structure) and syntactic phenomena would also be
of great interest to me. I'd appreciate comments and suggestions - and I
will, of course, post a summary to the list.
Thanks a lot.
Chris Bongartz.