A cross-linguistic study of diphthongs in spoken word processing in Japanese and English

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1997-07

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Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics

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This paper investigates the proper treatment of diphthongs in Japanese and English in terms of spoken word processing. Three phoneme-monitoring experiments were conducted with three different groups of language users: Japanese monolinguals, English monolinguals and semi-bilingual Japanese speakers of English; both English and Japanese materials were used. The results showed that English monolinguals treat diphthongs as single units during language processing, while Japanese monolinguals treat them as two separate units. The processing of Japanese and English diphthongs by semi-bilingual Japanese speakers of English is also discussed.

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Working Papers in Linguistics, no. 50 (1997), 163-175.