I just finished collecting data for a new project (read: distractor from dissertation writing) that looks at phonological interference in Japanese/English cross-script priming. Put simply, priming studies look at how the prior presentation of a word or sound (the prime) affects the time needed to make a decision on a target word that follows. By manipulating the prime, and observing the resulting effect on the target word, we can make predictions about the organization of the first and second language lexicons in the case of cross-language priming.

Now, considering the huge number of English loanwords in Japanese, I wanted to see if manipulating the relationship between katakana script primes either helped or hindered the recognition of certain English words by Japanese learners of English. To do this I selected English words that can be read as “false friends” in Japanese—words that orthographically adhere to the Japanese mora structure like English “take” as タケ, “mine” ミネand “bike” ビケ. I used a masked priming technique where the katakana primes were flashed onscreen very briefly (50 ms—too quick to really recognize). This masking assumes that the visual or sound properties of the primes, at some low level of processing, will somehow influence target decision times. I used three types of primes. The first were “identity” primes, which are the correct katakana reading of the English target (カム—come). The second were the false friend-pairs (コメ—come); the third were unrelated (ボール—come). I predicted that the identity primes would be the fastest. But, the false friends were my real interest; I thought they would be the slowest, and least accurate, of the three conditions because once the katakana prime activates the Japanese moraic reading, participants must make a greater effort to recalculate the correct English pronunciation. Essentially, competition between the first/second language phonology should yield longer reaction times and lower accuracy.

The results so far show that ID primes were clearly the fastest, replicating previous J-E priming results. But, the false friend condition, while much slower than the ID primes, was no different from the unrelated primes. From what I can tell at this point, it looks like participants weren’t being “duped” by the L1 phonology in the (コメ—come) pairs. But, interestingly, the accuracy rates for the false friend-primed targets were significantly lower than even the unrelated pairs. So, the false-friend primes affected accuracy, but not speed. I still need to consider the effects of English proficiency (TOEIC score) on RTs and accuracy. Well, be on the lookout for a more detailed analysis at the upcoming BEAL forum!

Recently back from the Japan Society of Language Science’s 16th annual conference at Bunkyo University in Saitama, Japan (about an hour north of Tokyo). I really enjoyed the presentations and was impressed with the overall quality. Silvina Montrul from the University of Illinois gave the plenary address on 1^st/2^nd language attrition—forgetting a language due to lack of use or exposure.

Someone commented that as Japan plans to get its school-aged kids English-ready for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics—by increasing instruction hours/starting lessons in earlier grades—that the youngest of the bunch in particular will forget or incompletely acquire their native Japanese. I think this question expresses a common, but not usually vocalized, worry about improving foreign language education in Japan. For one thing, I don’t think even the most overzealous government plan to increase English hours would negatively affect children’s Japanese ability in the basically monolingual society in Japan. This made me wonder if the question was really expressing a concern about the loss of literacy, considering the time children invest in learning the written language–kanji and classical Japanese. I don’t think the presenter got the thrust of the question, since it came across as being about losing spoken language, leading her to respond that there’s no way this would happen in Japan. Written language is such a big part of Japanese kokugo instruction that it’s hard for many to consider it as separate of language ability in general. So I don’t see a change on the horizon in say, the hours spent on learning classical grammar, in order to increase English instruction hours. Well, as Dr. Montrul reminded the audience, attrition can be a politically-charged research topic.

The invited symposium continued the topic of attrition with newly-minted data on English attrition in Japanese returnees. John Matthews of Chuo University looked at phonological attrition of English consonants over a two-year period in young (7 to 12 year old) returnees. His prediction was that the ability to distinguish consonant pairs where one member isn’t found in Japanese (in nonsense words like “thaf” vs. “saf”) would be the first to go because of limited English exposure once the returnees were back in Japan. However, he found that this group didn’t lose their ability to discriminate these contrasts over the two-year period. Maybe if the returnees had no exposure to English, we might see a decline, but I’m sure kids this age are still taking mandatory English classes and getting some input. Also, basic perceptual ability on this type of task (AX discrimination) probably stays intact, so maybe a more difficult perception task would show a decline.