Comparison of Native and Non-native Perception of L2 Japanese Speech Varying in Prosodic Characteristics

This study investigates non-native listeners' perception of prosodic variation of Japanese utterances. A previous study [12] reports that there is no significant difference in the assessment of the accented speech by two groups of native Japanese-speaking judges, i.e., between those who have been exposed to non-native speech and those who have not, in that both of them relied on the correctness of timing for their judgement. The same second language (L2) Japanese utterances as those used in [12] were presented to two groups of learners (beginners and advanced) whose L1 is English. The listeners were asked to assess the pronunciation of those utterances using a 7-point scale. It was found that beginners and advanced learners use different criteria for their judgement from native speakers depending on the error types in the speech samples.