The sounds of Japanese English: Monophthong vowels and rhythmic patterning

Abstract

This paper builds upon previous descriptions of Japanese English by offering finer-grained acoustic analyses of two aspects of its linguistic sound system: monophthongal vowels and rhythmic patterning. At the segmental level, though research has been done on the phonological distribution of vowels in Japanese English, these studies have tended to focus on vowel quality differences in the acoustic space. Our study approaches the acoustic investigation of monophthongal vowels in Japanese English by examining not just vowel quality, but also vowel duration. Additionally, we conducted a quantitative analysis of the rhythmic patterning of Japanese English by using the pairwise variability index (PVI). Results suggest that monophthongal vowels in Japanese English do not exhibit a homogeneous pattern of ‘conflation’ in terms of vowel quality or duration, and that Japanese English tends towards a stress-timed patterning of speech rhythm. Hence, empirical data presented in this paper argue for the need of a ‘pluricentric’ paradigm in world Englishes research, rather than a ‘monolithic’, Inner-Circle norm-centric framework.