Parallelism Between Sentence Structure and Nominal Phrases in Japanese: Evidence from Scrambled Instrumental and Locative Adverbial Phrases

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - The present study investigated the canonical position of instrumental and locative adverbial phrases in both Japanese sentences and noun phrases to determine...     

Semantic involvement in the lexical and sentence processing of Japanese kanji

This study examined how skilled Japanese readers activate semantic information when reading kanji compound words at both the lexical and sentence levels. Experiment 1 used a lexical decision task for two-kanji compound words and nonwords. When nonwords were composed of kanji that were semantically similar to the kanji of real words, reaction times were longer and error rates were higher than when nonwords had kanji that were not semantically similar. Experiment 2 used a proofreading task (detection of kanji miscombinations) for the same two-kanji compound words and nonwords at the sentence level. In this task, semantically similar nonwords were detected faster than dissimilar nonwords, but error rates were much higher for the semantically similar nonwords. Experiment 3 used a semantic decision task for sentences with the same two-kanji compound words and nonwords. It took longer to detect semantically similar nonwords than dissimilar nonwords. This indicates that semantic involvement in the processing of Japanese kanji produces different effects, depending on whether this processing is done at the lexical or sentence level, which in turn is related to where the reader's attention lies.     

Pre- and Post-head Processing for Single- and Double-Scrambled Sentences of a Head-Final Language as Measured by the Eye Tracking Method

Using the eye-tracking method, the present study depicted pre- and post-head processing for simple scrambled sentences of head-final languages. Three versions of simple Japanese active sentences with ditransitive verbs were used: namely, (1) $\text{ SO }_{\!1\!}\text{ O }_{\!2\!}\text{ V }$ canonical, (2) $\text{ SO }_{\!2\!}\text{ O }_{\!1\!}\text{ V }$ single-scrambled, and (3) $\text{ O }_{\!1\!}\text{ O }_{\!2\!}\text{ SV }$ double-scrambled order. First pass reading times indicated that the third noun phrase just before the verb in both single- and double-scrambled sentences required longer reading times compared to canonical sentences. Re-reading times (the sum of all fixations minus the first pass reading) showed that all noun phrases including the crucial phrase before the verb in double-scrambled sentences required longer re-reading times than those required for single-scrambled sentences; single-scrambled sentences had no difference from canonical ones. Therefore, a single filler-gap dependency can be resolved in pre-head anticipatory processing whereas two filler-gap dependencies require much greater cognitive loading than a single case. These two dependencies can be resolved in post-head processing using verb agreement information.     

Frequency of occurrence for units of phonemes, morae, and syllables appearing in a lexical corpus of a Japanese newspaper.

On the basis of the lexical corpus created by Amano and Kondo (2000), using the Asahi newspaper, the present study provides frequencies of occurrence for units of Japanese phonemes, morae, and syllables. Among the five vowels, /a/ (23.42%), /i/ (21.54%), /u/ (23.47%), and /o/ (20.63%) showed similar frequency rates, whereas /e/ (10.94%) was less frequent. Among the 12 consonants, /k/ (17.24%), /t/ (15.53%), and /r/ (13.11%) were used often, whereas /p/ (0.60%) and /b/ (2.43%) appeared far less frequently. Among the contracted sounds, /sj/ (36.44%) showed the highest frequency, whereas /mj/ (0.27%) rarely appeared. Among the five long vowels, /aR/ (34.4%) was used most frequently, whereas /uR/ (12.11%) was not used so often. The special sound /N/ appeared very frequently in Japanese. The syllable combination /k/+V+/N/ (19.91%) appeared most frequently among syllabic combinations with the nasal /N/. The geminate (or voiceless obstruent) /Q/, when placed before the four consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, and /s/, appeared 98.87% of the time, but the remaining 1.13% did not follow the definition. The special sounds /R/, /N/, and /Q/ seem to appear very frequently in Japanese, suggesting that they are not special in terms of frequency counts. The present study further calculated frequencies for the 33 newly and officially listed morae/syllables, which are used particularly for describing alphabetic loanwords. In addition, the top 20 bi-mora frequency combinations are reported. Files of frequency indexes may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at http://www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Factor structure of the Korean version of Wong and Law's Emotional Intelligence Scale

This study reports the factor structure of a Korean version of the 16-item Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) for a sample of 161 Korean university students. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the four-factor model of the WLEIS: (1) self-emotional appraisal, (2) others' emotional appraisal, (3) use of emotion, and (4) regulation of emotion. However, improvement of the model fit after removing three items suggests the need for future research on the cross-cultural measurement invariance of the WLEIS.     

Predicting lexical accent perception in native Japanese speakers: An investigation of acoustic pitch sensitivity and working memory

Spoken language perception may be constrained by a listener's cognitive resources, including verbal working memory (WM) capacity and basic auditory perception mechanisms. For Japanese listeners, it is unknown how, or even if, these resources are involved in the processing of pitch accent at the word level. The present study examined the extent to which native Japanese speakers could make correctness judgments on and categorize spoken Japanese words by pitch accent pattern, and how verbal WM capacity and acoustic pitch sensitivity related to perception ability. Results showed that Japanese listeners were highly accurate at judging pitch accent correctness (M = 93%), but that the more cognitively demanding accent categorization task yielded notably lower performance (M = 61%). Of chief interest was the finding that acoustic pitch sensitivity significantly predicted accuracy scores on both perception tasks, while verbal WM had a predictive role only for the categorization of a specific accent pattern. These results indicate first, that task demands greatly influence accuracy and second, that basic cognitive capacities continue to support perception of lexical prosody even in adult listeners.     

New figures for a Web-accessible database of the 1,945 basic Japanese kanji, fourth edition.

On the basis of calculations using the latest lexical database produced by Amano and Kondo (2000), the fourth edition of a Web-accessible database of characteristics of the 1,945 basic Japanese kanji was produced by including the mathematical concepts of entropy, redundancy, and symmetry and by replacing selected indexes found in previous editions (Tamaoka, Kirsner, Yanase, Miyaoka, & Kawakami, 2002). The kanji database in the fourth edition introduces seven new figures for kanji characteristics: (1) printed frequency, (2) lexical productivity, (3) accumulative lexical productivity, (4) symmetry for lexical productivity, (5) entropy, (6) redundancy, and (7) numbers of meanings for On-readings and Kun-readings. The file of the fourth edition of the kanji database may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive, http://www.psychonomics.org/archive/.     

New figures for a Web-accessible database of the 1,945 basic Japanese kanji,fourth edition

On the basis of calculations using the latest lexical database produced by Amano and Kondo (2000), the fourth edition of a Web-accessible database of characteristics of the 1,945 basic Japanese kanji was produced by including the mathematical concepts ofentropy, redundancy, andsymmetry and by replacing selected indexes found in previous editions (Tamaoka, Kirsner, Yanase, Miyaoka, & Kawakami, 2002). The kanji database in the fourth edition introduces seven new figures for kanji characteristics: (1) printed frequency, (2) lexical productivity, (3) accumulative lexical productivity, (4) symmetry for lexical productivity, (5) entropy, (6) redundancy, and (7) numbers of meanings for On-readings and Kun-readings. The file of the fourth edition of the kanji database may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive,http://www.psychonomics.org/archive/.     

The cognitive processing of Japanese loanwords in katakana

Abstract: The present study examined two questions concerning the cognitive processing of Japanese loanwords borrowed from English and written in katakana. The first question was whether "interlexical activation" occurs between Japanese and English. Results from a lexical decision task showed that loanwords phonetically similar to the original English words were judged with the same speed and accuracy as those being phonetically dissimilar to their original English words. The study further examined the cognitive processing of unadopted loanwords (i.e., words unlisted in a Japanese loanword dictionary). Reaction times displayed the shortest mean for non-words, followed by pseudo-loanwords, and finally unadopted loanwords. Thus, the only time the lexical representation of an original English word was possibly activated was when native Japanese speakers had seldom seen the word in katakana. The second question was what creates the "lexical mental boundary" between adopted and unadopted loanwords. A questionnaire showed that native Japanese speakers are likely to use decision-making strategies for determining lexicality of loanwords in Japanese based on their daily experience of exposure to katakana words in print.     

Disambiguation and Integration in Korean Relative Clause Processing

Previous studies on Korean relative clauses (RC) show that, with respect to processing, object-extracted relative clauses (ORC) are more difficult to process at the head noun than subject-extracted relative clauses within temporarily ambiguous contexts. ORCs, however, are predicted by experience-based processing models to incur a greater processing cost during early processing stages at the RC verb, since it is a likely locus of disambiguation for RCs in Korean, and because ORCs are a less frequent structure. Consequently, the current study investigates whether processing difficulty for ORCs manifests itself at the RC verb using eye-tracking methods, a simple sentence structure and a sentential-decision task. The results revealed significantly increased go-past reading times for ORCs at the RC verb. We believe this is a result of a less frequent structure being more difficult to parse during disambiguation. Accordingly, experience-based models of processing can accurately predict difficulty for ORCs in Korean.