Perception of lexical pitch-accent by Korean learners of Japanese

Abstract

Tokyo Japanese has a lexical pitch-accent system whereas Seoul Korean features no wordlevel tonal representations. The present study investigated phonological perception of lexical pitch-accent by advanced Seoul Korean learners of Japanese, via sequence-recall experiments. The results, on the contrary to our prediction, showed that advanced Korean learners performed as well as native Japanese speakers in perceiving pitchaccent contrasts. Non-significant variance also suggested the advanced Korean learners in general have acquired lexical pitch-accent phonologically. The observations that Korean learners had no difficulties in perception of pitch-accent were discussed with respect to acquisition models of non-native perception.