ABSTRACT

This article offers finer-grained acoustic analyses of two aspects of the linguistic sound system of Japanese English (JpE): monophthongal vowels and rhythmic patterning. At the segmental level, though past research has examined the vocalic inventory of JpE, these studies have tended to focus on vowel quality differences in the acoustic space. Our study approaches the acoustic investigation of monophthongal vowels in JpE by examining not just vowel quality, but also vowel duration. At the level of prosody, we conduct a quantitative analysis of the rhythm of JpE using the pairwise variability index. Results suggest that monophthongal vowels in JpE do not exhibit a homogeneous pattern of ‘conflation’ in terms of vowel quality or duration, and that JpE tends towards a stress-timed patterning of speech rhythm. Hence, the empirical data argue for the need of a ‘pluricentric’ paradigm to undergird world Englishes research, rather than a ‘monolithic’, Inner Circle norm-centric framework.

摘要

本文提供了日语英语（JpE）语言声音系统两个方面的更细粒度的声学分析：单音元音和节奏模式。在片段级别上，尽管过去的研究已经检查了JpE的声音清单，但是这些研究倾向于集中于声学空间中的元音质量差异。我们的研究不仅通过检查元音质量，还通过检查元音持续时间来研究JpE中单音节元音的声学研究。在韵律方面，我们使用成对变异性指数对JpE的节奏进行定量分析。结果表明，JpE中的单语元音在元音质量或持续时间方面没有表现出“融合”的均匀模式，并且JpE倾向于语音定时的应力定时模式。因此，