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Strategies used by Children saying Japanese Words Backwards: Implications for Syllable-Internal Structure

Judy Yoneoka 米岡ジュリ - 1 - 9/19/2023

概略

英語のシラブルという概念は、モーラに基づく日本語にもあるかどうかは、よく議論されるし、存在す

るとしたら、どのように形成されているかも問われる。英語のシラブルには onset-rime の構造があるが、

Katada (1990)はこれに対して、日本語のシラブルの構造はモーラを反映する onset/nucleus-coda であると主

張している。

本論は、日本語のシラブルの概念と役割の視点から、３人の子供（１１歳、８歳、４歳）の言葉を反対

にするゲームの答えを分析する。答えにはモーラ作戦、リズム作戦、シラブル作戦と回避作戦という４種

類の作戦が見られたが、３人の子供はそれぞれ違うストラテジーを利用したことがわかった。モーラ作戦

は、１１歳の子供が主に利用したが、８歳の子供はあまり使用せず、４歳の子供はまったく使わなかった。

その代わり、シラブル作戦や回避作戦は４歳の子供に頻繁に使われ、１１歳の子供にはまったく使われな

かった。この様にス作戦が年齢によって異なることは、日本語が発達するにつれ、シラブルの認知が先に、

モーラを後で認知できるようになることを指示する。また、１１歳と８歳の子供がそれぞれモーラ戦略と

リズム戦略を主に利用したことは、日本語のシラブルにはモーラを反映する onset/nucleus-coda 構造が認知

的に存在する仮定を支持する。さらに、これらのストラテジーは４歳の子供に見えなかったことから、こ

の構造を把握する能力は成長と共に発達すると推測できる。これらの結果の一つの要因として、短期記憶

(short term memory)の M-space の大きさを本論で提案する。



Abstract

Japanese is a mora-timed language, and whether or not there is a place for the concept of "syllable" in the language

is a question of current debate. Assuming that the Japanese syllable does exist, another hot question is that of its

syllable-internal structure. Many phonologists and psycholinguists assume a syllable internal onset-rime (or remainder)

distinction for English. On the other hand, Katada (1990) proposed an alternative syllable internal structure of

onset/nucleus vs. coda for Japanese, which reflects its moraic structure.

In the present study, backwards renditions of Japanese words produced by three male children ages 11, 8, and 4 are

analyzed with respect to their implications for the syllable in Japanese. Four strategies are defined and discussed:

moraic, metrical, syllabic and avoidance. The moraic strategy is used almost exclusively by the 11-year-old, sometimes

by the 8-year-old and rarely by the 4-year-old. Conversely, syllabic and avoidance strategies are used mainly by the 4-

year-old but almost never by the 11-year-old. This suggests that such strategies are related to age and that awareness of

the syllable in Japanese precedes perception either of the mora or of any other syllable-internal structure.

For the older children, both the moraic and metrical strategies point to the psychological reality of a Japanese

syllable-internal structure of onset/nucleus vs. coda rather than the onset vs. rime structure commonly believed to exist

in English. The fact that these strategies are not present in the 4-year-old suggests that the awareness of syllable-

internal structure is developmental. It is also suggested that the role of cognitive memory may play a part in the

availability of different strategies to children of different ages.

1. Introduction: The backwards game.

Talking "backwards" is a pervasive linguistic phenomenon occurring spontaneously in children from around age 7 in

a variety of cultures. The study of rules and strategies for its many variations provides clues to the canonical shape and

syllable structure of language. Sherzer (1982:178ff) reports on some of these variations: (1) syllabic: a kuna play

language "arepecunmakke" takes the first syllable of the word and puts it at the end; (2) sub-syllabic: a variant of the

French word game "verlan” (see also Levkowitz 1991) reverses syllable onsets in two-syllable words and the onset and

coda of one-syllable words; (3) orthographic: English "Back Slang", a cover term for several types of play language,

includes one variant in which words are said backwards on the basis of their orthography (e.g. give becomes evig).



Cowan, Brain and Leavitt (1985) also report two distinct strategies in reversing English words: a sound-based strategy

of reversing phonemes, and a spelling-based strategy of reversing "letters". In Arabic, there is a word reversal game in

which only the consonants are reversed but vowels left intact, a strategy which is not surprising considering the

consonant-oriented Arabic orthography. Backwards speech may also give clues to the morphology of a language, as

"content" morphemes are often reversed in speech whereas "function" morphemes are left intact (see Lefkowitz 1991

for examples).

The processing of segmental vs. suprasegmental phonology in backwards speech seems to differ. For example,

Cowan et. al. (1985) found two strategies for stress assignment in backwards renditions of word pairs such as CONtrast

(n) and conTRAST (v): 1) one strategy assigned initial stress in both cases (=> STARTnoc), paralleling the tendency

for penultimate syllable stress assignment in English, and 2) the other strategy preserved the stress pattern of the

original stimulus word (=>STARTnoc (n) and startNOC (v)). Other possible strategies of (1) transposing the stress as

well as the phonemes (e.g. startNOC n. and STARTnoc v.), (2) assigning stress to the final syllable (startNOC in both

cases) or 3) eliminating stress altogether, were quite rare. The former two strategies seem to indicate that in backwards

speech, suprasegmental phenomena are treated separately from the phonemes themselves, and are assigned on the basis

either of language-specific (=strategy 1) or stimulus-specific (=strategy 2) metrical tiers.

As can be seen from the above discussion, rules for word reversal appear to work on several different levels and in

conjunction with various linguistic elements: segments, syllables, stress, orthography, and morphology. Similar

variations in rules were found in the study of three Japanese children reversing words in their language, and the results

will be presented in this study.

2. English vs. Japanese representations of syllabic and phonemic structure

One ongoing debate in phonology is whether syllables have internal heirarchical structure, and if so, what kind. A

flat structure consists of onset, nucleus and coda, (see Fig. 1a), whereas a heirarachical syllable could have two possible

structures: onset vs. rime (Fig. 1b) or head vs. coda (Fig. 1c). Psycholinguistic research (Treiman, 1989, Fowler,

Treiman and Gross 1993) has generally supported the idea of a syllable-internal structure in English consisting of onset

vs. rime (Fig 1b). 1



syllable syllable syllable

Onset Rime Head 　Coda

　　 ↙ ↓ ↘ 　↓ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ ↓

onset nucleus coda onset nucleus coda 　　　　onset nucleus coda

/p 　　　a 　　　n 　/p 　a+n/ 　　　　　/ｐ+a　 n/

Fig. 1a. Flat　　　　　Fig. 1b. Onset-rime Fig 1c. Head-coda.

Figs. 1a-c. Three possible internal structures for the syllable /pan/.

Evidence (and perhaps priming) for onset-rime recognition in English is often seen in children's word games

and literature: rhyming games such as “The Name Game” or Sesame Street style rhyming songs abound. “The Cat in

the Hat” type stories are written in rhyme, and some storybooks for young readers are written so as to specifically target

this distinction for children (take for example the reader "The Fat Cat Sat on a Mat"). Pig Latin, too, is a prime

example of an English game that exploits the onset. Everywhere, the English-speaking child is bombarded with

linguistic data reinforcing the integrity of the onset in the syllable.

On the other hand, the onset-rime structure has been claimed to be unsuitable for Japanese. Katada (1990) proposes

instead that the head-coda structure in Fig 1b is compatible with Japanese mora structure. Certainly this claim is

upheld in the environment of the prelinguistic Japanese child, who is consistently supplied with information supporting

a head-coda distinction. Japanese first-year readers use alliterations such as "ii kao iki iki a i u e o"2 rather than rhymes.

"Spelling out" of words for small children consists of prononcing each mora carefully, emphasizing the head/coda

structure of the syllable. Katada (1990) cites the childhood game shiritori as another example: the object of the game is

to take the final (C)V of the last player’s word and produce a word that begins with it, e.g. /ne ko//ko ma//ma i//i

nu/.3 Traditional poetic forms such as tanka and haiku also exploit and maintain a mora-based syllable distinction (cf.

Gilbert and Yoneoka 2000).

The position adopted in this paper is that both syllable-internal analyses are valid based on orthographical and

linguistic differences, and that neither represents an innate phonemic representation. This stance predicts that the

onset/nucleus vs. coda structure should then be readily evidenced in Japanese speakers, and indeed many studies give



evidence of such structure. For example, Kawahata (1995) has a delightful study on the tribulations of Japanese adults

learning the English game pig latin, and their difficulties in “knowing where to cut” the word. This is clearly due to the

problem of not being able to separate the head into onset vs. nucleus. A study by Otake et. al. (1993) suggests that

Japanese adults segment spoken words moraically rather than syllabically. Yoneoka (1996) indicates that children who

have internalized the orthographic conventions of Japanese kana have difficulty separating the onset from the rime and

using the rime as a unit in word play in English.

In an extensive study, Mann (1986) found that Japanese 1st graders have a meta-awareness of mora (ie. head and

coda) nearing 100%, roughly comparable to their US peers’ syllable awareness scores of 90%. On the other hand, they

had little or no awareness of individual phonemes (as compared to 70% of their American counterparts). She also

found that Japanese childrens’ ability to delete initial phonemes (e.g. /ka sa/ /a sa/) tended to develop with age, in

her study reaching the 70% level of the American first graders between 3rd and 4th grade. However, this surface ability

to “distinguish phonemes” tended to be based more on ability to work creatively with the tools of the Japanese

language than with actual awareness of the segments per se. In these initial phoneme elision tasks, for instance, most of

the 6th graders reported using a strategy of lengthening the vowel of the first kana character, converting the length into

a separate kana, and then dropping the original character (e.g. /ka sa//ka a sa//a sa/). Alternatively, they would

replace the appropriate kana with the first kana that appears in the same row in the syllabary chart (i.e. /ka/ is replaced

with the bare vowel kana /a/). Strictly speaking, neither of these strategies show any level of phonemic awareness at

all, but rather demonstrate an ability to work creatively with the Japanese orthography.

The data from Japanese backwards speech presented in the rest of this study indicate that older children tend to use a

mora based head-coda strategy to transpose words. Variants of this strategy, which can be seen to parallel the sound vs.

spelling variants of English backward speech, were identified. The youngest child’s strategies, however, were found to

be more syllabic than moraic. This suggests the possibility that whole syllable awareness precedes syllable-internal

distinctions, as has been proposed for English (Treiman 1987). Evidence was also found of a metrically-based strategy

which, like Cowan et. al.’s (1985) stress assignment strategy a) discussed above, preserves the internal moraic beat of

the original word.



3. The subjects and data

The main subjects in this study are three brothers aged 11.3, 8.11 and 4.9 respectively at the time of the study. To

reflect their ages, they will be referred to as Child11, Child8 and Child4. All had been raised in a predominantly

Japanese environment, but had had about 2 months' extensive exposure to English when the data was collected. This

exposure to English is presumed not to have had an effect on the response stategies displayed by the older boys in the

study, who were clearly thinking in "Japanese". However, a strategy of metathesis of syllable onsets was evidenced

three times in the data of the 4-year-old (/bare － / = /rabe－ /, /kyojin/ = /jyokin/, /hantai/ = /tanhai/), and could be

construed as a result of his exposure to English. Both the 11-year-old and 8-year-old were literate in Japanese and read

very little English, while the 4-year-old was somewhat familiar with both orthographic systems but did not read either

yet. All three enjoyed playing games, and behaved with interest towards the task.

These children had already spontaneously made a game of saying their own names backwards. The backwards

names were formed on the basis of the Japanese kana orthography, memorized and treated as formulaic expressions.

However, although Child11 generalized this orthographical treatment to other words, the younger two children

displayed a variety of (differing) non-orthographic strategies.

Building on their own “name game”, I gave a total of 40 words to the children over two test periods. They were each

interviewed separately and their responses were recorded. 33 of these words showed differences in treatment of one of

the following 5 phenomena: 1) vowel length, 2) moraic geminate consonant /Q/, 3) moraic nasal /N/, 4) devoiced

vowels, and 5) digraphs; all of which are important for the purpose of exploring the question of relative saliency of the

syllable vs. mora in Japanese. The results for each type will be discussed separately in the following sections.

4.0 Results

4.1. Vowel length (see Table 4.1 in Appendix)4

Analysis of the childrens’ treatment of vowel length provides some key data for postulation of the use of different

strategies by each. Compare the following possible responses to the katakana stimulus word /to－masu/ (トーマス):

(a)　moraic strategy su ma － to （スマート）

(b) metrical strategy su － ma to 　（スーマト）



(c) syllabic strategy su ma to －（スマトー）

(d) avoidance strategy su ma to 　　（スマト）

The four strategies differ in the placement of the vowel length (－). (a) is the result of applying a moraic strategy of

reversing the kana characters, as produced consistently by Child11. The second response type (b), which was most

typical of Child8, must be analyzed in two “steps”: (1) the syllables are reversed, (2) length is kept in its original

position and assigned accordingly. We will refer to this as the metrical strategy. The third response (c), most often

witnessed in Child4, reflects a syllabic strategy: the vowel length is kept with the appropriate syllable. In (d), the length

is ignored completely. This strategy is also used occasionally by Child8 and often by Child4.

Vowel length in Japanese phonology is phonemic, and is usually treated along with the moraic nasal /N/ and

first part of a geminate consonant /Q/ as a weak mora. The Japanese “syllable” is defined as either a single strong mora

or a strong-weak mora pair. With this definition, we can apply the syllabic and moraic (=prosodic) tiers used in metrical

phonology to discriminate these different strategies for reversing /to – ma su/ as shown in Fig. 2.

syllabic tier syllable1 syllable2 syllable3

prosodic tier mora1 mora2 mora3 mora4

/ to - ma su /

ト　　　　　ー　　　　　マ　　　　　　ス

1 Although the psychological and phonological reality of the onset is widely accepted and supported, some scholars have raised the question of the psychological validity of the rime, claiming that it is possible that the division is simply between the onset and the rest of the word. However, evidence for onset-rime syllable consituency was found (Fowler, Treiman and Gross 1993) in medial syllables of trisyllabic words, suggesting that the rime does have validity.2 Kokugo 1 Book 2, Kazaguruma Publishing, 1990. 3 Although the rules of shiritori are based on orthography, children tend to make errors when they answer based on sound. Katada cites as an example: /budou origami/ Although he further goes on to say that responses based on syllabic analysis do not occur (e.g. /dougu/ in response to /budou/), I seem to remember such responses in my own children when they were quite small. I am not aware of a comprehensive study of small children’s speech errors in shiritori, but such a study may be useful to determine whether there is evidence for premoraic syllabic organization in Japanese.4 Vowel length is moraic and marked in both hiragana (for Japanese words) and katakana (for foreign loan words), but it is important to note that they are treated differently in the orthography. The symbol /－/ is used for transcription of vowel length in katakana words whereas the character of the lengthened vowel itself is used for words in hiragana. This will produce different backwards renditions using moraic or orthographic strategies: /I/ in for the vowel length in /Shi I ta ke/ (hiragana) but /o/ for the length in /shi － to / (katakana).



syllabic strategy = s1 s2 s3 s3 s2 s1 　　　　 / su ma to – /

metrical strategy = 1) s1 s2 s3 s3 s2 s1

2) s3 m1 + m2 　　　　　 / su – ma to /

moraic strategy =　　m1 m2 m3 m4 m4 m3 m2 m1 　 / su ma – to /

Fig. 2. Three strategies for reversing /to - ma su/ represented in terms of phonological tiers.

In. Fig. 2, the syllabic strategy takes place fully on the syllabic tier and the moraic strategy on the prosodic

tier, but the metrical strategy straddles the two tiers—first reversing the syllables but assigning length in its original

prosodic position. These strategies are analogous to the treatment of stress in English backwards games as discussed in

the introduction.

Some of the responses to stimulus words could be interpreted as either a moraic or metrical strategy: e.g. /ru－go/

for /go－ru/. Analogously, a response of /ba re－/ for /re ba－/ could have derived from either a metrical or syllabic

strategy. Analyzing the treatment of length by the three children along the criteria of the first 3 strategies (and factoring

out cases of avoidance, which do not give us any clues about the mora vs. syllable question), we find that

approximately 70% of Child11’s responses, 36% of Child8’s responses and 62% of Child4's responses were

unequivocally moraic, metrical and syllabic respectively. If we additionally assume that the ambiguous responses can

be justifiably treated as belonging to the predominant response type, we find that Child11 has answered 100%

moraically, Child8 82% metrically, and Child4 87% syllabically.

Of particular interest is Child11's tactic of using a moraic /n/ initially to represent the sound of the vowel length

character (e.g. /n n ka sa/ for /sa k ka－/) when there was no preceding vowel. It is unclear why he would choose this

phoneme rather than a vowel per se. It may be postulated, however, that this strategy shows unwillingness to commit to

any vowel quality combined with determination to keep the mora intact. If so, /N/ would be the only available choice

for a word-initial position in the Japanese phonological system.5

Also intriguing is Child4’s response of /ra be－ / for /ba re－ /, as this response implies that his syllabic strategy

5 Besides vowel length, the only other single phoneme mora is /Q/, which never occurs word-initially.



applies only when the whole syllable is reversed, and not when individual phonemes are reversed. This is the first of

three instances of metathesis found in the data for this child; a strategy that will be discussed further in 4.3.

The vowel length responses were the only ones that could be sufficiently differentiated to posit a different response

strategy for each child. Having been thus defined and postulated, however, these three strategies will now be assumed

as a framework within which the other four phonological phenomena will be analyzed.

4.2. The moraic consonant /Q/ (Table 4.2 in Appendix).

In Japanese orthography, the little tsu っ marks gemination /Q/ of consonants but is limited to occurrence before

unvoiced obstruents. Thus, one inherent problem for backwards rendition of words with geminate consonants is what

to do in case the geminate marker (ッ) precedes a normally non-geminating phoneme (or a nasal, which geminates by

using the moraic nasal /N/ rather than /Q/). This was the case with three of the six relevant stimulus words, in which

the geminate marker was made to precede /g/, /m/ and /b/ respectively. For /batto/, the two older children solved the

problem by devoicing the /b/, whereas the youngest avoided the gemination and kept /b/. Similarly, for /matchi/ the

two older children supplied allophones of moraic /N/, representing partial or full assimilation to the following

consonant. (Interestingly, this stimulus has produced several different responses in adults as well, including

/chipma/, /chitma/ and /chi?ma/).6 The treatment of /g/ in /gakkou/ seemed to be complicated by the added problem of

vowel length, as was also true of the stimulus word /sakka － /. In both cases, the gemination was ignored by all

children in favor of a satisfactory resolution of the problem of vowel length. This suggests a hierarchy of saliency in

Japanese weak mora for which vowel length is higher than geminate consonants.

Note that evidence of the three strategies postulated above can be seen in the geminate words as well. In addition to

Child11’s clear and consistent use of moraic orthography, Child8’s metrical strategy may be seen in the lengthening of

the final vowel in /kasa－/ for /sakka－/. Child4’s syllabic strategy shows up in /toban/ for /batto/, where we also find

a moraic /N/ substituting for /Q/ before silence. Interestingly, this parallels Child11’s use of /N/ as a substitute for

initial vowel length, which was noted and discussed in 4.1. In all other cases, Child4 uses his avoidance strategy and

ignores the gemination altogether.6 The fact that the glottal stop /?/ here appears as an alternative to /Q/ supports the possibility that the two might be related, and even suggests that /Q/ may be a set of allophones for a phoneme /?/.



4.3. Moraic /N/ (Table 4.3 in Appendix)

The previously defined moraic, metrical and syllabic strategies produce different responses to words with medial

and final moraic /N/ as follows:

stimulus moraic strategy metrical strategy syllabic strategy

Medial N /piNku/ kuNpi kuNpi kupiN

Final N /kabaN/ Nbaka baNka baNka

The first two strategies produce the same results for medial N, but the responses for the second two strategies merge in

the case of a final N. Taking this into account, the childrens’ data can be analyzed as follows:

Child11 Moraic 90%, Avoidance 10%

Child8 Moraic 20%, Moraic/metrical ambiguous 60%, Syllabic 20%

Child4 Moraic/metrical ambiguous 40%, Metrical/syllabic ambiguous 30%, Avoidance 20%

As with the previous category, Child11’s responses are clearly moraic. Indeed, his only case of avoidance (/pi－

man/ = /manpi－/) could be interpreted as assimilation and subsequent shortening of initial /N/, which does not occur in

Japanese phonology, to the following /m/.

Child8, on the other hand, shows some variation from his syllabic strategy here. He seems to be more aware of

status of the final /N/ as a separate mora than he was of vowel length or gemination, 7 evidenced by his use of a moraic

strategy (initial N in response) to two of the N-final stimulus words /toshokan/ (=>/nkashou/) and /kyojin/ (=>/njyoki/).

Note, however, that this is a strategy which seems to have developed spontaneously, as seen by his “well-documented”

confusion for the earlier occurring stimulus word /pi － man/. Here, he begins moraically with /npi/, /nmapima/,

/nmapi/, but then gives up and reverts to a metrical strategy for his final response of /mannpi/. For medial /N/, we

7This fact suggests that there may be a heirarchy of saliency of the Japanese weak mora /N/, /V/ and /Q/. Certainly /Q/ seems to be less salient than either of the other two, and the fact that /N/ was used by Manabu to replace final /V/ suggests that the former may be the most salient of the three.



cannot tell whether his major strategy is moraic or metrical, although we do find him using the syllabic strategy twice

as well, for /shingou//goushin/ and /hantai//taihan/. However, in both cases the two syllables have identical

metrical weight, indicating that he is also respecting the metrical rhythm of the stimulus word.

Like Child8, Child4 uses a range of strategies for words with moraic /N/. In addition to avoidance, we see a

chronological progression from a syllabic strategy (/goshin/ for /shingou/) to a moraic/metrical one (/kunpi/ for

/pinku/), then to a very interesting strategy of metathesizing. (e.g. /tanhai/ for /hantai/, /jyokin/ for /kyojin/).

This metathesizing strategy of Child4 was already mentioned in 4.1 (/rabe －/ for /bare－/) and is of particular

interest in light of the current theories of onset/rime syllable-internal structure, reviewed in section 2. Clearly the

strategy used by Child4 here is exploiting an onset/rime structure, and one could theorize that this strategy may be

based on a growing awareness on Child4’s part of English "rhyming" strategies, with which he may have been

becoming familiar through his kindergarten exposure to English. Thus, it may reflect a developmental awareness of the

onset-rime dichotomy. Child4’s age (4.10) suggests the possibility of a critical age for receptivity to this distinction.

This suggestion is borne out not only by the difficulty of training older Japanese children to make the onset/rime

distinction in the phoneme awareness studies reviewed above (Mann 1986), but by studies on illiterate adults who lack

this distinction as well.

4.4. Devoiced vowels (Table 4.4 in Appendix).

One often-observed phonomenon in Japanese phonology is the devoicing of vowels between unvoiced consonants

(e.g. sukiyaki). Five stimulus words realizing this phenomenon were chosen to test the possibility that the

voicelessness of the intervening vowel might lead to analysis and movement of the consonants as a set (especially in

the youngest and most orthographically naive child).

There were three occasions on which this actually seemed to occur. Interestingly, only one of these was made by

Child4, with his response of /tosta-/ to /suta-to/. The other two were witnessed in Child8: (1) /sutou,sugo/ to /go-suto/,

in which his initial transfer of the [st] as a unit got him into trouble with the rest of the analysis, and (2) /tosu-ta/ to

/suta-to/, a particularly interesting response which shows transfer of the /sut/ as a set and yet "breaks it apart" again to

insert the length in the correct metrically-driven position. Indeed, this response may be cited as evidence for



independence and ordering of strategies: transposition first, then mapping onto a metrical tier.

Note, however, that the two stimulus words which triggered the transfer as a set were both English loan words

(indeed, all the stimuli in this set were English loan words8) with (1) two closed syllables and (2) the relevant mora

present in the same syllable. It may very well be the case that transfer of /CVC/ as a set would not occur in instances

other than under these limited conditions.

8 Indeed, loan words were purposely selected as it was assumed that they might show a higher susceptibility to /CVC/ transfer as a set than would native Japanese words. We can also point out here that the Child4’s response of /tosuta-/ created another English loan word, one of which he was probably aware.

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child, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 18:201-212.Mann, Virginia A. (1986). Phonological Awareness: The role of reading experience. Cognition 24, 65-92.McCawley, James (1968). The Phonological Component of a Grammar of Japanese. Mouton: the Hague.Otake, T., Hatano, G., Cutler, A. and Mehler J. (1993). Mora or syllable? Speech Segmentation in Japanese. Journal of

Memory and Language, 32, 258-278.Pascual-Leone J (1970) A mathematical model for the transition in Piagetian developmental stages. Acta Psychol 32:301-345Peters, Ann (1983). The Units of Language Acquisition. Monographs in Applied Psycholinguistics. New York: Cambridge

University Press.Scherzer, Joel. (1982) "Play Languages: with a note on ritual languages" in Obler, L. and L. Menn, Exceptional Language

and Linguistics Academic Press, p. 175-199.Treiman, R. (1983) The structure of spoken syllables: evidence from novel word games. Cognition, 15.49-74.Treiman, R. (1985) Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: evidence from children. Journal of Experimental Child



4.5. Digraphs (Table 4.5 in Appendix).

Consonant-glide clusters such as /sya/ and /kya/ involve the second type of “little” character in Japanese

orthography. The combination of a character representing C/i/ and little "ya"ゃ, "yu"ゅ or "yo"ょ, results in loss of the

/i/ and palatalization of the preceding consonant. For digraphs such as these, where two orthographic symbols blend to

form just one phoneme with a single moraic weight, a strategy based on orthography might try to break them apart

(paralleling, say, a response of /pihs/ for /ship/ in English). Child11 indeed exhibited such a difficulty for the first two

Psychology. 39.161-81.Treiman, R. (1986) The division between onsets and rimes in English syllables. Journal of Memory and Language, 25.87-

104.Treiman, R. (1987) On the relationship between phonological awareness and literacy. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive,

7:524-529.Treiman R. and Baron, J (1981). Segmental Anslysis ability: Development and relation to reading ability. In G.E.

Mackinnon & T.G. Waller (Eds.) Reading research: Advances in Theory and Practice (Bol. 3 pp. 159-198) New York: Academic Press.

Tunmer and Rohl (1991) " Phonological awareness and reading acquisition", in D. Sawyer and B.J. Fox, Phonological Awareness in Reading: The Evolution of Current Perspectives, Springer Series in Language and Communication, Springer Verlag.

Vance, Timothy J. (1987). An introduction to Japanese phonology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Yoneoka, J. (1996) English Syllable-Internal Structure of Japanese Children living in Hawaii: A Pilot Study. Kumamoto

Gakuen Daigaku Ronshu Sogo Kagaku 3-1 p. 1-16.Yoshiba, Hiroshi. (1981). The Mora Constraint in Japanese Phonology. Linguistic Analysis 7.3.241-263.



stimulus words, refusing to even answer once he got to the critical part of the word (e.g. his response for /toshokan/ was

/nka ienai???/(I can’t say it)). Subsequently, though, he developed the strategy of keeping the phoneme together,

transferring the two characters as a set. (Interestingly, the responses of another boy Child11's age showed clear

evidence of breaking up these orthographic units--e.g. this boy’s response for /toshokan/ was /nkayoshito/).

Child8 and Child4 both avoided the cluster for the stimulus /kyanpu/, but otherwise (with one notable exception)

had no trouble transferring the cluster as a set. This would be the expected result using either a syllabic or metrical

APPENDICES -- TABLES 4.1 - 4.5

Notes for Tables 4.1-4.51) “－” is used for transcription of vowel length in katakana (those borrowed from other languages) whereas the vowel itself is used for hiragana words. This parallels the Japanese orthographic conventions of the two syllabaries. 2) Syllable boundaries are marked by periods.3) Responses are transcribed phonemically. Blank spaces indicate mora (and for the most part, character) boundaries.

Stimulus Child11 Child8 Child4 kyuu.kyuu.sha ien you?! (I can't say!) shakyuusha shakyuukyuge－.mu mu－ge mu－ge,(mugee!) muge－ji.dou.sha shaudoshi,shautoshi,shaudoji shadouji shadoube－.su.bo.ru rubosu－be rubosube borube－ba.re－ reba－ reba－ rabe－sak.ka－ nnkasa kasa－ kasago－.su.to tosu－go stou,sugo to－goshu－.to to－shu to－shu to－shusui.pa－ npaisu pai,paiisu pasusu.ta－.to to－tasu tosu－ta tosta－go－.ru ru－go ru－go rugo－mi－.to to－mi to－mi tomi－,tami－bo.ku.sa － nsakubo sakubo － sabo － Table 4.1. Responses to stimuli containing vowel length.

Stimulus Child11 Child8 Child4 Gakko ukouga kouka,kok,kou,kouga koyo,kogaMatchi chinma chimma chimaBatto toppa toppa toba,tobanKappa pakka pakka pakkasakka－ nnkasa kasa－ kasachippu putchi putchi puchi



strategy. For the stimulus /kyojin/ (one of the last words of the test), however, both younger children provided unique

responses. Child4’s /jyokin/ metathesis has already been discussed in 4.3., but Child8’s /njyoki/ can be interpreted as an

orthographic-based shift with the two characters reversed individually, and then reblended the little yo / ょ / with the

now-preceding /ji/.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

The evidence presented here has three implications for phonological and language acquisition theory. The

Table 4.2. Responses to stimuli containing geminate consonants.

Stimulus word Child11 Child8 Child4 Shingou ugonnshi,ugonshi gooshin goshinPiiman maapi 　npi,nmapima,nmapi,mannpi　　　　manpiiToshokan nka ienai??? (I can’t say) Nkashou kashoutoMinchi chinmi chimmi chinmiKyanpu punkya punka pukanPinku kunpi punki kunpiSensei isense isense isenseSanka kansa kansa kasaHantai itanha taihan tanhaiKyojin njikyo njyoki jyokin Table 4.3. Responses to stimuli containing moraic N.

Stimulus word Child11 Child8 Child4 basuke kesuba kesuba kebago－suto tosu－go stou,sugo to－gosuta－to to－tasu tosu－ta tosta－bokusa－ nsakubo sakubo－ sabo－masuku kusuma kusuma sumaku Table 4.4. Responses to stimuli containing devoiced vowels.

Stimulus word Child11 Child8 Child4 toshokan nka ienai??? (I can’t say) nkasho kashotokyu－kyu－sha ien yo??? (I can’t say) shakyu－sha shakyu－kyukyanpu punkya punka pukanshu－to to－shu to－shu to－shujidousha shaudoshi,shautoshi,shadouji shadouji shadoukyojin njikyo njyoki jyokin Table 4.5. Responses to stimuli containing consonant/glide clusters.



first is the question of language specificity of the onset-rime distinction. The strategies for both older children in this

study clearly make use of a head-coda structure (=moraic), and nowhere is evidence of an onset-rime analysis to be

seen. On the other hand, preliterate Child4’s syllabic strategy along with his metatheses discussed in 4.3 suggest that

perception of the Japanese CV-C structure as traditionally documented is developmental, and may be more based on

orthographical considerations than the underlying structure of the language itself.

The second implication addresses the question of relative ordering of syllabic, syllable-internal, and

phonemic awareness. Several studies (Fox and Routh, 1975; Liberman et al 1974: Treiman and Baron, 1981) have

pointed out the fact that in English speaking children, awareness of the syllable tends to develop before awareness of

the phoneme. Treiman (1985, 1986) postulates that onset-rime awareness must follow syllable awareness and precede

phonemic awareness. The results of the present study tend to parallel this ordering, although the relevant syllable

internal structure is head/coda, not onset/rime. The moraically-based head/coda analysis was clearly the dominant

pattern for Child11 in this study, and the metrical analysis used by Child8 also respects the existence of the head/coda

distinction. However, the syllable-based shifts found in both younger children (and dominant in Child4) attest to the

saliency of the syllable as a unit of analysis as well. For Child8 it is a supplementary unit, used only when moraic

weights of the syllables are equal. However, for Child4, who tends to ignore other moraic phenomena such as length

and gemination, it is clearly the salient feature for analysis.

Finally, we can address the question of development of phonemic awareness in Japanese. As discussed in the

introduction, Mann’s (1986) findings raise the question of whether Japanese children actually develop phonemic or

onset-rime awareness. The glimmerings of phonemic awareness seen in Child3's metatheses point to the possibility that

such awareness could be sensitive to a critical period and critical input data. However, the question arises as to whether

these metatheses, and indeed the syllabic strategy itself evidenced by Child3 is representative of strategies of analysis

in other Japanese 4-year-olds or whether his exposure to English may have played a crucial role. If the latter is true, this

would support the hypothesis that onset-rime distinction and phonemic awareness are language/culture specific (or

perhaps specific to languages that use alphabetic orthography). It also raises the question of universality of the syllable

itself: the initial awareness of the syllable may be the first stage towards development of literacy in a more general

sense. This is an intriguing line of questioning and merits further research with other Japanese children of the same age



group.

There are also pedagogical and psycholinguistic implications of this research. First, the question is raised as to

whether the different strategies evidenced by the three children represent individual differences in cognitive learning

and acquisition styles or whether they can be interpreted as different stages in cognitive development. Child11 and

Child8 were both orthographically literate and close in age, but the fact that Child11 consistently used a moraic strategy

whereas Child8 did not shows that different strategies may exist in children of similar ages. The use of different

strategies (sound/spelling, stress assignment) is documented for English backwards speaking as well. The sound vs.

spelling strategies discussed in the introduction are analogous to Child11’s /n ka sho to/ for /to sho ka n/ viz his friend’s

/n ka yo shi to/. The separating of prosodic and segmental tiers found to be one strategy in English speakers ’ handling

of English stress (Cowan 1985) parallels the metrical strategy used by Child8. It is possible, then, that these different

strategies are developments of initial analytical or gestalt approaches to language as defined by Peters (1983).

On the other hand, evidence that these strategies may be developmental comes from four other Japanese children

who were similarly tested. Two of these children were the same age as Child11, and showed the same tendency

towards reliance on orthography. Indeed, as previously mentioned, one of the two even demonstrated a tendency to

break up digraphs such as /sya/ and /kya/, completely ignoring the fact that he was creating phonemic havoc. The other

two children were 8 years old. One showed the same metrical and syllable-type strategies as Child8 and Child4 did, but

the other tried to reverse the words moraically like the older children. However, this child had great difficulty with the

task, and took inordinate amounts of time to respond to any stimulus with more than three mora. It could then be

hypothesized that the metrical strategy is a developmental stage for children who have already progressed beyond

syllabic awareness, but are not yet ready to meet the demands of moraic transposition.

Evidence for this hypothesis may be found in short-term memory research. Pascual-Leone (1970) calculates

the development of short-term memory (=M-space) with the following formula:

M-space = ‘a’ + ‘k’; where

‘a’ = a constant representing storage space for execution; ‘k’ = ( age - 2 ) /2

With this formula, we obtain the following ‘M’ space values of the seven children involved in this study (the 3 main

children and the 4 described in the previous paragraph):



AGE 4 6 8 9 10 11 12

Value of ‘k’ 1 2 3 4 5

M-space 2 3 4 5 6

MML 3.0 (2.4) (3.2) (3.3) 3.3 (3.7) 3.6

The final row shows the mean length in mora (MML) of the responses for the main children (in bold face) and the

additional children (in parentheses) studied. Note that with the exception of Child4’s 3.0, the MML rises steadily with

age, paralleling the rise in the ‘M’ space storage area. In terms of the backwards game, this means that the younger

childrens’ cognitive M spaces would have allowed only 2 or 3 morae to be juggled at one time, whereas older children

would have been able to handle 5 or 6 morae. The syllabic strategy would have then been employed by younger

children to allow a 5-mora word such as /toshokan/ to be analyzed in 3 units. The 8 year olds, able to handle 4 units of

information, could have employed the metrical strategy which, while based on the syllable, adds an extra element of

matching metricality.

The average English speaker is probably much more consciously aware of the syllable than of either phonemes or

onset-rimes (unless they are poets or kindergarten teachers). On the other hand, the role that the syllable plays in

Japanese phonology is not as marked as that of the syllable in English, being foreshadowed by the mora. Thus, the

initial syllable distinction as seen in Child4 may subsequntly lose its saliency when he develops the moraic head-coda

distinction. This would explain results (Otake et al., 1993) that suggest that Japanese adults listen to English as well as

Japanese words moraically rather than syllabically. However, the psychological reality of the syllable seems not to be

entirely lost, as it has been claimed to play a role in pitch accent assignment (Vance 1990) and dialectal variation.

It would be interesting to test children who speak languages written with purely consonantal symbols such as

Hebrew or Arabic, and of ideographic languages such as Chinese. The orthographic structure of these languages does

not encourage either variant syllable-internal structure over the other. Thus, children should not be expected to produce

any syllable-internal organization per se, but may somehow tend to highlight both the onset and the rime, perhaps at the

expense of the less orthographically salient nucleus. If this is true, then there may be even more distinct orthography-



specific possibilities for syllable-internal structure division: onset-rime (C)(VC), head-coda (CV)(C), flat (CVC),

dipping (C)V(C) and a null value, as in the case of functionally illiterate adults.

Mann (1986:89) suggests that the ability to manipulate phonemes tends to atrophy unless maintained by

appropriate reading experience; we may alternatively suggest that reading experience (at least in Japanese) leads to the

awareness of the head-coda syllable internal division, and that the phonemic manipulation based on this division (e.g.

as required for the backwards task) is a skill that develops after the onset of reading and concurrent with the

development of available short-term memory.

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