Prosodic Disambiguation in Japanese: A Comparative Study of Native Speakers and Swedish L2 Learners

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates whether intermediate and advanced Swedish learners of Japanese language can use prosodic cues—particularly pitch-based features such as downstep—to differentiate between structurally ambiguous noun phrases, specifically those having both left branching (LB) and right branching (RB) interpretations, in spoken Japanese in the same way as native speakers. It also examines whether their prosody pattern is influenced by syntactic awareness. Moreover, it studies whether advanced and intermediate learners exhibit differences in their prosodic realization. To this end, speech data was collected from native speakers and learners under two reading tasks: spontaneous and awareness-guided. Results indicate that while in general learners demonstrate native-like pitch patterns (downstep), clear variation within learner group was observed across proficiency levels: advanced learners exhibited more stable, native-like phrasing, but intermediate learners often showed inconsistent pitch pattern. In addition, awareness of different syntactic interpretation resulted in native speakers’ prosody pattern to be more salient, but it did not lead to better prosodic realization of L2 learners. These findings highlight the pedagogical value of incorporating sentence-level prosody into L2 instruction—particularly for helping learners bridge the gap between syntactic understanding and prosodic realization, thereby acquiring more native-like intonation and fostering better communication skills.