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Mora or syllable? Which unit do Japanese use in naming visually presented stimuli?

2004; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 01 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0142716404001018

1469-1817

Katsuo Tamaoka, Yasushi Terao,

Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Because the Japanese phonetic script (i.e., kana) represents moraic units, it is often claimed that Japanese people assemble phonology at the moraic unit. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the unit for naming visually presented stimuli, focusing on the special nasals /N/, geminates /Q/, long vowels /R/, and dual vowels /J/. The special sounds create two morae when there is only one syllable. Experiments 1 and 2 compared the production of three-mora, three-syllable and three-mora, two-syllable real, and nonsense words. The findings indicated that native Japanese speakers named the three-mora words containing the special sounds more quickly. Accordingly, it is posited that special sounds are named as syllable units rather than moraic units.