Acquisition of Geminate Consonants by English Speaking Learners of Japanese

Abstract

This paper discusses the nature of geminate consonants in Japanese and problems second language learners of Japanese have in the acquisition of geminate consonants. In the experiments on English speakers' production of geminate consonants, insertion errors of geminate consonants were observed more frequently than omission errors. It was found that durational errors were caused by the prosodic interference from English accentuation, and that the degree of germination was reflected in the relative duration of a geminate consonant to the preceding vowel (RDV). Based on the findings, some pedagogical suggestions were offered to second language learners and teachers.