Regional Stereotypes and the Perception of Japanese Vowel Devoicing 195even though, as suggested before, Kinki speakers may devoice vowels as fre-
quently as Tokyo speakers in the most general environments, that is, in unac-
cented morae between voiceless consonants.
Therefore both Tokyo and Kinki people tend to use stereotypical criteria.
That is, for Tokyo people, a devoicer is a Tokyo person and a nondevoicer is a
non-Tokyo person, and for Kinki people, a devoicer is a non-Kinki person and
a nondevoicer is a Kinki person. It is important to note, however, that, neither
Tokyo nor Kinki people suffer from linguistic insecurity, and both recognize
prestige in their own dialects.
- Methods
In my experiment, I presented a test tape that consisted of a word list to
Tokyo and Kinki people and asked them to judge for each word whether the
speaker was from the same region as their own. I chose the words so that
voicing variation would be the only difference they could use in making
judgments. Words as in (1a) and (1b) have only one devoiceable vowel in the
most general devoicing environment and have the same accent pattern in
Tokyo and Kinki. For comparison, I also used words that contain no devoice-
able vowel and are pronounced in different pitch accents in Tokyo and Kinki
as in (1c) and words that contain no devoiceable vowel and are pronounced
in the same pitch accents as in (1d).
Word Gloss Speaker Devoicing/Accent
(1a) at afuta ‘hurriedly’ J Devoiced
atafuta ‘hurriedly’ K Nondevoiced
(1b) nadeshiko ‘a pink’ K Devoiced
michihide ‘by high and low tides’ M Nondevoiced
(1c) kawari ‘replacement’ H LHH (Tokyo)
kawari ‘replacement’ G HHH (Kinki)
(1d) tabun ‘probably’ E
Tables 7.3 and 7.4 show how the responses were tabulated. The responses I
expected were:
- Tokyo respondents would judge Tokyo pitch accent and devoiced tokens
as “from the same region.” - Kinki respondents would judge Tokyo pitch accent and devoiced tokens
as “not from the same region,”