200 Midori Yonezawa Morris
5.4 Gender of the Respondent
Tables 7.14, 7.15, 7.16, and 7.17 show the results by gender of the respondent.
The results for Tokyo devoiced and Kinki combined data are not signi¿ cant. In
all cases that are signi¿ cant, women respondents are promoters of the expected
response, indicating they may be more sensitive to voicing status in general and
perhaps matching assumptions about the standard character of vowel devoicing.
Gender Weight
Female 0.524
Male 0.466Gender Weight
Female 0.556
Male 0.421Gender Weight
Female 0.543
Male 0.470Gender Weight
Female 0.528
Male 0.4595.5 Age of the respondent
Finally, Tables 7.18 and 7.19 show the results of combined data by age of
the respondent. In the Tokyo results, a mild age-grading pattern is indicated,
again matching the assumption that vowel devoicing is a standard form, which
the youngest and oldest have less concern with. The Kinki results do not show
an age-grading pattern, with only the youngest age group as a demoter. This
might indicate linguistic change, but that is not con¿ rmed. It should be noted
that, in recent studies, Fujimoto (2004) shows that the devoicing rate in Osaka
is higher than those given in Sugito (1969) and Sugito (1988) and that the
devoicing rate in accented morae in Tokyo is much higher than Yoshioka’s
Table 7.14 Results by Gender of the Respondent (Tokyo, Combined)
Table 7.15 Results by Gender of the Respondent (Tokyo, Nondevoiced)
Table 7.16 Results by Gender of the Respondent (Kinki, Devoiced)
Table 7.17 Results by Gender of the Respondent (Kinki, Nondevoiced)