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Phonemic awareness in alphabetically literate Japanese adults: the influence of the first acquired writing system

par Nakamura, Mitsuhiro;Kolinsky, Régine ;Spagnoletti, Carmela ;Morais, Jose
Référence Cahiers de psychologie cognitive, 17, 2, page (417-450)
Publication Publié, 1998

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

The present study examined the nature of the metaphonological units that are used by Japanese native speakers who know both mora-based and phoneme-based writing systems. In three experiments, participants were asked to perform a reversal task. The results show that, in comparison to phonemes and syllables, moras are the most prominent units in spontaneous reversal. On the other hand, the participants were perfectly able to manipulate phonemes under request. Yet, detailed analysis of their phonemic reversals as well as introspective reports reveal that, when asked to reverse phonemes, most subjects used an interchange of written kana characters instead. While coherent with the notion that phonemes are not the major metaphonological units of Japanese, the use of such a strategy implies the ability to analyze CV kanas into their internal consonant-vowel constituents. Thus, whereas the nature of the first acquired writing system seems to exert a strong, pervasive influence on the native speaker's metaphonological procedures, such language-specific procedures amount to the ability to perform metalinguistic operations at the phonemic level.