Japanese/Korean Linguistics

This paper examines the temporal structure of intonation units (IUs) in English and Japanese using semi-controlled Covid-19 conversations recorded on Zoom. Intonation units, speech chunks demarcated by prosodic cues, were manually transcribed and analyzed for duration and preceding pause length. The study found Japanese IUs to be significantly longer (median 1.30 s) than English IUs (1.00 s), and Japanese pre-IU pauses longer (0.30 s vs. 0.10 s). Morphological factors, notably Japanese’s reliance on multisyllabic words versus English’s monosyllables, and pragmatic factors, greater encoding of discourse information and sociolinguistic markers in Japanese, explain these differences. Additionally, prolonged pauses in Japanese often trigger speaker shifts, whereas in English they occur at nongrammatical boundaries to support cognitive planning. The paper suggests extending this comparative approach to other languages and genres to uncover universal and language-specific IU patterns.