Orthographic Effects on the Perception and Production of Certain Japanese Phones by L2 Learners

The purpose of this thesis is to test the influence of orthography on how second language (L2) learners of Japanese perceive and produce sounds absent from their native language English. The study tests whether Japanese L2 learners perceive and produce the Japanese phones /ɸ/ and /ç/ as closer to their transcription equivalents /f/ and /h/ than non-learners (those not learning Japanese in any capacity) do. The study uses a language (Japanese) where Roman orthography is not used frequently, testing the limits of L1 orthographic effects, as well as looking at the phonemic rather than the word level. It was found that orthography did not influence the perception of Japanese phones at the phonemic level, and that in general there are limits on orthographic effects in this scenario. But, instances of orthographic influence were found for the production of words, which indicates that auditory perception is likely being overridden by an orthographic effect, most likely in the lexical representation of a word.