The present study investigates the effect of furigana on lexical inferencing. After completing a pretest to determine their knowledge of the target words, participants read a passage and completed a think-aloud protocol and questionnaire. The experimental group read a passage with furigana over all kanji words while the control group read a passage without furigana. The protocols were evaluated to determine the rate and quality of lexical inferences of 16 target kanji words. The results of the questionnaire were evaluated to determine participant perception of passage and kanji difficulty, self-assessed percentage of the story that was understood, and the degree to which they liked the story. It was found that the group with furigana made more correct inferences than the control group. It was also found that the furigana group perceived the kanji in the passage to be easier than the control group did. Furigana did not seem to affect the degree to which the participants liked the story, their perception of the difficulty of the story or the percentage of the story that they understood. Implications for theory and pedagogy are discussed.

Currently in Japan there are 5,202 choirs registered as part of the Japan Choral Association. The majority of these choirs are amateur or professional choirs. This situation contrasts with that in the United States where colleges and universities are the primary entities perpetuating the advancement of the choral art. Most likely because of this, there is little if any academic investigation of modern Japanese choral music. Even in Japan, there is not a substantial body of academic study of this literature. As a result, this repertoire is seldom, if ever, performed outside of Japan.Numerous problems confront Western choral conductors interested in programming modern Japanese choral music that is based on traditional Japanese musical idioms. In this document, I have provided information that will allow Japanese choral literature to be accessible to non-Japanese speaking conductors. This information is divided into four areas. First, an overview of Japanese music history is provided. Next, a discussion of the elements of traditional Japanese music such as genre types, modes and tonalities provides the necessary background for a conductor to approach modern Japanese choral music. Third, a practical method whereby non-Japanese speaking choral conductors may transcribe the two phonetic Japanese alphabets into readable English phonetics is proposed. Fourth, a practical approach to the performance of modern Japanese choral music, inclusive of various musical genres, voicing, and instrumental complements is suggested. Discussion of representative choral works by three native composers including a work based on a folk tune, a work for women's chorus, a work for men's chorus, and a composition for mixed chorus and traditional Japanese instrumental complement provides concrete application of the aforementioned discussions.Lastly, in this document I will provide information on several contemporary native Japanese composers, their compositions, and their publishing companies to facilitate the acquisition and performance of this rich choral repertory.

Existem muitos sistemas de escrita em uso pelo mundo. Quase todos eles são representações dos sons das línguas, compostos por poucas dezenas de símbolos. A escrita japonesa, porém, inclui caracteres chineses (kanji), que representam não só os sons mas também os sentidos; e, para isso, precisa empregar milhares de símbolos. A complexidade do sistema de escrita japonês torna-o mais difícil de aprender e de processar mentalmente. Por que então ele continua sendo usado até hoje? Haveria alguma vantagem? Investigando estas questões, descobrimos que a escrita japonesa permite formas de expressão que não seriam possíveis através da transcrição sonora pura, nem em sistemas de escrita mais simples. Esta observação é importante, não apenas para os estudos japoneses, mas para os estudos da linguagem escrita em geral: o caso japonês demonstra que a escrita não pode ser compreendida como um simples registro visual da fala, mas deve ser estudada como um sistema de acesso à linguagem com características próprias. Neste trabalho, analisamos algumas dessas formas de expressão específicas da escrita, tal como se apresentam no japonês. / There are many writing systems currently in use around the world. For almost all of them, the basic mechanism is using graphical symbols to represent the sounds of language. A few dozen symbols are enough for this purpose. Japanese writing, however, includes Chinese characters (kanji), which are related not only to sound but also to meaning; since there are many possible meanings, kanji number in the thousands. The complexity of Japanese writing makes it comparatively harder to learn, and harder to process mentally. Why, then, is it still in use? Are there any advantages to such a system? A closer look show that Japanese writing allows modes of expression which would be impossible in a phonetic transcription of speech, or in simpler writing systems. This is an important datum, not only for Japanese studies, but for the linguistic study of writing itself; the Japanese case clearly shows that writing cant be adequately described as merely a visual representation of speech, but must rather be analyzed as an independent system for accessing language. In this dissertation we discuss, from Japanese examples, some of these expressive techniques which can only be realized in a written medium.

Existem muitos sistemas de escrita em uso pelo mundo. Quase todos eles são representações dos sons das línguas, compostos por poucas dezenas de símbolos. A escrita japonesa, porém, inclui caracteres chineses (kanji), que representam não só os sons mas também os sentidos; e, para isso, precisa empregar milhares de símbolos. A complexidade do sistema de escrita japonês torna-o mais difícil de aprender e de processar mentalmente. Por que então ele continua sendo usado até hoje? Haveria alguma vantagem? Investigando estas questões, descobrimos que a escrita japonesa permite formas de expressão que não seriam possíveis através da transcrição sonora pura, nem em sistemas de escrita mais simples. Esta observação é importante, não apenas para os estudos japoneses, mas para os estudos da linguagem escrita em geral: o caso japonês demonstra que a escrita não pode ser compreendida como um simples registro visual da fala, mas deve ser estudada como um sistema de acesso à linguagem com características próprias. Neste trabalho, analisamos algumas dessas formas de expressão específicas da escrita, tal como se apresentam no japonês. / There are many writing systems currently in use around the world. For almost all of them, the basic mechanism is using graphical symbols to represent the sounds of language. A few dozen symbols are enough for this purpose. Japanese writing, however, includes Chinese characters (kanji), which are related not only to sound but also to meaning; since there are many possible meanings, kanji number in the thousands. The complexity of Japanese writing makes it comparatively harder to learn, and harder to process mentally. Why, then, is it still in use? Are there any advantages to such a system? A closer look show that Japanese writing allows modes of expression which would be impossible in a phonetic transcription of speech, or in simpler writing systems. This is an important datum, not only for Japanese studies, but for the linguistic study of writing itself; the Japanese case clearly shows that writing cant be adequately described as merely a visual representation of speech, but must rather be analyzed as an independent system for accessing language. In this dissertation we discuss, from Japanese examples, some of these expressive techniques which can only be realized in a written medium.