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The present study investigated the existence of a Japanese mental syllabary and units stored therein for speech production. Experiment 1 compared naming latencies between high and low initial mora frequencies using CVCVCV nonwords, indicating that nonwords with a high initial mora frequency were named faster than those with a low frequency initial mora. Experiments 2 and 3 clarified the possibility of CV light and CVN/CVR heavy syllables as being units implicated in speech production. CVNCV nonwords in Experiment 2 and CVRCV nonwords in Experiment 3 displayed shorter naming latencies and lower error rates than their baseline (same bi-mora frequencies) of CVCVCV-structured nonwords. Since bi-mora frequencies between CVN/CVR and CVCV were the same, heavy syllables comprised of CVN and CVR units may contribute to ready-made motor-programs stored in the Japanese mental syllabary as variations of the 100 core light syllables (300 units in total). Experiment 4 further tested the effects of bi-mora frequency on the naming of nonwords, and found that CVCVCV-structured nonwords with high bi-mora frequencies were named more quickly and accurately than those with low bi-mora frequencies, although some bi-mora combinations seem to exhibit nonconforming tendencies (i.e., null significance in item analysis). Experiment 5 demonstrated that the naming of real words with high word frequency was quicker than for other real word conditions with low word frequencies (i.e., word frequency effects), with little effect of bi-mora frequencies. Unlike the nonword condition of Experiment 4, bi-mora frequency had only a minor influence on the naming of real words. Based on these findings, the present study proposes a possible model of the Japanese mental syllabary accompanied by a discussion of bi-mora and word frequency effects.

Most experimental research making use of the Japanese language has involved the 1945 officially standardized kanji (Japanese logographic characters) in the Jōyō kanji list (originally announced by the Japanese government in 1981). However, this list was extensively modified in 2010: five kanji were removed and 196 kanji were added; the latest revision of the list now has a total of 2136 kanji. Using an up-to-date corpus consisting of 11 years' worth of articles printed in the Mainichi Newspaper (2000-2010), we have constructed two novel databases that can be used in psychological research using the Japanese language: (1) a database containing a wide variety of properties on the latest 2136 Jōyō kanji, and (2) a novel database containing 27,950 two-kanji compound words (or jukugo). Based on these two databases, we have created an interactive website ( www.kanjidatabase.com ) to retrieve and store linguistic information to be used in psychological and linguistic experiments. The present paper reports the most important characteristics for the new databases, as well as their value for experimental psychological and linguistic research.

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