本研究主要是從縱斷研究的觀點來探討 3名台灣人日語學習者 S1、S2、S3在 3年的日語學習過程中使用日語「demo」時的韻律特徵。本研究先依照日語「demo」所連接的前後發話間是否存在著逆接與對比的關係將日語「demo」的用法分類，然後分別針對每個類別進行「demo」的語音分析。本研究的主要考察結果如下所示。整體而言，這 3名台灣人日語學習者隨著日語學習時間的增加，日語「demo」的音長調整有趨向日語母語話者的使用傾向，然而日語「demo」的音高調整卻不見這樣的傾向。

This longitudinal study examined the prosodic features of demo, which used by three Japanese learners, S1, S2 and S3, in Taiwan, during their three years Japanese learning period. The use of demo can be categorized into two types, “A and Non-A related” and “A and Non-A unrelated”. Analyzing their phonetic performances reveals that, the feature of adjusting the duration of demo to distinguish “A and Non-A related” from “A and Non-A unrelated” can be observed, but the feature of adjusting the pitch range of demo cannot be found, even though their Japanese language proficiency are growing during the learning period.