Acoustic characteristics of liquid geminates in Japanese

Abstract

Japanese contrasts consonant length. Much research has been done on the acoustic characteristics of obstruent geminates in Japanese, identifying the constriction duration as the primary acoustic correlate. The ratios of the duration of the consonants and the surrounding vowels have also been investigated, and it was pointed out that the ratios differ from some other languages with distinctive consonant length, such as Italian. The present study examines the acoustics of liquid geminates in Japanese. Phonological phenomena in Japanese such as verb inflection demonstrate that the language dislikes liquid geminates. However, while not as common as obstruent or nasal geminates, liquid geminates are not impossible; they are present in certain loanwords and emphatic expressions. I report on the acoustic correlates of liquid geminates focusing on consonant sonority and consonant-vowel ratio, in three environments controlled for vowel quality and pitch-accent position: namely, loanwords (mostly from Italian and Arabic), emphatic forms of adjectives (e.g., karai “spicy” > karrai) and emphatic forms of onomatopoeic expressions (e.g., garagara “expresses emptiness” > garragara), pronounced by three native speakers of Tokyo dialect of Japanese in laboratory settings.