Consonant duration and vowel‐to‐vowel coarticulation in Japanese

Abstract

This study examined vowel‐to‐vowel coarticulation in sequences of vowel‐bilabial consonant‐vowel, where the duration of the oral closure for the consonant is varied for linguistic purposes. Native speakers of Japanese served as subjects. The linguistic material consisted of Japanese word pairs that only differed in the duration of the labial consonant, which was either long or short; the durational ratio of short and long consonants in Japanese is about 1:2. Recordings were made of lip and tongue movements using a magnetometer system. It was hypothesized that there would be greater vowel‐to‐vowel coarticulation in the context of a short consonant, since a long consonant would allow the tongue more time to move. The results do not show any strong support for this hypothesis, however. The reason is that Japanese speakers modulate the speed of the tongue movement between the two vowels according to consonant duration, making it faster during a short consonant and slower during a long consonant. [Work supported by NIH.]