Fundamental frequency perturbation caused by voiced and voiceless stops in Japanese

Abstract

The study investigates the effect of voicing of stops on the fundamental frequency (F0) of the following vowels in Japanese, particularly, how this effect interacts with phonemic accentual patterns. A speaker of Standard Japanese recorded/Can/syllables where C was/p,t,k,b,d,g,m,n/. F0 was measured for each glottal period after the consonantal release, or after the vowel onset in the case of aspirated stops. The results showed a dip in F0 around 40 ms after the release of voiced stops, while F0 generally stayed higher after voiceless stops. To examine the interaction between consonantally‐induced F0 variations and accentual patterns, the F0 contours in C1VC2V words with /t,d,n/ as C1 with either high‐low or low‐high accent were analyzed. In the high‐low accent, the low initial F0 after a voiced stop caused F0 to peak later in time than after a voiceless stop. This pattern was not observed in the low‐high accent, where the initial dip was followed by a fast increase in F0 after a voiced stop, while the pitc...