Abstract
Liquid geminates are uncommon and disfavored in Japanese native phonology. However, instances of emphatic expressions and loanwords from languages with liquid geminates such as Italian or Arabic suggest that they are not impossible. The current study examines the durational, acoustic, and articulatory properties of geminated liquids in Japanese to obtain further insights into the nature of /r/ in Japanese and the process of gemination in general. We report on a production experiment whereby eight native speakers of Japanese pronounced mimetics of the form CVCVCVCV with and without emphatic gemination (e.g., kirakira > kir:akira “shiny”). In addition to the audio, tongue movements were recorded using the EMA technology. Preliminary durational analysis suggests that singleton-geminate ratio is about 1:3, which is slightly larger than the ratios previously reported for geminated obstruents. We explore what articulatory strategies speakers employ to lengthen the liquid consonant whose prototypical singleton production is [ɾ].
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