Relative timing of oral and laryngeal motions in voiceless consonant production: A comparison of single and geminate consonants in Japanese

Abstract

It is known that temporal coordination of oral and laryngeal articulations is important in voiceless consonant production. In this study, the relative timing of oral constriction and glottal opening is investigated for single and geminate voiceless consonants in Japanese. The motions of the jaw, lips, tongue, and larynx of three male speakers were examined using EMA (electromagnetic articulograph), PGG (photoglottograph), and EGG (electroglottograph) techniques. A set of /iie eCe desu/ and /iie eQCe desu/ sentences, containing voiceless consonants /s, t, φ, p/, was used for the test utterances. /QC/ in the sentence shows a geminate form in Japanese. The experiment data showed that the interval between the peak of glottal opening and oral release onset for geminates was longer than for singles and that consonant duration was also longer. For each form, the longer the consonant duration was, the longer the interval became. These temporal relations were found for all speakers, although the ratio of the two intervals was different for each speaker. The results suggest that, for both single and geminate consonants, articulators are controlled based on the consonant duration dependence of the oral-glottal timing. [Work supported by CREST, JST.]