Effects of consonant length on vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Japanese

Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation across consonants can be seen as evidence of overlap between the articulatory gestures of the vowels. Further evidence for the organization of the gestures can be found in contextual variation in the durations of the vowels. This acoustic study of Japanese examines the effects of geminate consonants on the durations and the F2 values of the surrounding vowels in VCV utterances. Because of the syllable structure of the language, geminate consonants in Japanese might be expected not to close the preceding syllable, eliminating this potential source of vowel shortening. In agreement with this hypothesis, vowels did not shorten before geminate consonants (in fact they lengthened), and the second vowel affected the formants of the first vowel less across geminate than across single consonants. [Work supported by NSF.]