Durational Evidence That Tokyo Japanese Vowel Devoicing Is Not Gradient Reduction

Abstract

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A central question in the Japanese high vowel devoicing literature concerns whether vowels are devoiced through a categorical process or via gradient reduction. Examining how vowel height and consonantal voicing condition phrase-internal CV duration in a corpus of spontaneous Tokyo Japanese, it was found that CVs containing high vowels are substantially shorter before voiceless consonants, whilst non-high vowels do not exhibit comparable shortening. This quantitative difference between CV durations suggests a controlled temporal compression of the CV, consistent with views that Japanese vowel devoicing is produced through a categorical process targeting high vowels preceding voiceless consonants, and supports previous observations made of elicited productions.

Keywords

• phonetics
• syllable duration
• Japanese
• spontaneous speech
• vowel devoicing