TY - JOUR
T1 - The lingual articulation of devoiced /u/ in Tokyo Japanese
AU - Shaw, Jason A.
AU - Kawahara, Shigeto
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported partly by the OTKA grants No. T023063 and T029387 to GS, and an FWF-grant (P-12748-MOB) to CPK. Thanks are due to G. J. Samuels (Beltsville) and E. Lieckfeldt (Berlin) for sharing unpublished data).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - In Tokyo Japanese, /u/ is typically devoiced between two voiceless consonants. Whether the lingual vowel gesture is influenced by devoicing or present at all in devoiced vowels remains an open debate, largely because relevant articulatory data has not been available. We report ElectroMagnetic Articulography (EMA) data that addresses this question. We analyzed both the trajectory of the tongue dorsum across VC1uC2V sequences as well as the timing of C1 and C2. These analyses provide converging evidence that /u/ in devoicing contexts is optionally targetless—the lingual gesture is either categorically present or absent but seldom reduced. When present, the magnitude of the lingual gesture in devoiced /u/ is comparable to voiced vowel counterparts. Although all speakers produced words with and without a vowel height target for /u/, the frequency of targetlessness varied across speakers and items. The timing between C1 and C2, the consonants flanking /u/ was also effected by devoicing but to varying degrees across items. The items with the greatest effect of devoicing on this inter-consonantal interval were also the items with the highest frequency of vowel height targetlessness for devoiced /u/.
AB - In Tokyo Japanese, /u/ is typically devoiced between two voiceless consonants. Whether the lingual vowel gesture is influenced by devoicing or present at all in devoiced vowels remains an open debate, largely because relevant articulatory data has not been available. We report ElectroMagnetic Articulography (EMA) data that addresses this question. We analyzed both the trajectory of the tongue dorsum across VC1uC2V sequences as well as the timing of C1 and C2. These analyses provide converging evidence that /u/ in devoicing contexts is optionally targetless—the lingual gesture is either categorically present or absent but seldom reduced. When present, the magnitude of the lingual gesture in devoiced /u/ is comparable to voiced vowel counterparts. Although all speakers produced words with and without a vowel height target for /u/, the frequency of targetlessness varied across speakers and items. The timing between C1 and C2, the consonants flanking /u/ was also effected by devoicing but to varying degrees across items. The items with the greatest effect of devoicing on this inter-consonantal interval were also the items with the highest frequency of vowel height targetlessness for devoiced /u/.
KW - Articulatory phonetics
KW - CV timing
KW - EMA
KW - Gestural coordination
KW - Japanese
KW - Phonetic interpolation
KW - Vowel devoicing
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U2 - 10.1016/j.wocn.2017.09.007
DO - 10.1016/j.wocn.2017.09.007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042725113
VL - 66
SP - 100
EP - 119
JO - Journal of Phonetics
JF - Journal of Phonetics
SN - 0095-4470
ER -