Durational Evidence That Tokyo Japanese Vowel Devoicing Is Not Gradient Reduction

• Published in: Frontiers in psychology Vol. 10; p. 821
• Main Authors: Tanner, James, Sonderegger, Morgan, Torreira, Francisco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 16-04-2019
• Subjects: Japanese; phonetics; Psychology; spontaneous speech; syllable duration; vowel devoicing; phonetics; syllable duration; spontaneous speech; vowel devoicing; Japanese
• ISSN: 1664-1078; 1664-1078
• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00821

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.