Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Japanese: the effect of consonant duration

This paper examines vowel-to-vowel lingual coarticulation in sequences of vowel-bilabial consonant-vowel, where the duration of the oral closure for the consonant is either long or short. Native speakers of Japanese served as subjects. The linguistic material consisted of Japanese word pairs that only differed in the duration of the labial consonant, which was either long or short. Recordings were made of lip and tongue movements using a magnetometer system. It was hypothesized that there would be greater vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in the context of a short consonant, since a long consonant would allow the tongue more time to move. The overall results do not show any strong support for this hypothesis, however. Subjects modulate the speed of the tongue movement between the two vowels, making it slower during the long than during the short consonant.