14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14)San Francisco, CA, USA |
A distinction in vowel quantity is typically realized acoustically
by vowel duration. Research on the perception of Swedish
vowel quantity supports this and further suggests that when the
duration of a vowel is relatively long (due, e.g., to inherent
duration), vowel quantity may not be adequately cued by
duration alone and may also make use of the vowel spectra to
distinguish vowel quantities. If this account of the Swedish
findings is correct, other languages which have vowel quantity
distinctions would be expected to show a similar pattern.
The current project investigates the perceptual cues used
to distinguish vowels quantities in Japanese. Of particular
interest is whether Japanese listeners use spectral cues to
identify the quantity of vowels which have a relatively long
inherent duration. Results are compared with the findings for
Swedish and discussed in terms of the perceptual role of vowel
duration and spectra as cues for vowel quantity.
Bibliographic reference. Behne, Dawn / Arai, Takayuki / Czigler, Peter / Sullivan, Kirk P. M. (1999): "Vowel duration and spectra as perceptual cues to vowel quantity: a comparison of Japanese and Swedish", In ICPhS-14, 857-860.