15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15) Barcelona, Spain August 3-9, 2003

Domain-Initial Strengthening in Japanese: An Acoustic and Articulatory Study

Akiko Onaka

Macquarie University, Australia

Phonetic and acoustic properties of speech segments have been claimed to be reinforced at domain-initial position. The study investigates domain-initial strengthening effect by examining differences in acoustic and articulatory properties of consonants /t/ and /n/ across different prosodic positions in Japanese. Domain-initial strengthening is examined using acoustic and articulatory data obtained by electropalatography (EPG). It is found that the duration of the consonants in higher prosodic domains is longer than that in lower prosodic domains. Amount of linguopalatal contact is greater in higher prosodic domains than in lower prosodic domains. Results show that the domain-initial strengthening effect is present in Japanese. Nevertheless, the effect appears to be less consistent and less systematic in Japanese.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Onaka, Akiko (2003): "Domain-initial strengthening in Japanese: an acoustic and articulatory study", In ICPhS-15, 2091-2094.