Effects of speaking rate on the single/geminate stop distinction in Japanese

Yukari Hirata; Jacob Whiton

doi:10.1121/1.2000807

journal article Sep 01, 2005

Effects of speaking rate on the single/geminate stop distinction in Japanese

Yukari Hirata Jacob Whiton

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 118 No. 3 pp. 1647-1660 · Acoustical Society of America (ASA)

View at Publisher Save 10.1121/1.2000807

Abstract

This study addressed an issue in the theory of acoustic invariance. The question was whether an invariant acoustic property exists for distinguishing Japanese single and geminate voiceless stops across rates and speakers. Four native Japanese speakers produced disyllabic words with single and geminate stops (e.g., /kako/ and /kak:o/) spoken in a carrier sentence at three speaking rates. Durations of sentences, words, stop closures, vowels preceding the contrasting stops, and voice onset times were measured. Ratios of geminate to single stop closures, geminate words to singleton words, closures to preceding vowels, and closures to words were calculated. The effect of rate on closure duration was to yield overlap between the singleton and geminate categories, and to lengthen geminate closures more than single closures as rate decreased. However, the ratio of geminate to single closure duration was unaffected by rate. Furthermore, the ratio of closure to word duration (0.35 as an optimal boundary) best classified all singleton and geminate tokens with 95.7%–98% accuracy. Thus, in spite of overlap in absolute closure duration between single and geminate voiceless stops, there is a relationally invariant measure that divides the two phonemic categories across rates and speakers, supporting the theory of relational acoustic invariance.

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Metrics

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Citations

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References

Details

Published: Sep 01, 2005
Vol/Issue: 118(3)
Pages: 1647-1660

Authors

Y

Yukari Hirata

Colgate University Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, , Hamilton, New York 13346

J

Jacob Whiton

Colgate University Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, , Hamilton, New York 13346

Cite This Article

Yukari Hirata, Jacob Whiton (2005). Effects of speaking rate on the single/geminate stop distinction in Japanese. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118(3), 1647-1660. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2000807

Effects of speaking rate on the single/geminate stop distinction in Japanese

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