2014 年 18 巻 2 号 p. 44-53
Previous studies on sokuon, or Japanese geminate consonants, have mainly focused on the acoustic properties. Some studies claim that laryngeal characteristics also differ between sokuon and singletons. However, physiological studies on sokuon are not well explored. This study uses a high-speed digital video system and PGG to examine whether any laryngeal/glottal tension takes place in producing sokuon. The results showed that no apparent laryngeal constriction or glottal stop appeared during sokuon. However, the analysis of PGG and kymograph showed that the glottal opening tends to be suppressed during sokuon during the onset part, suggesting that some kind of tension of the vocal folds is involved in producing the phoneme.