Articulatory Variability in Word-Final Japanese Moraic-Nasals: An X-ray Microbeam Study

Abstract

The place of articulation in Japanese moraic-nasals is known to vary in accordance with the following sound and is assumed to be uvular in word final position. This paper describes the articulatory variability of word-final moraic-nasals based on the X-ray microbeam speech production database in Japanese. The results depict substantive inter-speaker variability in three of the four words examined. Moreover, 75% of the data examined were deemed unlikely to be uvular nasals and the lips were likely to be closed in 40% of the data. The results do not support the claim that word-final moraic-nasals are uvular.