Tongue Contours during Pre-Geminate Vowel Lengthening in Japanese: A Case Study with Voiceless Alveolar Plosive /t/

Abstract

This study investigates the tongue contours during the production of the vowel /a/ preceding geminate and singleton /t/ in Japanese. We report acoustic and articulatory results from a production experiment using ultrasound imaging. Our results generally support the previous literature predicting a relationship between pre-geminate vowel duration and extreme formant values, as well as more extreme articulatory gestures. We also observed interspeaker variability, some speakers not behaving as expected. Our results suggest the potential role of gestural timing and the need to consider the gestural coordination between the pre-geminate vowel and the surrounding segments.