Characteristics of Japanese Ra-gyôn with palatography and linguography

Abstract

Japanese Ra-gyôn (/r/ as liquid phoneme) was observed in this paper by using a static method of physiological phonetics called palatography and linguography. With this method, the place of articulation is determined from the palate or tongue with a mixture of edible oil and powdered coal. Regarding the difference between /da/ and /ra/, the manner of articulation, whether plosive or flap, was assumed to be determined according to the difference in the contact area of blade of tongue and alveolar arch. As a result, a relatively smaller contact area was successfully confirmed as a flap to distinguish the two. It was further confirmed that there are people whose /ra/ becomes a lateral and whose overall dorsum of tongue contacts the palate at the time of articulating /da/.