A Study on Perception of Internal Juncture in Japanese.

Abstract

From the present experiments on internal juncture in Japanese, it may be concluded that prosodic factors are more prominent than allophonic variations of the segments for juncture perception. Especially, the fall-rise contour of Fo is pronounced in pre- and post-junctural positions. Amplitude and duration of stop closure are also significant as a perceptual cue for juncture, and the duration of stop closure was increased in post-junctural position. Secondly, there was no significant difference in VOT values of stop consonants in junctural position as opposed to those in non junctural position. Although the effects of juncture on aspiration of stop consonants or vowel duration were not significantly found, this does not mean that allophonic variations are irrelevant. Since the data on them is limited in the present study, we need further experiments to examine the effects on other allophonic vari-ations of segments. Finally, from the identification tests by using synthetic speech sounds, the effects of pause and Fo patterns were confirmed. Each dialect has some characteristic Fo patterns to distinguish contrastive phrases, but there are cases in which each mora in contrast has a different degree of effects on pitch perception of the phrases.