INTERSPEECH 2011 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association Florence, Italy August 27-31. 2011

The Perception Boundary Between Single and Geminate Stops in 3- and 4-Mora Japanese Words

Shigeaki Amano (1), Yukari Hirata (2)

(1) Aichi-Shukutoku University, Japan
(2) Colgate University, USA

The perception boundary between single and geminate stops was examined by regression analyses in 3- and 4-mora Japanese words spoken at various speaking rates. It was found that the perception boundary is well predicted by a linear function with duration of stop closure and durations of word or disyllable which contained the single and geminate stops. However, we conclude that the disyllable duration was a better variable than the word duration because it provides a more consistent explanation for the perception boundary regardless of word length and speaking rate variations. The results support a relational acoustic invariance theory.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Amano, Shigeaki / Hirata, Yukari (2011): "The perception boundary between single and geminate stops in 3- and 4-mora Japanese words", In INTERSPEECH-2011, 2233-2236.