AUTHOR=Tanner James , Sonderegger Morgan , Torreira Francisco 

TITLE=Durational Evidence That Tokyo Japanese Vowel Devoicing Is Not Gradient Reduction

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00821

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00821

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>A central question in the Japanese high vowel devoicing literature concerns whether vowels are devoiced through a categorical process or via gradient reduction. Examining how vowel height and consonantal voicing condition phrase-internal CV duration in a corpus of spontaneous Tokyo Japanese, it was found that CVs containing high vowels are substantially shorter before voiceless consonants, whilst non-high vowels do not exhibit comparable shortening. This quantitative difference between CV durations suggests a controlled temporal compression of the CV, consistent with views that Japanese vowel devoicing is produced through a categorical process targeting high vowels preceding voiceless consonants, and supports previous observations made of elicited productions.</p>