Do the mechanisms of vowel epenthesis in consonant clusters vary according to languages?

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520434
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Prefectural University of Hiroshima
• Principal Investigator: FUNATSU Seiya 県立広島大学, 公私立大学の部局等, 講師 (30275383)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): FUJIMOTO Masako 早稲田大学, 人間科学学術院, 招聘研究員 (30392541) ; IMAIZUMI Satoshi 県立広島大学, 保健福祉学部, 教授 (80122018)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 子音クラスタ / 母音添加 / 日本語 / 英語 / 調音運動 / WAVE system

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We investigated the mechanisms of vowel epenthesis in consonant clusters using the WAVE system (NDI Corp.). Tongue tip movements were measured during the articulation of native and non-native consonant clusters in English. The subjects were three Japanese and three English speakers. The speech samples were 3 words: blat, bnat, btat. In these words, consonant cluster /bl/ is native in English, but /bn/ and /bt/ are non-native consonant clusters in English. These words were embedded in a carrier sentence, “Say X.”, and these sentences were uttered 10 times each in random order. Tongue tip displacement from first consonant /b/ to second consonant /n, l, t/ was measured. In comparison with the data of English speakers indicated that the tongue tip displacement in Japanese speakers did not show significant difference from English speakers. We infer that the mechanisms of vowel epenthesis in consonant clusters in Japanese speakers are not different from that in English speakers.

Free Research Field

音声科学