The consonantal realisation of the mora nasal in Osaka Japanese

The description of the pronunciation of the mora nasal in Standard Japanese varies considerably in the literature. The mora nasal is the syllable final nasal in Japanese (e.g. ‘n’ in Honda). Along with other elements, it came into the Japanese language with early loan-words from Chinese and extended the originally simpler phonotactics, which consisted of (C)V-syllables only. The variation in the descriptions of the mora nasal can be found not only between different researchers but also depending on the phonetic context, in which it is placed. In some studies the mora nasal is described as having an underlying phonetic place and modus of pronunciation, close to a velar nasal, and which is modified according to phonetic context and speaking style, but often leaves a trace of the original pronunciation. Others assume more context dependent realisations, not giving any information about some original pronunciation. In the following, a more detailed outline of the various descriptions of the pronunciation of the mora nasal in specific context will be given to illustrate the motivation of the present investigation, which is to show the existence of a consonantal realisation of the mora nasal in intervocalic context in Osaka Japanese, however favoured by particular circumstances and context

Rhythmic contrast between Swedish and Albanian as an explanation for L2-speech?

Based on observations of the rhythmic structure of L2-speech produced by L1-speakers of Albanian – which suggest the occurrence of transfer – a study is presented here that compares durational aspects between the two languages. In order to do this, speech read by Swedish and Albanian L1-speakers was recorded and investigated, and normalized durational factors were analysed. The results, however, do not support the assumption that there is variation in the rhythmic structure between the two languages. According to the results, transfer cannot explain previous observations

A Cross-Language Study of /hi/ and /ç/ in Japanese and German : A Spectral Analysis

The present study aims to clarify the phonetic value of the /h/-part in the Japanese syllable /hi/, German /h/ before /i/ and German /ç/ in their specific environments from an acoustic point of view. In phonetic descriptions of Japanese, /h/ before /i/ is often transcribed as both [ç] and devoiced [i] in the same broader context. Since German treats both realizations as phonemically distinct, it seems to be a useful language to compare the Japanese data with. An acoustic analysis of Japanese and German data will be undertaken to show similarities and differences between the acoustic structures of these sounds, depending on the environment in which they occur