Mechanisms of vowel epenthesis in consonant clusters: an EMA study

Seiya Funatsu , Masako Fujimoto

The mechanisms of vowel epenthesis in consonant clusters were investigated using an electromagnetic articulograph (EMA). The target languages were Japanese and German. Japanese does not allow consonant clusters, while German does. Two Japanese speakers and two German speakers participated in this experiment. For Japanese speakers, normalized tongue tip displacements from the first consonant to the second consonant in clusters (/bn/, /pn/) were significantly larger than those of German speakers (p<0.001). Also, the normalized moving times of tongue tip for Japanese speakers were significantly longer than those for German speakers (p<0.001). These results suggested that the coarticulation between first and second consonant for Japanese speakers would be weaker than that for German speakers. Moreover, from the measurement of tongue back movement, the timing between articulatory movement and vocal fold vibration would affect the vowel epenthesis.

Mots clés: EMA; consonant cluster; vowel epenthesis; Japanese

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Seiya Funatsu, Masako Fujimoto. Mechanisms of vowel epenthesis in consonant clusters: an EMA study. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810613⟩