Effects of foot structure on mora duration in Japanese? Mitsuhiko Ota†, D. Robert Ladd† and Madoka Tsuchiya‡ † University of Edinburgh, UK ‡ Institute of Education, University of London, UK E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] None of the previous studies has examined the role of the ABSTRACT bimoraic foot in Japanese speech timing, despite the growing evidence that the foot forms one of the levels in We investigated the role of foot structure on mora duration Japanese prosodic structure. So far the evidence for the foot in Japanese. Our initial hypothesis was that moras in in Japanese comes from templatic conditions on foot-final position are longer than moras in the same foot. morphological phenomena such as hypocoristics, clipping, Ten speakers of Tokyo Japanese read a set of surnames of and reduplication [10, 11], and the phonetic basis of the the form CVCVCVCV, in which the second and fourth CVs foot, if there is any, has not been investigated. We therefore were seen to correspond to foot-final moras. The analysis set out to examine the potential effects of the foot on the showed no support for foot-final mora lengthening. duration of moras in Japanese. On the basis of earlier However, we found evidence for word-final lengthening studies of factors that affect mora duration, at least two and within-mora/between-mora duration compensation. kinds of effects might be expected. On the one hand, we Though not conclusively, the results are consistent with the might expect to see unit-periphery effects, such as a interpretation that the bimoraic foot constitutes a domain of tendency to lengthen foot-final moras. On the other hand, compensation effects of mora duration in Japanese. we might look for evidence of foot-internal compensation, whereby the duration of moras would be adjusted to 1. INTRODUCTION compensate for an unusually long or unusually short “footmate.” Japanese speech has long been described as “mora-timed” (e.g., [1]), and at a first approximation the hypothesis of the A pilot experiment suggested that foot-final moras might be isochronous mora appears to be justified. Several studies longer than foot-initial ones, and our principal purpose in report a linear relationship between word duration and the the series of experiments reported here was to investigate number of moras in the word, showing that on average the role of position-in-foot on the duration of CV moras. On moras are of roughly constant duration [2, 3]. Moreover, at the basis of our study, however, we have had to conclude least a few studies (summarized in [4]) provide data that there is no evidence for foot-final mora lengthening, suggesting that there may be temporal compensation and in that sense the main thrust of this paper is to report a effects, such that moras will compensate for unusually long negative result (which we hope may nevertheless be useful or short neighbouring moras. These results clearly point to to subsequent investigators). However, we also present a role for the mora in regulating the fine durational details clear evidence, based on a different methodological of Japanese. approach from the corpus-based study of Warner and Arai [8], that the final mora in a word is longer than other moras. On the other hand, it is equally clear that there is no We also present more evidence for both within-mora and absolute isochrony. Most importantly, intrinsic segment between-mora compensation effects, providing further duration effects are found in Japanese as in every other proof that the role of the mora in Japanese speech timing is language (fricatives tend to be longer than stops, low not merely an illusion. vowels longer than high vowels, etc.), and these differences lead to predictable wide variation in mora duration [5]. 2. EXPERIMENT Second, it has also been reported by several investigators that the syllable-internal position of a mora affects its 2.1 Methods duration, as moras associated with nasal codas, geminate consonants, and the second position of long vowels are All our experiments were based on recordings of controlled consistently shorter than CV moras [5 - 7]. Finally, there is speech materials read aloud under laboratory conditions. evidence of unit-periphery effects, such that moras in Duration measurements were made on the basis of word-final, phrase-final and utterance-final position are simultaneous waveform and wideband spectrogram longer than moras earlier in the same word, phrase or displays on a standard digital signal processing package utterance [8, 9]. These findings make it clear that, however (xwaves). duration is regulated in Japanese, it is not simply a matter of mora isochrony. Materials. The stimuli were three sets of unaccented CVCVCVCV Japanese surnames. Each set contained 16 names, which included /ma/, /ka/ or /na/ as one of the four CV sequences. For example, the set including /ma/ had 4 12)=2.07, p<.05]. For all sets, there was also a significant names starting with /ma/, 4 names with /ma/ as the second main effect for mora position (/ma/ [F(1, 3)=33.12, p<.001]; CV sequence, and so on. The /ma/ set is shown in Table 1: /ka/ [F(1, 3)=8.11, p<.001]; /na/ [F(1, 3)=37.8, p<.001]). The durations of moras in different positions are given in Figure 2. Bonferroni post-hoc analyses show that for the matsumoto masuzawa matsuzaka matsuzawa /ma/ set, the fourth mora was longer than all the others, and shimakura yamamoto tamamura komazawa the first and second mora were longer than the third. For the fujimaki kitamachi motomaki sakamaki /ka/ set, the first and fourth moras were longer than the nagashima nakajima kawashima kageyama second. For the /na/ set, the fourth mora was longer than the Table 1: Stimuli for Experiment 1 (the /ma/ set) rest, and the second mora was longer than the third. 160 Following the standard analysis of Japanese phonology that a CV syllable with a short vowel is monomoraic and the 150 foot is bimoraic, each stimulus word was taken to be bipedal, with the structure illustrated in Figure 1. Thus, the 140 second and the (word-final) fourth moras are foot-final. s n a e M Word l 130 a n i g r Ft Ft a M ka 120 d σ σ σ σ e t a ma µ µ µ µ m i t s 110 na E ya ma mo to 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 Figure 1: Positions of moras POSITION Subjects. Subjects were 10 native speakers of Japanese Figure 2: Mora duration in four different positions (ms) from the greater Tokyo area. At the time of the study, they were enrolled in a short-term English program in A targeted comparison was made between the duration of Edinburgh, UK. All 10 subjects recorded the /ma/ and /ka/ /na/ in the name minakami and that in tominaka. It was stimuli sets, but only 5 recorded the /na/ set. predicted that the mora /na/, which is flanked by the moras /mi/ and /ka/ in both names, would be longer in Recording procedure. The stimulus surnames were (mina)(kami), in which it occupies a foot-final position, randomized and presented in a list. Subjects were asked to than in (tomi)(naka), where it lies in a foot-initial position. read each name at a normal rate in the carrier sentence Kare A repeated measures t-test using the mean duration of the no namae wa ____ desu (‘His name is ____’). Each two repetitions made by each speaker detected no stimulus was read 3 times. significant difference in the duration of /na/ between the two words [t(4)=0.36, n.s.]. Measurement and analysis. Measurements were made for the first two renditions of each stimulus word that were 2.3 Discussion produced without hesitation or extraneous noise. This yielded 800 tokens per speaker. Mora duration was The results present no obvious support for the hypothesis measured as the duration between the closure of the that position-in-foot has a systematic effect on mora consonant and the closure of the following consonant. The duration. If foot-final moras were longer than foot-initial, two measurements were then averaged to give the mean we would expect to find a pattern of durations like the one duration of the speaker’s production of each stimulus word. we see for the /na/ set, with the second and fourth moras longer than the first and third. However, this pattern of 2.2. Results durations is lacking for the other two sets, conspicuously so in the case of the /ka/ set. Since the /ma/ and /ka/ sets are A three-way ANOVA with fixed factors of speaker, mora based on 10 speakers and the /na/ set only on 5, the obvious position and segment type was conducted for the /ma/ and conclusion is that we have not found what we were looking /ka/ stimulus sets. A significant two-way interaction was for. This conclusion is strengthened by the result of the found between position and segment type [F(2, 6)=12.03, p paired comparison of /na/ in minakami and tominaka. <.001], and between position and speaker [F(2, 13)=3.85, p<.001. In order to analyze the effects of mora position for On the other hand, the results clearly point to the existence each segment type, a two-way ANOVA with fixed factors of a word-final lengthening effect. This effect is of speakers and mora position was performed separately for statistically robust for the /ma/ and /na/ sets.