Lexical quantity in Japanese and Finnish

Despite the fact that Finnish and Japanese differ from each other typologically, remarkable similarities between them can be heard. The most obvious common phonetic feature may be the linguistically distinctive quantity in both vowels and consonants. In the present study I investigated the similarities and differences of lexical quantity in Finnish and Japanese. So far, no large systematic phonetic comparative study on these two languages exists. As background, I discuss the sound systems of each language, including segments, phonotactics, syllable structures, as well as rhythm and timing issues, all being closely related to quantity. The major experiments were concentrated on production and perception of quantity: (1) the segmental, syllabic and word durational ratios of bisyllabic nonsense words with /CV(V)C(C)V(V)/ structure (2-5 moraic words) were measured and (2) using synthetic speech stimuli, the perceptual boundary ranges in equivalent structures were compared and correlated with three fundamental frequency and intensity patterns in order to observe their influence on quantity perception. In addition, I conducted perception tests on the Finnish /(C)VnC(C)V/ structure with the Japanese speakers, and compared the durational ratios of the nasal consonant in the /CV-n/N-C(C)V/ structure both in isolation and a sentence. I also discuss the durations of /h/ in Japanese and the Finnish /hV/ and /CV1hCV2/ structures. In each experiment, the syllable concept was used for both languages, but the ‘linearity’ or ‘isochronicity’ based on the Japanese mora hypothesis was also taken into consideration. In Chapter 3, utilising the structure /CV(V)C(C)V(V)/, the results showed that (1) the segmental ratios were smaller in Finnish, and the durational variations were relatively narrower and more stable in Finnish than in Japanese; (2) in both languages, the segmental durations depended not only on the syllable structure but also on the syllable position in the word; (3) both languages showed similar stepwise patterns in increasing ratios, but Japanese showed greater linearity (isochronicity), according to the number of syllables/morae, regardless of the number of phonemes, while Finnish showed a greater dependence on the number of phonemes within the comparable syllable structure; (4) the segmental durational ratios within the word showed negligible differences between the languages. In Chapter 4, I used the short/long vowels/consonants in /CV(V)C(C)V(V)/ and created stimuli with 8 types of syllable structure and variable prosodic patterns. The results revealed that (1) the Japanese perceptual boundary ranges were shorter in duration, but the Finnish counterparts were more stable in differentiating between short/long segments; (2) the Finnish reached the minimum durational point of long vowels and consonants in less time than the Japanese, but the Finnish had wider prosodically conditional variations than the Japanese; (3) the word structural differences had more effect than the prosodic conditional differences in differentiating short segments from long segments in both Finnish and Japanese. In Chapter 5, the findings were that (1) the Japanese mostly perceived the Finnish /CVnC(C)V/ as trimoraic words in both listening and transliteration; (2) the durations of /n/ were much shorter in the /CVnCCV/ structure than in /CVnCV/ in Finnish, and (3) the durational patterns showed similarities in /CV-n/N-CV/ for both Finnish and Japanese. In Chapter 6, /h/ was defined as an approximant, not as a fricative. The duration of the Japanese /h/ was longer than in Finnish, but the durations of /h + V/ were similar in both languages. The Finnish /CV-h-CV/ did not show an isochronic durational pattern.

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