The consonantal realisation of the mora nasal in Osaka Japanese

Summary, in English

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 contexts

• Author: Mechtild Tronnier
• Department/s: Phonetics
• Publishing year: 1996
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Working Papers, Lund University, Dept. of Linguistics
• Volume: 45
• Full text: - 443 kB; Download statistics
• Links: http://www.ling.lu.se/disseminations/pdf/45/Tronnier.pdf
• Document type: Working paper
• Topic: General Language Studies and Linguistics
• Status: Published