Discrimination Boundary Between the Single and Geminate Consonants: A Crosslinguistic Study

Abstract

In this chapter, the nasal quantity contrast examined in previous experiments was investigated crosslinguistically: Finnish speakers were asked to distinguish Japanese single and geminate nasal contrasts (experiment 5), and Japanese speakers were asked to distinguish Finnish single and geminate nasal contrasts (experiment 6). The research questions are:

• Q1. Do Finnish speakers perceive Japanese nasal quantity contrast as intended? In other words, when Japanese speakers intended to produce /n/, would it be perceived as such by Finnish speakers? What about /nn/?

• Q2. Do Japanese speakers perceive Finnish nasal quantity contrast as intended? In other words, when Finnish speakers intended to produce /n/, would it be perceived as such by Japanese speakers? What about /nn/?