Lexical quantity in Japanese and Finnish

要旨

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 /C1V1(V1)C1(C1)V1(V1) / 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)VnC1(C1)V / structure with the Japanese speakers, and compared the

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