Tongue movement kinematics in long and short Japanese consonants.

This paper examines tongue movements in stop and fricative consonants where the duration of the oral closure/constriction for the consonant is varied for linguistic purposes. Native speakers of Japanese served as subjects. The linguistic material consisted of Japanese word pairs that only differed in the duration of the lingual consonant, which was either long or short. Recordings were made of tongue movements using a magnetometer system. Results show a robust difference in closure duration between the long and short consonants. Overall, the path of the tongue movement during the consonant was longer for the long than for the short consonant. All speakers decreased the speed of the tongue movement during the long consonant. These adjustments in tongue movements were most likely made to maintain the contact between the tongue and the palate for the closure and constriction.