Durational properties of emphatically lengthened 1 consonants in Japanese

Languages can make use of phonetic duration to signal two kinds of meanings. The first 9 is a lexical, phonological contrast. For example, in Japanese [kata] with a short [t] means 10 ‘frame’ and [katta] with a long [tt] means ‘bought’. This sort of contrast is usually limited 11 to a binary distinction, and its phonetic properties have been well studied for many diverse 12 languages. The other use of phonetic duration is to express pragmatic emphasis. Speakers of 13 some languages can use lengthening to express emphasis, as in the English example Thank 14 you sooooooo much. This lengthening can employ multiple degrees of duration, beyond 15 the more standard binary contrast. This second use of duration has been understudied, and 16 this paper attempts to fill that gap. To that end, this paper reports the first experimental 17 documentation of the consonant lengthening pattern in Japanese, which expresses pragmatic 18 emphasis. The results show that at least some speakers show six levels of durational 19 distinctions, while other speakers show less clear-cut distinctions among different levels 20 of emphatically lengthened consonants. Nevertheless, all but one speaker showed a linear 21 correlation between duration and level of emphasis. 22