Two experiments were conducted to examine whether a moraic nasal could occur word-initially in Japanese, manipulating duration of an onset nasal. In Experiment I, the duration of word-initial nasals, / and /m/, in two CVCV nonwords were prolonged up to 300% in steps of one tenth of the original duration. 10 Japanese college students were presented with the stimuli and asked to write them in Roman letters. The results showed that both nasals, irrespective of place of articulation, were recognized as N+n and N+m respectively when the word-initial nasal exceeded 1.8 times longer than the original duration. In Experiment II, the word-initial CV syllable in two non words, /kaNnaka/ and /KaNmaka/, was spliced off, leaving a long word-initial nasal and the nasal duration (both N+n and N+m) was decreased up to 10% in steps of one tenth of the original duration. 10 Japanese college students were presented with them to dictate in Roman letters. The results showed that both nasals were recognized as N+n and N+m respectively as long as a certain duration was maintained. The results of the two experiments suggest that a word-initial nasal, just like a word-medial nasal, can be recognized as moraic as long as it achieves a certain duration in Japanese.
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