Japanese vowel devoicing modulates perceptual epenthesis

This study investigates a relationship between perceptual epenthesis and vowel devoicing in Japanese. Across two experiments, epenthetic vowels are compared in environments where devoicing and deletion occur. In Experiment 1, participants assign illicit /VCCV/ and /VCVC/ tokens to /VCuCV/ and /VCVCu/ categories and judge how well tokens fit to the allocated category. In Experiment 2, participants discriminate between phonotactically illicit and licit tokens in AXB tests. The results show that illicit tokens are a better match to—and more difficult to discriminate from—their perceptually nearest legal counterpart when the target vowels are deleted than when they are merely devoiced