Effects of mora phonemes on Japanese word accent was analyzed statistically, utilizing a set of about 124,000 frequently used common nouns derived from the Japanese Word Dictionary edited by EDR (the Japan Electronic Dictionary Research Institute, Ltd., Japan). In this analysis, Japanese syllable was defined as preceding consonant (+semi-vowel) +following vowel, accompanied / not accompanied by...

One of the major findings of the recent linguistic research on Japanese is that the syllable plays a pivotal role in a variety of phonological and morphological phenomena in the mora-based prosodic system of this language. This paper attempts to reinforce this argument by proposing a significant generalization of Japanese accentuation in terms of ‘syllable weight’, an idea that each syllable ha...

This study reports research into the development of perception of special mora categories by Korean learners of Japanese as a second language. First, a test which measured boundary width and the boundary point of distinction between singletons and special mora was used to establish participants’ categorical perception across four levels of proficiency. Then a two year longitudinal study followe...

[Purpose] This study verified the changes in muscle activities and grasping power during maximal isometric exercise of the forearm and masseter muscle with and without a mandibular orthopedic repositioning appliance (MORA). It also offers basic data for defining the correlation of function of hand with mouth. [Methods] EMG was used to measure masticatory muscle, flexor bundle and extensor bundl...

Kamesh Krishnamurthy, ∗ Ann M. Hermundstad, ∗ Thierry Mora, Aleksandra M. Walczak, and Vijay Balasubramanian † David Rittenhouse and Richards Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA 20147, USA Laboratoire de physique statistique, UMR8550, CNRS, UPMC and École Normale Supérieure...

In the Alabama language an imperfective aspect can be formed by geminating the onset consonant or lengthening the vowel of the penultimate syllable of a word. The imperfective morpheme consists of a single mora (with a linked high tone), and I demonstrate that whether gemination or lengthening takes place follows directly from a ranking of relevant constraints. The current optimality analysis d...

An HMM-based method of detecting prosodic word boundaries was developed for Japanese continuous speech and was successfully integrated into a mora-basis continuous speech recognition system with two stages operating without and with prosodic information. The method is based on modeling the fundamental frequency (F0) contour of input speech as transitions of mora-unit F0 contours and operates af...

Various studies have investigated the relationship between the mandibular position and its affect on human performance characteristics. To maintain the jaw in an optimal position Mandibular Orthopedic Repositioning Appliances (MORA) have been produced. A protective mouthguard is an appliance worn in the mouth which helps prevent injuries to the teeth, lips, cheeks, tongue, and jaw as a result o...

The focus of this paper is on two types of shortening observed in recent Japanese loanwords and on the trochaic shortening in Fijian. I will argue that the Japanese shortenings take place when a metrically unstable binary foot (extrametrical foot) becomes a stray mora so as to be accommodated into one of the two proposed surface ternary foot structures whereas Fijian Trochaic Shortening occurs ...

Speech rhythm in Japanese is based around a unit of timing known as the mora. In this study, the Haiku, a Japanese poetic form, is used to help Vietnamese learners of Japanese improve their speech rhythm or, more specifically, their mora-timing, by using bior quadric-mora-timing as a pedagogic strategy. Following instruction, participants in the study showed improvement in the uniformity of the...