The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants

Haruo Kubozono completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1988. He taught phonetics and phonology at Nanzan University, Osaka University of Foreign Studies, and Kobe University before moving to the National Institute for Japanese Languages and Linguistics as Professor/Director in 2010. His research interests range from speech disfluencies to speech prosody and its interfaces with syntax and information structure. He recently edited The Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology (2015, De Gruyter Mouton) as well as special issues on pitch accent and geminate consonants in Lingua (2012) and Journal of East Asian Linguistics (2013), respectively.

• PART I: PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION OF GEMINATE CONSONANTS; PART II: PHONOLOGY OF GEMINATE CONSONANTS

The book is excellent... It is important reading for anyone who works on the phonology of geminates, but its appeal is far wider than that might suggest. Because of the thorny empirical and theoretical issues raised by length contrasts, in particular concerning the relationship between phonetic properties and abstract phonological ones, this book will be interesting to anyone concerned with the boundary areas between phonetics and phonology.