Abstract
Length is a contrastive aspect in the Japanese language, and occurs both in consonantal and in vowel segments - differentiating, e.g., /kita/, "arrived", "came" from /kit:a/, "cut", "sliced" and opposing /meSi/, "food" and /me:Si/, "business card". Given the importance of phonetic and phonological categories development for the effective use of a language, the present study seeks to broad…