japanese loanword devoicing revisited: a rating study

in japanese loanword phonology, geminates optionally devoice when there is another voiced obstruent within the same stem, i.e., geminates may optionally devoice when they violate ocp(voice). this devoicing of ocp-violating geminates has received much attention in the recent phonological literature. however, the debates centering around this phenomenon have relied primarily on intuition-based data, and no systematic judgment experiments have been performed. this paper fills that gap. the experiment reported in this paper shows that japanese speakers do find devoicing of geminates natural when there is another voiced stop within the same word, i.e., when the geminates violate ocp(voice).