It ia an abrupt suspension of articulatory movements. Traditionally, Japanese linguists analyze this voiceless obstruent as consisting of a phoneme. Moraic obstruent is frequent in Japanese, for example, [iqta] in pairs like ita (was) vs. iqta (went). It is claimed that the word having a moraic obstruent have stronger closure than their short counterparts, with the articulators exerting more pressure on each other. We realized that there was a significant difference in a mora obstruent by the following consonants, Unvoiced Plosive or Unvoiced Fricative in Figure 5.6. Its duration follows the manner of articulation of following consonants, and preceding vowels did not effect the duration.
