Distribution of Closure Voicing Ratio in the Murayama Dialect of Yamagata Japanese

Abstract

This paper reports that phonetic realization of voiced geminates in the Murayama dialect of Yamagata Japanese. Whether closure voicing ratio is long or not in voiced geminates in Tohoku dialects is controversial. This paper analyzes the data which were taken from elicitation from four native speakers, and demonstrates that both long and short closure voicing ratio exist in the dialect. Moreover, the result demonstrates that closure voicing ratio of underlying voiced geminate is longer than that of derived one for one speaker. Our results imply the necessarity that more comprehensive research on voicing in Tohoku dialects is needed.