Articulation of geminate obstruents in the Ikema dialect of Miyako Ryukyuan: A real-time MRI analysis

The Ikema dialect of Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan, has typologically rare word-initial and voiced geminate obstruents (e.g. /vva/ ‘you’, /ffa/ ‘child’, /tta/ ‘tongue’, /badda/ ‘side’). These sounds are marked two ways: Voicing through is hard to produce initial voiceless plosives seem be difficult perceive. This study investigated real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rt-MRI) examine the articulatory settings underlying contrasts between singleton obstruents. Our analyses male speakers’ utterances showed following five characteristics: (i) have longer duration constrictions regardless position consonant types; (ii) alveolar plosive /dd/ articulated with a larger linguopalatal contact than its counterpart but such difference depends on speaker for pair /tt/–/t/ fricative pairs /ss/–/s/ /zz/–/z/; (iii) /t/ /tt/ greater degree their counterparts /d/ /dd/, respectively, fricatives show inter-speaker variation; (iv) do not any systematic (midsagittal) geminates singletons, or consonants; (v) accompanied by pharyngeal expansion both speakers lowering larynx one speaker, never velum. We also observed that tend realize as affricates, which we interpret part adjustments (full) voicing phonologically fricatives.