Kagoshima Japanese (KJ), known as a syllable-timed dialect, exhibits distinct control of speech timing compared to mora-timed dialects, including Standard Tokyo Japanese (TJ). Recent studies have reported that KJ speakers today are bilingual and, as a consequence of dialect contact, are able to switch between KJ and TJ, especially in accentual patterns. The current study examines whether such code-switching also affects the control of speech timing in geminate consonants. A production experiment was conducted with 21 native speakers of KJ. To elicit speech production in both KJ and TJ, two types of carrier sentences were prepared. Participants were asked to produce three minimal pairs differing in the presence or absence of a geminate consonant (e.g., Pepe versus Peppe), each repeated 10 times in both types of carrier sentences. The results showed no significant differences in the durational control of geminate consonants between the two dialects, although accent patterns differed depending on which dialect was being used. This suggests that code-switching between dialects is more likely to occur in accentual patterns than in the control of speech timing.
Shonosuke Koya (Wed,) studied this question.