Consonant gemination in Italian: The nasal and liquid case

Abstract

All Italian consonants affected by gemination, that is affricates, fricatives, liquids, nasals, and stops, were analyzed within a project named GEMMA that lasted over a span of about 25 years. Results of the analysis on stops, as published in (Esposito, A., and Di Benedetto, M. G. (1999). “Acoustic and Perceptual Study of Gemination in Italian Stops,” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, ASA, Vol. 30, pp. 175-185) showed that the main acoustic cue to gemination in Italian was closure duration, while frequency and energy domain parameters were not significantly affected by gemination. This paper - the first of a set of two covering all remaining consonants - addresses nasals and liquids; its companion paper addresses affricates and fricatives. Results on nasals and liquids confirm the findings on stops, in particular that the primary acoustic cue to gemination in Italian is durational in nature and corresponds to a lengthened consonant duration. Results also show an inverse correlation between consonant and pre-consonant vowel durations which is, however, also present when considering singleton vs. geminate word sets separately, indicating a sort of duration compensation between these segments to eventually preserve rhythmical structures; this inverse correlation is reinforced when considering singleton and geminate sets combined. Classification tests of singleton vs. geminate consonants show that, for both nasals and liquids, best classification scores are obtained when consonant duration is used as a classification parameter. Although slightly less performing, the ratio between consonant and pre-consonant vowel durations is also a potential good candidate for automatic classification of geminate vs singleton nasals and liquids in Italian.