Lexical and syntactic gemination in Italian consonants-Does a geminate Italian consonant consist of a repeated or a strengthened consonant?

Maria-Gabriella Di Benedetto,Javier Arango,Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel,Ian Chan,Sara Budoni,Luca De Nardis,Alec Decaprio

doi:10.1121/10.0004987

Abstract

Two types of consonant gemination characterize Italian: lexical and syntactic. Italian lexical gemination is contrastive, so that two words may differ by only one geminated consonant. In contrast, syntactic gemination occurs across word boundaries and affects the initial consonant of a word in specific contexts, such as the presence of a monosyllabic morpheme before the word. This study investigates the acoustic correlates of Italian lexical and syntactic gemination, asking if the correlates for the two types are similar in the case of stop consonants. Results confirmed previous studies showing that duration is a prominent gemination cue, with a lengthened consonant closure and a shortened pre-consonant vowel for both types. Results also revealed the presence, in about 10%-12% of instances, of a double stop-release burst, providing strong support for the biphonematic nature of Italian geminated stop consonants. Moreover, the timing of these bursts suggests a different planning process for lexical vs syntactic geminates. The second burst, when present, is accommodated within the closure interval in syntactic geminates, while lexical geminates are lengthened by the extra burst. This suggests that syntactic gemination occurs during a post-lexical phase of production planning, after timing has already been established.

Highlights

Consonant gemination is the process by which a consonant is produced, as the word “gemination” hints, as “doubled,” that is, as two consecutive occurrences of the same phoneme, or, under a different interpretation, as a stronger, longer, or more intense consonant
This study investigates the acoustic correlates of Italian lexical and syntactic gemination, asking if the correlates for the two types are similar in the case of stop consonants
As a matter of fact, most Italian consonants can be geminated in intervocalic position, with the exception of a few such as /z/, different experts of Italian phonology hold contrasting views regarding a particular subset of five consonants /ts, dz, S, fi, k/ [Porru (1939) vs Muljacic (1972)]

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Consonant gemination is the process by which a consonant is produced, as the word “gemination” hints, as “doubled,” that is, as two consecutive occurrences of the same phoneme, or, under a different interpretation, as a stronger, longer, or more intense consonant. It should be noted that in some dialects of southern and central Italy, consonants may be geminated in word initial position, independently of syntactic gemination (Bertinetto and Loporcaro, 1999; Bonucci, 2011), but in this case, the effect is not contrastive and seems to be more of a phenomenon involving junction and adjustment between consonants occurring at word boundaries In this instantiation, gemination seems to resemble the typical phenomenon of liaison in French, which is known to occur more often with words that co-occur frequently but does not prove, when realized, to favor lexical recognition of linked words (Fougeron et al, 2001).

EXPERIMENTATION

ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS

Findings

OF RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS