On the phonetics of Cypriot‐Greek geminate plosives

Abstract

This research provides evidence toward the existence of geminates in Cypriot Greek (hereinafter, CyG). In the existing literature it is reported that the sole or primary cue to gemination, across languages, is closure duration. This phonetic study verifies that this cross‐linguistic phonetic cue is also present in CyG. Toward this end, statistical analyses evidence highly significant durational differences in the voice onset time (VOT) of geminates versus singletons in CyG [F(164)=p<0.0001]. In fact it can safely be argued that VOT is the primary cue to gemination when it comes to CyG geminate plosives. This study contradicts previous claims [Arvaniti and Tserdanelis, 562 (2000); Arvaniti, 602 (1999b)] that argue closure duration to be the primary cue to gemination for CyG geminate stops. Furthermore, durational differences amongst the three voiceless plosives for both VOT and closure duration were highly evident. To the researchers’ knowledge this is the first study on CyG stops that considers durational differences with respect to the place of articulation, not only for singletons but also for geminates. Preliminary statistical analysis suggests an effect of the vowel following the target segment, a fact that could facilitate in resolving the phonological representation of utterance initial geminates.