Acoustic and Kinematic Correlates of Heterosyllabicity in Different Phonological Contexts

We investigate the temporal and kinematic properties of consonant gemination and heterosyllabic clusters as opposed to singletons and tautosyllabic clusters in Italian. The data show that the singleton versus geminate contrast is conveyed by specific kinematic properties in addition to systematic durational differences in both the consonantal and vocalic intervals; by contrast, tautosyllabic and heterosyllabic clusters differ significantly for the duration of the consonantal interval but do not vary systematically with respect to the vocalic interval and cannot be consistently differentiated at the kinematic level. We conclude that systematic variations in acoustic vowel duration and the kinematics of tongue tip gestures represent the phonetic correlates of the segmental phonological contrast between short and long consonants, rather than of syllable structure. Data are only partly consistent with the predictions of both moraic and gesture-based models of the syllable about the effects of syllable structure on speech production dynamics and call for a more gradient view of syllabification.

Non-durational acoustic correlates of word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay: The potential roles of amplitude and f0

This study reports on non-durational acoustic correlates of typologically rare word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay (KM) by focusing on two acoustic parameters – amplitude and f0. Given the unusual characteristics of the word-initial consonant contrast and its potential maintenance in domain-initial environments, this study sets to examine the extent to which amplitude and f0 can potentially characterise such a contrast in KM in addition to the cross-linguistically established acoustic correlate of closure duration. The production data involved elicited materials from sixteen KM native speakers. RMS and f0 values were measured at the start of the vowel following stops and sonorants produced in isolation (i.e. utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (i.e. utterance-medial position). Results indicate that the consonant contrast is reflected in systematic differences in (i) vowel onset amplitude and f0 following the target consonant and (ii) the ratios of amplitude and f0 across two syllables of disyllabic words. There are also effects of utterance position, manner of articulation and voicing type on the magnitude of contrast between singletons and geminates with utterance-initial voiceless stops generally showing the greatest magnitude difference. The conclusion is drawn that the KM word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast can be associated with a set of acoustic parameters alongside closure duration.

A prosodic account of consonant gemination in Japanese loanwords

This chapter is a study of the distribution of geminate consonants in Japanese loanwords, which differs in significant ways from their distribution in native words. Both prosodic markedness and faithfulness to the source word plays a central role. Sometimes, such as in loanwords from Italian, geminates are preserved as such. But usually, as in loanwords from English, gemination is a way of preserving word-final coda-hood in the source word. Whether or not a given consonant is geminated depends on a host of complex segmental factors that are the result of a whole family of anti-gemination constraints, ranked at different points within the constraint hierarchy of an optimality-theoretic grammar. Finally, significant higher-level prosodic factors that are part of the native system are at work, and explain many details of the gemination pattern that are rooted neither in faithfulness to the source word nor in segmental features.

A templatic approach to gemination in the imperfective of Tashlhiyt Berber.pdf

Tashlhiyt Berber uses, among other processes, gemination to form the imperfective. Most accounts of this phenomenon make reference to syllabic or prosodic structure. In this paper, I diverge from this trend, claiming that imperfective gemination is better analyzed as a templatic-based phenomenon resulting from morphological activity at the skeletal tier. I will argue for the use in the imperfective of a fixed-shape template over which consonant gemination is realized. Moreover, I will show that tri-, bi- and monoconsonantal verbs share the same template. The surface irregularity that bi- and monoconsonantal verbs display is viewed as the consequence of the identification of templatic positions.