Acoustical and perceptual study of gemination in Italian stops

On the basis of theoretical considerations and results from acoustic and perceptual analyses, it is hypothesized that closure duration is the primary cue for gemination in Italian. Results of an acoustic analysis of a large number of single and geminate Italian utterances show two acoustic correlates of gemination: the length of the closure and the length of the vowel preceding the consonant. Other acoustic parameters were not systematically related to gemination. These results were validated perceptually. At the perceptual level, the above cues were used by the listeners in the geminate/nongeminate discrimination; however, closure duration played a major role. Moreover, it was found that the significant lengthening of consonant was only partially compensated by the shortening of the previous vowel and by a small lengthening of the geminate utterance with respect to the nongeminate one. This result suggests that speakers follow a sort of timing (rhythm) which is fixed in duration and depends on the number of syllables in the word: words with equal numbers of syllables do not change in utterance length, an elongated segment being partly compensated by the shortening of another. This process seems to be applied also perceptually suggesting that the timing (rhythm) of a language is also an auditory attitude.