Geminates

Thesis investigates the synchronic and diachronic identity of the Anatolian VC-CV (fortis) and V-CV (lenis) stops, and their implications for Proto-Indo-European phonology and subgrouping. Through an examination of the origins and use of Hittite cuneiform, combined with phonological evidence, it is concluded that the underlying contrast must be length. A typological survey of geminate evolution and Proto-Anatolian phonology concludes that this contrast cannot emerge from a voicing contrast, and must be original. Therefore the Nuclear-Proto-Indo-European *t~*d~*dh contrast is an innovation, and a *t:~*t~*? system must be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. This development is good evidence for the Indo-Hittite Hypothesis.

Standard Modern Greek (SMG) and Cypriot Greek (CG), two language varieties used by Greek Cypriots living in Cyprus, differ in their plosive inventories, as CG includes voiceless geminate plosives which are absent in SMG. Words containing geminate plosives may be divided into two groups; in one, replacing a geminate plosive with a singleton plosive changes the meaning of the word, whereas in the other group replacing a geminate with a singleton does not cause any change to the word’s literal meaning. Matched-guise technique (MGT) tests carried out as a part of this study suggest that substituting a singleton plosive [t] with a geminate [t:h] tends to alter the social characteristics attributed to the speaker uttering words containing the target sounds.
Forced-choice perceptual tests were carried out with Greek Cypriot listeners in three conditions, (1) in the presence of the Greek flag (symbolising the Greek culture and/or region), (2) in the presence of the Cypriot flag (symbolising the Cypriot culture and/or region), and (3) in the absence of the two flags. The results indicate that the perception of the boundary between singleton and geminate plosives tends to be affected by several variables such as the length of the plosive embedded in the test stimuli, the presence of the flags, the gender of the listeners and the way listeners produced singleton and geminate plosives themselves. Socio-economic background and cultural affiliation of the listeners, which were assumed to be indicators of the amount of exposure to singleton plosives in the discussed context, were also among the variables affecting the perception of the boundary.
The results of this study seem to add evidence to some of the assumptions of exemplar theory relating to the importance of amount of exposure to a sound category, the role of acoustic properties of stored exemplars, and processing of indexical information in speech perception. Also, the results of the study appear to suggest that factors such as listeners’ linguistic insecurity or listeners’ satisfaction with their social position might also have an effect on the way they process speech by increasing or decreasing their sensitivity to acoustic properties of sounds. It is suggested that the role of listeners’ linguistic insecurity and the role of their satisfaction with social position in increasing and decreasing sensitivity to phonetic cues should be further investigated in future research and possibly incorporated into models of speech perception.

The study investigates rearticulated affricate geminates in Polish. Polish has voiceless affricates with three different places of articulation, all of which undergo gemination. Twenty-three native speakers of Polish produced words with intervocalic affricate geminates in two sentence positions. Rearticulation occurred in 76.5% of the productions. Durational measurements revealed that the first affricate had a significantly longer closure phase and a shorter frication release than the rearticulated affricate. The frication release in the second consonant tended to have higher maximum and mean intensity, however the difference was not significant. These results are interpreted to reflect bidirectional alignment of the two articulations to two different syllables.

Edge geminates (EGs) are of a different nature than intervocalic geminates. They are rarer and structurally different; they emerge – at least superficially – as tautosyllabic within an onset (word-initial geminate) or coda (word-final geminate), as opposed to the typically heterosyllabic intervocalic geminates. In this paper, we present an initial typology of the weight properties of EGs and make observations that may predict whether an EG patterns as heavy or light. For the latter part, we consider the relationship between EGs and edge consonant clusters in the languages under consideration and investigate the existence of correlations. An initial finding suggests that if EGs are unique in a language, i.e. the language possesses no edge clusters, then the geminate is more likely to pattern as moraic (cf. Trukese and Pattani Malay in initial position and Hadhrami Arabic finally). Additionally, weightless EGs seem to co-occur with weightless clusters at the same edge. Weight asymmetries between initial and final geminates in the same language are also attested. We provide tentative thoughts as to why the typology is shaped the way it is.

Standard Modern Greek (SMG) and Cypriot Greek (CG), two language varieties used by Greek Cypriots living in Cyprus, differ in their plosive inventories, as CG includes voiceless geminate plosives which are absent in SMG. Words containing geminate plosives may be divided into two groups; in one, replacing a geminate plosive with a singleton plosive changes the meaning of the word, whereas in the other group replacing a geminate with a singleton does not cause any change to the word’s literal meaning. Matched-guise technique (MGT) tests carried out as a part of this study suggest that substituting a singleton plosive [t] with a geminate [t:h] tends to alter the social characteristics attributed to the speaker uttering words containing the target sounds. Forced-choice perceptual tests were carried out with Greek Cypriot listeners in three conditions, (1) in the presence of the Greek flag (symbolising the Greek culture and/or region), (2) in the presence of the Cypriot flag (symbolising...

Introduction Pohnpeian (ISO639-3 pon) is a phonetically understudied Oceanic language spoken by about 34,000 people in the Federated States of Micronesia, and 12,000 in the United States. Rehg & Sohl (1981) claim that Pohnpeian has a typologically uncommon geminate/singleton contrast in word initial, medial, and final positions. We explored the acoustic differences between geminates and singletons by measuring the total segment durations .

This study investigates the durational cues of geminates and their singleton counterparts in Rural Jordanian Arabic (RJA), comparing word-medial and word final positions in terms of surrounding vowels, voicing, pharyngealization, manner and place of articulation. We build on work investigating geminates by Khattab 2007; Khattab and Al-Tamimi 2009; Abu-Abbas et al. 2011; Khattab and Al-Tamimi 2014. Unlike these authors, however, who focus on word-medial geminates, the present study investigates acoustic correlates of both word-medial and word-final germination. Our research is based on word list data comprising 204 words uttered by six native speakers of RJA, recorded and acoustically analyzed in Praat (version 5.4.04) for a total of 1224 words. Duration of the targeted geminate and singleton consonants as well as that of the preceding and following vowel was measured. Each consonant was also coded for a number of independent variables including word position, place and manner of articulation, voicing, pharyngealization, following vowel, preceding vowel, and speaker gender. The results of this study yield three particularly interesting findings which are the focus of this talk. First, we found that the proportional differences between geminates and singletons based on word position are significantly different: in final position, we see a duration ratio of 1.4:1 of the geminate as compared to the singleton, whereas in medial position we see a ratio of 2.1:1, an observation that has not been reported. In RJA, word-final gemination can be argued to be disappearing, with speakers not always able to make the distinction between minimal pairs. Second, we found that all vowels in the geminate context are significantly longer for females than for males, contra Khattab & Al-Tamimi (2008), while gender plays no role when it comes to the consonant duration in the geminate context. Third, we found that short vowels in the geminate context are significantly shorter than those in singleton context while long vowels in geminate context are significantly longer than those in singleton context. These findings for RJA are contrary to Khattab & Al-Tamimi (2008) for Lebanese Arabic, where post-geminate vowels were unaffected by the previous consonant. We further discuss how our findings support others which find that duration plays an important role in phonetic cues to gemination (Lahiri & Hankamer 1988, Khattab & Al-Tamimi 2008), and add to evidence of no phonological compensatory lengthening or shortening in geminate contexts (Khattab & Al-Tamimi 2008).

Oromo, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia and Kenya, is a language characterized by particularly complex morphophonology. It provides extremely interesting data for linguistic research on the nature of long vowels and geminate consonants, because long sequences are very common and have a high functional load. The focus of this study is to provide a systematic description and analysis of long sequences, with particular reference to the grammatical functioning of the length parameter. The findings prove that there is a length morphological unit that is phonologically interpreted as a copying process, it can also be asserted that the language treats vowel and consonant length in a systematic way. The analysis supports the autosegmental interpretation of long segments as single units in the quality tier and as two units in the quantity tier. However, some data contradict the universal and obligatory nature of this representation in identical segments belonging to different morphemes, because distinctions between many-to-one and one-to-one associations are necessary to account for the facts of particular languages. This dissertation works within the theory of phonological weight, because it permits the autosegmental expression of significant differences between the segments according to their initial and final quantity as well as to the way in which the quality tier associates with the quantity tier.

Bevezetés A magyar nyelvben a szingleton-gemináta oppozíció, azaz a nyelvileg rövid és hosszú mássalhangzók oppozíciója (ezeket a fogalompárokat a tanulmányban szinonimaként használjuk, az utóbbit szigorúan megkülön-böztetve a fizikai vagy fonetikai, ms-ban mérhető időtartamtól) fonológiai, azaz jelalakmegkülönböztető szerepű szembenállás. Ez azt jelenti, hogy léteznek a magyarban olyan minimális párok, amelyekben a jelentéssel bíró hangalakok közötti különbséget kizárólag a mássalhangzó hosszúsága adja, pl. ép ~ épp. Az elméletibb irányultságú nyelvleírások szerint a magyar mássalhangzórendszerben a szingleton-gemináta mássalhangzó-oppozíció legfőbb akusztikus kulcsa az időtartam, azaz az ejtés, hangoztatás tartama. Emellett hagyományosan azt is feltételezik, hogy gemináták csak bizonyos pozíciókban, csak intervokálisan, illetve megnyilatkozás végén (magán-hangzó után és szünet előtt) fordulhatnak elő a magyarban-nem állhatnak például szó elején, illetve nem fordulnak elő egy továb...

The study investigates rearticulated affricate geminates in Polish. Polish has voiceless affricates with three different places of articulation, all of which undergo gemination. Twenty-three native speakers of Polish produced words with intervocalic affricate geminates in two sentence positions. Rearticulation occurred in 76.5% of the productions. Durational measurements revealed that the first affricate had a significantly longer closure phase and a shorter frication release than the rearticulated affricate. The frication release in the second consonant tended to have higher maximum and mean intensity, however the difference was not significant. These results are interpreted to reflect bidirectional alignment of the two articulations to two different syllables.

Bevezetés A magyar nyelvben a szingleton-gemináta oppozíció, azaz a nyelvileg rövid és hosszú mássalhangzók oppozíciója (ezeket a fogalompárokat a tanulmányban szinonimaként használjuk, az utóbbit szigorúan megkülön-böztetve a fizikai vagy fonetikai, ms-ban mérhető időtartamtól) fonológiai, azaz jelalakmegkülönböztető szerepű szembenállás. Ez azt jelenti, hogy léteznek a magyarban olyan minimális párok, amelyekben a jelentéssel bíró hangalakok közötti különbséget kizárólag a mássalhangzó hosszúsága adja, pl. ép ~ épp. Az elméletibb irányultságú nyelvleírások szerint a magyar mássalhangzórendszerben a szingleton-gemináta mássalhangzó-oppozíció legfőbb akusztikus kulcsa az időtartam, azaz az ejtés, hangoztatás tartama. Emellett hagyományosan azt is feltételezik, hogy gemináták csak bizonyos pozíciókban, csak intervokálisan, illetve megnyilatkozás végén (magán-hangzó után és szünet előtt) fordulhatnak elő a magyarban-nem állhatnak például szó elején, illetve nem fordulnak elő egy további mássalhangzóval szomszédosan. Amennyiben (például toldalékolás vagy szóképzés miatt) mégis előállna az utóbbi eset, a gemináta mássalhangzó rövidül, azaz degeminálódik (Siptár-Törkenczy

Book blurb: The concept of the 'onset', i.e. the consonant(s) before the vowel of a syllable, is critical within phonology. While phonologists have examined the segmental behaviour of onsets, their prosodic status has instead been largely overlooked. In fact, most previous accounts have stipulated that onsets are insignificant when it comes to the 'heaviness' of syllables. In this book Nina Topintzi presents a new theory of onsets, arguing for their fundamental role in the structure of language both in the underlying and surface representation, unlike previous assumptions. To capture the weight behaviour of onsets, a novel account is proposed that relates their interaction with voicing, tone and stress. Using numerous case-studies and data from a variety of languages and phenomena (including stress, compensatory lengthening, gemination and word minimality), the book introduces a model that reflects the true behaviour of onsets, demonstrating profound implications for syllable and weight theories.

In Italian, length contrast is exploited in the consonant system. Previous articulatory studies have focused on the temporal organization of gestures in Italian geminates and on the lower lip kinematics of the singleton/geminate distinction. In this paper, data on lip and tongue gestures are discussed in order to directly test hypotheses on the gestural organization of geminate consonants and to collect observations on the possible position of gestural targets in geminate and singleton consonants. The results show that Italian geminates appear to be best accounted for by a hybrid model that makes use of both Öhman"s Vowel-to-Vowel model and Browman and Goldstein"s Vowel-and-Consonant model. Moreover, our data partly confirm the existence of a higher virtual target in geminates than in singletons.