![]() ![]() The pattern where geminates attract stress, while other CC clusters do not, turns out to be rather rare, appearing in Cahuilla, San`ani Yemeni Arabic, some dialects of Hindi and Pattani Malay (the latter, though, is quite bizarre since usually onset geminates do not cause syllables to behave as though they are heavy). In moraic theory, it is generally held that autonomous coda consonants (part of a two-consonant cluster) may have an additional mora (long vowels always do), but the first half of a geminate always does. The correlation between stress and syllable weight is so strong that it is used presumptively to establish the subtypology of syllable weight, where long vowels always make a syllable heavy, and coda consonants may. The former correlation is frequently referred to as the Weight-to-Stress principle. It is a crucial preliminary step in understanding a significantly understudied class of sounds, thereby providing a more solid empirical basis for the study of language sound systems.There is a well-known indirect correlation between stress and gemination, because (1) heavy syllables tend to attract stress and (2) geminate consonants tend to make syllables heavy. This dissertation represents the first major cross-linguistic study of initial geminates. In addition to the phonological and phonetic analyses outlined above, this work also contains a database of typological information, reporting on a diverse set of languages that are claimed to have word-initial geminates. However, as will be shown, the production of initial geminates in Cypriot allows listeners to correctly discriminate between initial geminates and singletons in environments that are otherwise lacking in phonetic cues. This is due to the fact that the most salient acoustic feature for geminates,ĭuration, may be indistinguishable when the sound is in word initial position. The phonetic aspects are of particular interest for one simple reason: these sounds are commonly assumed to be impossible for listeners to distinguish from non-geminate sounds. (but are not required to), depending upon language-specific requirements.Ĭomplementing the investigation of the abstract behavior of initial geminates is a phonetic investigation of the production and perception of these sounds in Cypriot Greek. Crucially, the model that is developed and defended in this work claims that geminates are inherently linked to two timing slots, and may bear prosodic weight Specifically, it is shown that the diverse patterning of geminates in these languages is best accounted for within a framework that assumes the existence of both concrete phonological timing units and abstract prosodic weight units. The observed patterning of initial geminates indicates the need for revision of currentlyĭefended models of prosodic representation. The phonology portion concentrates on the patterning and distribution of these sounds in Leti, Chuukese, Cypriot Greek, and Luganda. The phonology and phonetics of word-initial geminate consonants are investigated in this dissertation.
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