An acoustic study on non-local anticipatory effects of Italian length contrast

The present study investigates non-local temporal adjustments before an upcoming length contrast in Italian minimal pairs that differ only in the length of the medial consonant (e.g., geminate word palla “ball” vs singleton word pala “shovel”). This contrast is reportedly signaled by the duration of the singleton/geminate consonant and of the preceding vowel. Here, it is shown that the duration adjustment extends further to the word-initial consonant, e.g., the [p] in palla is significantly longer than that in pala (experiment 1). In experiment 2, an effect of syllable structure is ruled out, an unavoidable confound when comparing singleton and geminate words. The comparison of geminate words with cluster words (e.g., as palco “stage”), both of which have a closed first syllable, shows a similar lengthening. Implications for models of speech production are discussed.