Timing the difference: A study of gemination in Dogri consonants

Abstract

This study examines the phonetic and phonological properties of singleton-geminate contrasts in Dogri within the context where the preceding vowel is short, i.e. in CVCV: word structures. Linear Mixed-Effects (LMER) statistical results reveal that geminates are temporally nearly twice as long as their singleton counterparts (~ 70 ms), followed by consistent shortening of the preceding vowel (~ 16 ms). The remaining segments, i.e., the word-initial consonant and the word-final vowel, remain indiscriminable across both word types, suggesting no anticipatory lengthening in geminate contexts for the former, and minor shortening (but statistically non-significant) among geminates for the latter. Additional findings regarding voicing effects, phrase-level context, and overall word duration for both word types confirm cross-linguistic voicing trends: voiceless geminates are longer with added evidence of pre-consonantal vowel shortening relative to their voiced counterparts. Moreover, geminates show significantly longer durations in Fixed Phrase contexts than in Carrier Phrase. Lastly, the longer total word duration for geminates (~ 53 ms) suggests that gemination in Dogri extends beyond a local phonetic phenomenon, bearing a distinctive prosodic and phonological weight. These results posit the view that temporal elongation reflects their status as phonologically contrastive units, rather than being a by-product of durational redistribution of the segments.