The Phonetics and Phonology of Tashlhiyt Geminates: An Overview
摘要
The length of consonants plays an important role in distinguishing words in various languages around the world, by contrasting singletons and geminates. A growing body of research has been conducted on the phonetics and phonology of this contrast over the last few decades. This chapter offers a general overview into this research, focusing on gemination in Tashlhiyt. It summarizes previous and ongoing studies, discussing the representation of gemination in the phonological system, as well as how the physical characteristics of geminates contribute to their unique patterns. Tashlhiyt is particularly interesting as it has contrastive geminates in word-initial, medial, and final positions, and displays various types of geminates such as lexical, morphological, and phonological.