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1 THE EFFECT OF MORA-TIMING ON THE DURATION OF VOWELS PRECEDING GEMINATE CONSONANTS

The notes and articles in this series are progress reports on work being carried on by students and faculty in the Department. Because these papers are not finished products, readers are asked not to cite from them without noting their preliminary nature. The authors welcome any comments and suggestions that readers might offer. This paper investigates the relationship among geminate consonants, preceding vowels, and timing in different types of languages. While it has generally been assumed that a predictable relationship between the geminates and preceding vowels exists only in syllable-timed languages, I show that the relationship is also (to a certain degree) predictable in mora-timed languages. However, while in syllable-timed languages vowels are shortened before geminate consonants, in mora-timed languages they are lengthened. I argue that this lengthening is due to the presence of a bimoraic foot in the mora-timed languages investigated here. 1. INTRODUCTION. The effect of consonant gemination on preceding vowels has been widely discussed in the literature, together with the general effect of closed syllables on vowels. The phenomenon of vowel shortening in closed syllables has been at the forefront of the discussions. It has been generally recognized that vowels tend to shorten in closed syllables, including syllables closed by geminate consonants (cf. Maddieson 1985, Ham 2001:135). This paper will concentrate on languages in which vowels are lengthened before geminate consonants. I will show that while vowel shortening before geminates may be more common cross-linguistically in syllable-timed languages, vowel lengthening in the same position is not as exceptional as previously assumed in the literature. I will further show that there is a connection between the geminate-to-singleton ratio and vowel lengthening, as well as a connection between the timing of a language and the presence of vowel lengthening before geminates.