Syntactic gemination


Syntactic gemination, or syntactic doubling, is an external sandhi phenomenon in Italian, other Romance languages spoken in Italy, and Finnish. It consists in the lengthening of the initial consonant in certain contexts. It may also be called word-initial gemination or phonosyntactic consonantal gemination.
In Italian it is called raddoppiamento sintattico, raddoppiamento fonosintattico, raddoppiamento iniziale, or ''rafforzamento iniziale.''

Italian

"Syntactic" means that gemination spans word boundaries, as opposed to word-internal geminate consonants as in "cat" or "year". In standard Italian, syntactic doubling occurs after the following words :
  • all stressed monosyllables and some unstressed monosyllables : a, blu, che, ché, chi, ciò, da, dà, dì, do, e, è, fa, fra, fu, già, giù, ha, ho, la, là, lì, ma, me, mi, né, o, più, può, qua, qui, re, sa, se, sé, si, sì, so, sta, sto, su, sù, te, tè, tra, tre, tu, va, etc
  • *Example: Andiamo a casa, 'Let's go home'
  • all polysyllables stressed on the final vowel
  • *Example: Parigi è una città bellissima, 'Paris is a very beautiful city'
  • a few paroxytones when they are not substantivized: come, dove, qualche, sopra
  • *Example: Come va?, 'How are you?'
Articles, clitic pronouns and various particles do not cause doubling in standard Italian. Phonetic results such as occasional → 'the dog' in colloquial speech are transparent cases of synchronic assimilation.
The cases of doubling are commonly classified as "stress-induced doubling" and "lexical".
Lexical syntactic doubling has been explained as a diachronic development, initiating as straightforward synchronic assimilation of word-final consonants to the initial consonant of the following word, subsequently reinterpreted as gemination prompts after terminal consonants were lost in the evolution from Latin to Italian. Thus resulting from assimilation of in Latin ad casam in casual speech persists today as a casa with, with no present-day clue of its origin or of why a casa has the geminate but la casa does not.
Stress-induced word-initial gemination conforms to phonetic structure of Italian syllables: stressed vowels in Italian are phonetically long in open syllables, short in syllables closed by a consonant; final stressed vowels are by nature short in Italian, thus attract lengthening of a following consonant to close the syllable. In città di mare 'seaside city', the stressed short final vowel of città thus produces.
In some phonemic transcriptions, such as in the Zingarelli dictionary, words that trigger syntactic gemination are marked with an asterisk: e.g. the preposition "a" is transcribed as.

Regional occurrence

Syntactic gemination is used in standard Italian and it is also the normal native pronunciation in Tuscany, excluding most of Arezzo province, central Italy and southern Italy, including Sicily and Corsica. In northern Italy, San Marino and Switzerland speakers use it inconsistently because the feature is not present in the dialectal substratum, and it is not usually shown in the written language unless a single word is produced by the fusion of two constituent words: "chi sa"-> chissà. It is not unusual to hear northern speakers pronounce geminates when present in established written forms, but not observe syntactic gemination if not written in an otherwise identical phonological sequence. Thus "chissà chi è stato" with, meaning "who knows who did it" may contrast with "chi sa chi è stato?" with, meaning "who knows who did it?", whereas speakers from areas where chi is acquired naturally as a gemination trigger will have phonetic for both.
It is not normally taught in the grammar programmes of Italian schools so most speakers are not consciously aware of its existence. Those northern speakers who do not acquire it naturally often do not try to adopt the feature.

Exceptions

It does not occur in the following cases:
  • A pause is at the boundary of words in question. In particular, initial gemination may be conditioned by syntax, which determines the likelihood of pause. For example, in the phrase La volpe ne aveva mangiato metà prima di addormentarsi, there is no gemination after metà if there is even a slight pause, as prima is part of the adjunct, a sentence element that is easily isolated phonologically from the main clause within the prosodic hierarchy of the phrase.
  • The stressed final vowel is lengthened.
  • A sharp break or change occurs in the pitch on the word boundary.
There are other considerations, especially in various dialects, so that initial gemination is subject to complicated lexical, syntactic and phonological/prosodic conditions.

Finnish

Boundary gemination, known in Finnish as rajageminaatio, loppukahdennus, or alkukahdennus, is a phonological phenomenon in Finnish in which consonant sounds are doubled at the boundary of two words. The feature occurs primarily in spoken Finnish and is not reflected in written language. The phenomenon is also referred to as rajakahdennus.
Boundary gemination is triggered by certain morphemes. If the morpheme boundary is followed by a consonant, it is doubled. If it is followed by a vowel, a long glottal stop is introduced. For example, mene pois is pronounced meneppois, and mene ulos is pronounced . Following Fred Karlsson, these triggering morphemes are called x-morphemes and marked with a superscript 'x', e.g., "sadex".
Boundary gemination appears in various grammatical contexts and may significantly affect the pronunciation of spoken Finnish. The following are the main contexts in which boundary gemination occurs:
  • Imperative forms
  • * Tule tänne! → pronounced as tulettänne.
  • * Mene pois! → pronounced as meneppois.
  • Infinitive verbs
  • * Haluan ostaa koiran. → pronounced as haluan ostaakkoiran.
  • * Nyt täytyy lähteä pois. → pronounced as nyt täytyy lähteäppois.
  • Negative verb forms
  • * En mene sinne. → pronounced as en menessinne.
  • * Älä ota kuvaa! → pronounced as älä otakkuvaa.
  • Words ending in -e
  • * Vene hajosi. → pronounced as venehhajosi.
  • * Sade jatkui pitkään. → pronounced as sadejjatkui pitkään.
  • Allative case
  • * Kerron lapsille sadun. → pronounced as kerron lapsillessadun.
  • * Se oli meille tarkoitettu. → pronounced as se oli meillettarkoitettu.
  • Possessive suffix
  • * Hän tuli äitinsä kanssa. → pronounced as hän tuli äitinsäkkanssa.
  • * Hän käveli isänsä takana. → pronounced as hän käveli isänsättakana.
  • Certain adverbs
  • * Se tekee varmasti hyvää. → pronounced as se tekee varmastihhyvää.
  • * Menen sinne kohta. → pronounced as menen sinnekkohta.
  • Comitative case
  • * Hän tuli molempine poikineen. → pronounced as hän tuli molempineppoikineen.
  • NUT-participle
  • * En tullut kokoukseen. → pronounced as en tullukkokoukseen.

Historical context and regional occurrence

Boundary gemination in Finnish likely developed from historical phonological shifts, including the loss of final consonants in certain word forms, which led to the doubling of initial consonants in subsequent words. The process resembles modern spoken Finnish trends, where the dropping of final -t in the NUT-participle results in similar gemination effects.
Most notably, the Pori and Kymenlaakso dialects lack this feature. For example, tule tänne may sound more like tuletänne, instead of the standard pronunciation, tulettänne.