The LaMIT database: A read speech corpus for acoustic studies of the Italian language toward lexical access based on the detection of landmarks and other acoustic cues to features.

The LaMIT database consists in recordings of 100 Italian sentences. The sentences in the database were designed so to include all phonemes of the Italian language, and also take into account the typical frequency of each phoneme in written Italian. Four native adult speakers of Standard Italian, raised and living in Rome, Italy, two female and two male, pronounced the sentences in two different recording sessions; two repetitions for each sentence per speaker were therefore collected, for a total of 800 recordings. The database was specifically created for application in the LaMIT project, that focuses on the application to the Italian language of the Lexical Access model proposed by Ken Stevens for American English. The model relies on the detection of specific acoustic discontinuities called landmarks and other acoustic cues to features that characterize each phoneme. Each recording was thus processed to generate a set of labeling files that identify both predicted landmarks and other cues, and actual landmarks/cues. The labeling files, compiled according to the labeling syntax used in the Praat speech processing software, are also made available as part of the LAMIT database.

Lexical and syntactic gemination in Italian consonants-Does a geminate Italian consonant consist of a repeated or a strengthened consonant?

Two types of consonant gemination characterize Italian: lexical and syntactic. Italian lexical gemination is contrastive, so that two words may differ by only one geminated consonant. In contrast, syntactic gemination occurs across word boundaries and affects the initial consonant of a word in specific contexts, such as the presence of a monosyllabic morpheme before the word. This study investigates the acoustic correlates of Italian lexical and syntactic gemination, asking if the correlates for the two types are similar in the case of stop consonants. Results confirmed previous studies showing that duration is a prominent gemination cue, with a lengthened consonant closure and a shortened pre-consonant vowel for both types. Results also revealed the presence, in about 10%-12% of instances, of a double stop-release burst, providing strong support for the biphonematic nature of Italian geminated stop consonants. Moreover, the timing of these bursts suggests a different planning process for lexical vs syntactic geminates. The second burst, when present, is accommodated within the closure interval in syntactic geminates, while lexical geminates are lengthened by the extra burst. This suggests that syntactic gemination occurs during a post-lexical phase of production planning, after timing has already been established.