Timing the difference: A study of gemination in Dogri consonants

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.