Gemination in Amharic: Examination of the Duration of Amharic Consonants

Abstract

This study investigated the duration of Amharic consonants. Three native speakers were recorded reading geminate and nongeminate Amharic words prepared in a list and durations were extracted using Praat. The results showed that Amharic consonants can be twice as long as
singletons and word final consonants were found to be longer in word final position than in word medial position. Voiceless consonants were longer
than voiced consonants in both word medial and word final positions as both geminates and singletons. However, there was no statistically significant
differences between the duration of geminate voiced and voiceless consonants.