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This article seeks to determine the acoustic correlates of gemination in Standard Somali (Afroasiatic, Cushitic), in particular whether closure duration is the primary acoustic correlate distinguishing singleton and geminate stops, with immediate consequences for the analysis of word-initial strengthening. We provide an acoustic analysis of word-initial and word-internal voiced singletons as well as of their geminate counterparts on the basis of a production experiment conducted with four native speakers. Three temporal and four non-temporal acoustic properties of /b d ɡ/ and /bb dd ɡɡ/ are examined and systematically compared (closure duration, release burst duration, vowel duration; and closure amplitude, release amplitude, presence of a release burst, (de)voicing). We argue that the opposition between singleton and geminate voiced stops is primarily realized as the manner contrast approximant [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] vs. stop [b d ɡ]. Word-initially, Somali exhibits various peculiarities that are reminiscent of the cross-linguistically attested phenomenon of domain-initial strengthening. This article provides the first study of this phenomenon in Somali. We establish that word-initial /b d ɡ/ and word-medial /bb dd ɡɡ/ share the same closure duration, release burst duration, and vowel duration within the Prosodic Word. They also have a similar closure amplitude, and voicing properties. Moreover, the acoustic properties of word-initial /b d ɡ/ remain constant, and do not depend on their position in the prosodic hierarchy. On the basis of these results, the article also aims at providing new insights in the phonological representation of Somali geminates and word boundaries, and thus contributes to the understanding of word-initial strengthening in Somali.

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The tonal accent (TA) of Somali undergoes many variations that remain understudied and poorly understood. This paper investigates two of the most important of these variations, which both imply the pitch lowering of the TA. The first lowering involves the last TA of a subject NP. Specifically, the high tone of the TA (H*) becomes mid (M) or low (L) and has been analyzed as resulting from the de-accentuation of the word. The other lowering has been described as the general process whereby a H or M tone is realized at the next tone level below (HM, ML), just before a pause. This paper argues that both pitch lowerings result from the interaction between the H* and a L tone associated with a prosodic constituent. In subject case, the L tone is assumed to be a tonal morpheme that is associated with the phonological phrase and delinks the last H* in a subject NP. In a pre-pausal context, the L tone is a boundary tone associated with higher constituents and only has a local lowering effect on the last mora of those constituents.

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