The GEMMA project database

INTRODUCTION

Some languages allow the clustering of the same consonant in vowel contexts and this phenomenon is known as "consonant gemination." Gemination plays a particular role in the phonology of such languages because several words change meaning as a function of singleton versus geminate consonants (minimal pairs). The GEMMA project, started in 1993, investigates the role of gemination in the Italian language.

DATABASE

General info:	The database includes a set of vowel–consonant–vowel (VCV, the nongeminate case) and vowel–consonant–consonant–vowel (VCCV, the geminate case) utterances in the symmetric environment of the vowels [i, a, u] for all consonants that in the Italian language appear in both single and geminate form: stops ([b], [d], [g], [p], [t], [k]), affricates ([tʃ], [dʒ], [ts], [dz]), fricatives ([f], [v], [s]), nasals ([m], [n], ) and liquids ([r], [l]).
Subjects:	Six native adult speakers of standard Italian (three male, three female) with no known articulatory impairment.
Sample type:	1-channel, signed integers, 16 bits
Sample rate:	10 kHz
File format:	.wav
Language:	Italian
License:	The GEMMA project database is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .
Download:	GEMMA_database.zip

REFERENCES

A. Esposito and M.-G. Di Benedetto, Acoustic and perceptual study of gemination in Italian stops, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, ASA, DOI: 10.1121/1.428056, ISSN: 0001-4966, WOS: 000083071300042, Vol. 30, pp. 175-185, 1999.

F. Argiolas, F. Macri and M.-G. Di Benedetto, Acoustic analysis of Italian [l] and [r], The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, ASA, ISSN: 0001-4966, Vol. 97, 1995.