Geminate Consonants and Stress Accent in Italian as a Foreign Language: the Case of Advanced French-Speaking Learners

Abstract

This article presents a study conducted with French-speaking participants who are advanced learners of Italian, focusing on their pronunciation and perception of Italian phonological features, such as consonant gemination and stress, which are crucial for semantic distinction in Italian. The first part of the article describes these features in both Italian and French. The following section presents the methodology of the study, which is divided into two parts: the perception and the production of the studied features. The results show that, despite a good command of geminated consonants and stress by the participants, difficulties remain in recognising semantic differences due to stress and geminated consonants, particularly bilabial and labiodental ones. Some issues also persist with stress on the preantepenultimate syllable. These results suggest that although the group demonstrates a high level of proficiency, they could benefit from targeted improvement.