Abstract:
Consonant gemination, in general, has two major aspects: a. lengthening b. doubling.
This study focuses on articulation and orthography in Sinhala, the two parts of the
language where consonant gemination occurs. It examines the pronunciation time
ratios of the 16 pairs of singleton and geminated Sinhala consonants in order to
analyze the relationship that exists between their articulation and orthography. This
study focuses on the problem of whether there is a relationship between orthography
and the articulation time ratios of geminated and singleton consonants in Sinhala.
Two research questions are posed in order to examine this research problem: 1) What
are the articulation time ratios between the geminated and non-geminated consonants
in Sinhala? and 2) What relationships exist between orthographic symbolization and
those ratios? A group of ten adult participants contributed to the data: five males and
five females. Praat.exe was the main technical instrument used to measure
pronunciation timings. The data revealed that the ratios lie between a minimum of
1:1.6 and a maximum of 1:2.4 times. Therefore, consonant gemination in Sinhala is
a lengthening process. It further exhibits that the alpha-syllabic writing system in
Sinhala ignores the length ratios of the geminated consonants.
