ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 presents the research project that is at the core of this book. First, it narrates the story of how the project came about. It then provides the linguistic background required to understand the project by describing the consonant systems of English and Italian and introducing the concept of gemination. The chapter then describes the project’s rationale and lists its eight research questions. This is followed by a discussion of the theoretical background (linguistic relativism and multi-competence) and a brief introduction to the most innovative aspects of the project. Then, the methods are described in detail, including participants, materials, procedures, equipment, ethical considerations, and analysis (both the acoustic analysis of spoken data and statistical analysis).
