Geminación consonántica y variación vocálica en asturiano. Nuevos datos para el estudio de la evolución fonológica románica

Consonant gemination has traditionally been considered in Romance linguistics as
one of the main markers that delimit the two major Romance-speaking areas, eastern and
western, as established by Von Wartburg. According to this view, the phenomenon is
typical of the eastern area, being bounded by the Spezia-Rimini line. However, the present
paper provides up-to-date evidence of a residual survival of this kind of articulation in a
mountainous region of Central Asturias, apparently associated with vowel inflection and
certain illocutionary conditions, which might provide clues to the process of consonant variation in Romance.