This paper investigates preaspiration of geminate stops in Standard Italian /pp tt kk/. We first compare voiceless stops produced in isolated words according to speaker sex and then region (Northern, Central and Southern Italy). We find that the frequency and duration of preaspiration remain relatively stable across these sociophonetic categories. Given these patterns we suggest that the appearance of preaspirated stops is conditioned primarily by phonetic (consonant place, vowel type, lexical stress) rather than the sociophonetic factors under consideration
