Is there a strong correlation between geminate consonants and initial-syllable stress, or stress in the earlier syllables of words?
A survey of European languages suggests that there might be such a correlation. For example, in Italian, where antepenultimate stress is common, geminate consonants are ubiquitous (fatto "done", troppo "too much", etc.). By contrast, geminates seem rare-to-absent in standard Spanish/Portuguese (which have more thoroughgoing penultimate/final stress) and French (which has mainly final stress).
Similarly, most Germanic languages had geminates at some point in their history (although many are no longer true phonetic geminates due to sound change), and initial-syllable stress was historically the norm in Germanic. Cf. English tap < Old Eng. tæppa, Icelandic tappi "cork, peg", German Zapfen "peg, pin", etc.
Thanks for any further insight into this issue.