Re: /p/ versus devoiced b?

On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Danny Wier wrote:
>
> > Since they're transliterated very often as double consonants, maybe the best
> > bet is to pronounce them as geminates. (I forgot, I do have a conlang -- Q
> > (also known as Quaelits) -- with "tense" consonants, ejectives and "tense"
> > ejectives! I cheat and make the tense consonants pharyngealized.)
>
> Truly dumb question, what's a geminate?  They were discussed at some
> point on this list (since I joined) and, as usual, I missed the definition.
Hoo boy. They were discussed, yes, but there are at least two
definitions floating around out there. The first (and apparently
most common) is that a geminate is a "long" consonant. An
example: the /n/ in 'penny' is short, while the /n/ in 'pen
knife' is long. The long /n/ of 'pen knife' is a geminate.

The definition which I use in my work overlaps considerably with
this one for all practical purposes, but it isn't the same. For
a consonant to be geminate has to do with a property of its
phonological representation irrespective of  how it's
pronounced. So you could possibly have a geminate consonant that
isn't long, or a long consonant that isn't a geminate; though
neither of these seem to happen very often. But I seem to be in
the minority on this one, so I will concede to the popular usage
of geminate = long on this list.

However, what Danny is referring to is a particular romanization
scheme for Korean in which tense consonants are written as
doubled consonants. I don't know if they are really longer in
their articulation than the plain or aspirated series, though,
so I can't comment on the suitability of substituting a long
pronunciation for the tense consonants.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir