Re: What is gemination? What are geminates?

DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:

>From: "Kristian Jensen"
>
>> Douglas has it correct. But I'd like to add that there is also a
>> terminological distinction between consonant sounds that occur when
>> two identical consonant sounds are next to each other across a syllable
>> boundary, and consonant sounds that are long but within the same syllable.
>> The former is called a geminate, the latter is called a long or doubled
>> consonant.
>
>I didn't know this. Does this mean the Japanese and Italian examples are
>long consonants and not geminates?
The Japanese and Italian examples are geminates because they occur across
syllable boundaries. In both languages, there is some prosodical nature at
work. From what I understand of Italian, the length of the stressed syllable
is always heavy. a short stressed vowel must be followed by a consonant
while a long stress vowel cannot be followed by a consonant. Geminates
therefore occur to fill in a gap left open when a short vowel occurs in a
stressed syllable without a specified syllable final consonant. E.g.
['fa:.to] "faith" vs ['fat.to] "fact" vs ['fal.to] "???".

>Or does it mean that there are languages (none of which I'm familiar with)
>where a hypothetical word like "ebb" is genuinely pronounced /Ebb/?
There are. The Scandinavian langs (except Danish) are European candidates I
know that are like this. However, like Italian, there is a prosodical thing
at work in these langs as well such that it is impossible to find surface
contrasts like [eb] vs [ebb] in these langs. Finnish could be a better European
candidate since there is no prosodical connection between vowel length and
consonant length. This time, however, long consonant occurs only in
intervocalic position. We need to look outside of Europe. The only one I know
is Pattani Malay spoken in southern Thailand with long consonants occuring in
syllable-initial position; [bulE] "moon" vs [b:ulE] "months". But I'm sure
there are more out there, also with a hypothetical contrast like /eb/ vs /ebb/.

-kristian- 8)