Re: What is gemination? What are geminates?

H. S. Teoh wrote:

>On Sun, Nov 05, 2000 at 03:58:18PM -0500, Robert Hailman wrote:
>> The subject says it all. People have been talking about it all
>> willy-nilly, and I haven't understood much of it. Does anyone care to
>> explain?
>[snip]
>
>Hehe, I asked the same question before. From what I can understand
>(correct me if I'm wrong), geminates are "long" consonants.
OK... you're techinically a bit off so I'll correct you. ;)

Geminates are uninterrupted successions of two identical short consonants
across a syllable boundary, as in; <bookcase> [buk.kejs]. Long consonants
on the other hand can be restricted within a syllable, as in Swedish:
"wide" <vitt> [vit:], which contrasts with "white" <vit> [vi:t]. Or Pattani
Malay; [bulE] vs [b:ulE], "moon" and "months" respectively.