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Re: What is gemination? What are geminates?

From:DOUGLAS KOLLER <laokou@...>
Date:Monday, November 6, 2000, 0:35
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? 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/? Kou