Kou wrote:
> From: "Robert Hailman"
>
> > 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?
>
> As I understand it, it's the doubling of a consonant sound as in the
English
> "meanness" (/minnEs/)" or "bookcase" (/bUkkes/) (don't know how to express
> an offglide in Kirshenbaum), a kind of holding of the consonant sound for
a
> beat, as opposed to the illogical "mean 'S'" (/minEs/) or "book ace"
> (/bUkes/). Some languages, like Japanese and Italian, use this as a
phonemic
> distinction: Japanese "kata" (square) vs. "katta" (bought); Italian "eco"
> (echo) vs. "ecco" ((t)here it is, voilà).
>
Finnish does it as well. Italian has really a great bulk of couplets:
ameremo/ameremmo (we'll love/ we'd love). The problem is that in Italian
gemination has influence also on the quality of the previous vowel: eco
/eko/ ecco /Ekko/; ameremo /ame'remo/ ameremmo /amerEmmo/. A good exemple
would be mora /mOra/ (a fruit) morra /mOrra/ (a game).
Luca