Re: THEORY: final features, moras, and roots [was: it's what I do]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 11:48:18AM -0400, Togonakamane@AOL.COM wrote:
[snip]
> oh yeah, the "little tsu" that doubles consonants. that I did forget, but
> geminates..... well, it's hard to forget something that you didn't know
> anything more about than the word.....there's all this talk of geminates
> right now on the list.....what IS a geminate? in layman's terms, please, the
> explanations I've seen so far on the list have been way beyond me.
I'm asked the same question before :-)  From what I can gather, a geminate
is a long consonant. Here's the quote from Dirk Elzinga:

> A geminate consonant is long; compare the pronunciation of English /n/
> in 'penny' with the /n/ in 'pen knife'; you should notice that the /n/
> in 'penny' is short, while that of 'pen knife' is long. The lengthened
> /n/ in 'pen knife' can be considered a geminate.
Hope this helps :-)


T