Gemination

In phonetics and phonology, gemination (/ˌdʒɛmɪˈneɪʃən/; from Latin geminatio 'doubling', itself from gemini 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from stress. Gemination is represented in many writing systems by a doubled letter and is often perceived as a doubling of the consonant. Some phonological theories use 'doubling' as a synonym for gemination, while others describe two distinct phenomena.

For the dental phenomenon, see Tooth gemination.
For root doubling in complex words, see Reduplication.
Not to be confused with Germination or Geminal.

Consonant length is a distinctive feature in certain languages, such as Arabic, Berber, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Polish and Turkish. Other languages, such as English, do not have word-internal phonemic consonant geminates.

Consonant gemination and vowel length are independent in languages like Arabic, Japanese, Finnish and Estonian; however, in languages like Italian, Norwegian and Swedish, vowel length and consonant length are interdependent. For example, in Norwegian and Swedish, a geminated consonant is always preceded by a short vowel, while an ungeminated consonant is preceded by a long vowel. A clear example are the Norwegian words tak [tɑːk] ('ceiling or roof' of a building), and takk [tɑkː] ('thanks').

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.