Gemination
In
phonetics,
gemination is when a spoken
consonant is "doubled", so that it is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a "single" consonant. The term comes from the word
geminus,
Latin for "twin".
Gemination is distinctive in certain languages, for instance
Italian,
Japanese,
Arabic and
Finnish. Most languages (including
English) do not have distinctive geminates.
Estonian has three phonemic lengths; however, the third length is a suprasegmental feature, which is as much tonal patterning as a length distinction. It is traceable to
allophony caused by now-deleted suffixes, for example half-long
linna <
linnan "of the city" vs. overlong
linna <
linnahan "to the city".
Geminated
fricatives,
nasals,
approximants, and
trills are simply prolonged. In geminated
stops, the "hold" is prolonged. Geminates are usually around one and a half or two times as long as short consonants, depending on the language.
Originally, gemination meant something different from mere consonant length. At the end of the
19th century, German phoneticians thought that a long consonant that follows a
checked vowel would have two peaks of
intensity, whereas other long consonants would have only one. Therefore, these twin-peaked long consonants were called
geminates.
The hypothesis of the two peaks of intensity was abandoned because it could not be confirmed by measurements. Nowadays, the term geminate is a synonym for 'long consonant'.
The term is occasionally applied to vowels.
In
written language, gemination is often indicated by writing a consonant twice ("ss", "kk", "pp", and so forth), but can also be indicated with a special symbol, such as the
shadda in Arabic, or
small tsu in
Japanese. Estonian uses 'b', 'd', 'g' for short consonants, and 'p', 't', 'k' and 'pp', 'tt', 'kk' are used for geminates.
In
Hungarian, even if two characters are put together to make a different sound, they are considered one letter, so
sz is one consonant, what sounds simply 's'. This can be 'doubled' by writing
ssz, not
szsz. Cs, dz, gy, ly, ny, ty and zs works the same: ccs, ddz, ggy, lly, nny, tty and zzs. The only Hungarian
trigraph, dzs can be geminated in writing by ddzs. (B, c, d, etc. - 'bb', 'cc', 'dd', and so on.)
Gemination can also be a spelling phenomenon, as in English words like "running" where there is no lengthening of the consonant in actual speech. However, consonant digraphs are used in English to indicate the preceding vowel is a 'lax' vowel, while a single letter often allows a 'tense' vowel to occur. For example, "tapping" /tæpɪŋ/ (from "tap") has a "short A" /æ/, which is distinct from the diphthong "long A" /eɪ/ in "taping" /teɪpɪŋ/ (from "tape").
In the
English phonology, gemination is not distinctive. Phonetic gemination occurs marginally. It is often found where a root-word is preceded by another root or a prefix ending with the same letter or sound that the second root begins with. Examples: "homemade", "screenname", "flat-top", "misspell", "unknown", "innumerable". In some dialects it is also found when the suffix -ly follows a root ending in -l or -ll, for example: "fully", "evilly", "dully", "foully". In all dialects it also occurs over word boundaries: "I'll learn", "some money", "with them".
In most instances, the absence of this doubling does not affect the meaning, though it may confuse the listener momentarily. Notable examples where the doubling does affect the meaning are the pairs "unaimed" versus "unnamed", and "holy" versus "wholly" (the latter two sounding identical in many areas however).
In languages such as
Swedish or
Italian, consonant gemination and
vowel length depend on each other. That is, a short vowel must be followed by a long consonant (geminate), whereas a long vowel must be followed by a short consonant. Gemination is phonemic in Italian, e.g.
penne [ˈpen.ne], a type of pasta (see
penne), but
pene [ˈpɛːne] "penis".
Luganda has exactly the same rule.
In other languages, such as
Finnish or
Japanese, consonant gemination and
vowel length are independent of each other. In Finnish, gemination is phonemic, such that
taka "back",
takka "fireplace",
taakka "burden", and so forth are different, unrelated words; this distinctinction is traceable all the way back to
Proto-Finno-Ugric. Finnish gemination is also affected by
consonant gradation. Another important phenomenon is that
sandhi produces geminates to word boundaries from an archiphonemic
glottal stop, for example
ota' se →
otas_se "take it!"
Distinctive gemination is usually restricted to certain consonants. There are very few languages that have initial gemination; among them are
Pattani Malay,
Chuukese, a few
Romance languages such as
Sicilian and
Neapolitan, and many of the
High Alemannic German dialects (such as
Thurgovian). Some African languages, such as
Setswana and
Luganda, also have initial gemination"in fact initial gemination is very common in Luganda and is used to indicate certain
grammatical features. In
spoken Finnish, geminates are produced between words by
sandhi effects.
In
Hungarian, gemination is distinctive. For example
megy means
go, while
meggy means
sour cherry.
*
West Germanic Gemination*
Glottal stop*
Length (phonetics)*
List of phonetic topics
