Talk:Gemination

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Italian is mentioned, but no example. I'm not familiar with Italian. Could anyone give an example?

Example of what?--47.32.20.133 (talk) 17:36, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

It seems Japanese has vowel gemination. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Infofarmer (talk • contribs) 10:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Vowel gemination is an oxymoron. The term gemination only applies to consonants. Rikat (talk) 19:37, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The article asserts that geminates are 1.5 to 2 X longer than singletons, but I believe the range of variation from language to language is larger than that. Here is a quote from William Ham, Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Geminate Timing, Routledge, 2001 ISBN 0415937604:

From a purely phonetic perspective, geminates can be described as long consonants, although the degree to which they are longer than their singleton counterparts varies widely from language to language. Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996: 91-92), for example, report from their cross-linguistic survey that, depending on the language, geminates are on average between one-and-a-half and three times as long as singletons in careful speech.

Rikat (talk) 19:43, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Russian

Russian does not distinguish between long and short consonants (or vowels, for that matter) in speech, but only in writing. I can say that as a native speaker. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.24.136.83 (talk) 13:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Disregard the comment above. I am native speaker too and definitely distinguish between long and short consonant in Russian. Though, it may drop in fast or children-like speech. All scientists recognize it.90.188.77.45 (talk) 20:56, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Russian phonology says that only /n/ and /nʲ/ are actually geminated. It may depend on dialect, though whatever the case may be it's definitely true that many instances of written double consonants don't indicate actual gemination in speech. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:01, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Polish

Info about gemination in Polish is false. While polish language has geminates (double consonants) it is not a gemination. It should be always pronounced as two separate (repeated) consonats. Long vovels and long consonants does not exist in Polish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.5.23.100 (talk) 20:09, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

"rodziny – 'families'; ssaki - 'mammals', rodzinny – adjective of 'family'" - that ssaki part seems to be irrelevant or corrupted. Anyone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.181.173.242 (talk) 14:25, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

The information on Polish is false, in such or another way. Whether they are geminates or not is disputable. Indeed, there is a possiblitity to pronounce them as a one long vowel, even if some prescriptive biased linguists call it incorrect. However, it is not the only possible way, and the pronunciation as two separated consonants is also possible, especially in slow speech. Anyway, the statement "it occurs in words of more than one morpheme, where the final morpheme of the first part is the same as the initial morpheme of the second" is completely false!!! There is no difference in treating double consonants both on the morpheme border and within the same morpheme. Rodzinny, wwozić, zzuć, greccy, lekki, jakkolwiek, najjaśniejszy are examples of the first type. Note double consonants in the initial position. It is possible because prefixes "w" and "z" contain only one consonant. But there are also examples of double consonants not on morpheme borders, like ssaki (which is cited and is not in accordance with the description!), czczy "vane" (: czy "whether"), dżdżownica "earthworm", dżdżysty "rainy (bookish)" (all word-initially), and also wanna "bathtub", Anna "Anna", Mekka, kwagga, kappa, Jaffa, gamma "Greek letter" (: gama "music scale"), Budda, Jagiełło, Allah, horror, Aszszur. See http://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/popraw/tidiri.html for more.

31.11.242.199 (talk) 19:54, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Mistake

The example of Japanese is exactly contrary - "came" = kitta, "cut (past)" = kita —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.84.134.174 (talk) 12:16, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't change anything, but the article is currently correct. kuru 'come' is an irregular verb with past tense kita 'came'. kiru 'slice' is a godan verb that could be mistaken as ichidan with past tense kitta 'sliced'. Wikky Horse (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

English gemination

Wolf Leslau used to give the word 'penknife' as a clear case of in-word gemination in English.Kdammers (talk) 01:24, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

“Orange juice” is listed as an example of non-gemination, but the IPA transcription shows gemination, and that is the only pronunciation I know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.188.191.57 (talk) 13:29, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I pronounce it with [ʒdʒ]. CodeCat (talk) 14:51, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

"night train" versus "night rain"

This is wrong. "train" is pronounced as [t͡ʃɹeɪn] and is definitely different from "...t rain" [t ɹeɪn].--2.245.79.201 (talk) 18:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

You are claiming that train is pronounced as if it were spelled "chrain". I have never, ever, heard an English speaker pronounce the word this way. These dictionaries all agree that the pronunciation is /treɪn/, in both American and British English:

• Oxford Dictionaries: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/train
• Merriam-Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/train
• Cambridge Dictionary: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/train
• MacMillan Dictionary: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/train_1
• The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/train
• dictionary.com: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/train?s=t

I am removing the "dubious" tag until someone can provide a source for this alternate pronunciation. CodeTalker (talk) 21:07, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Dictionaries only give phonemic transcriptions. I think phonetically the t is sometimes pronounced as ch by assimilation because r is postalveolar. Alveolar t sometimes becomes postalveolar ch before a postalveolar. — Eru·tuon 21:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is the cluster /tr/. It might not usually be "chrain", but it's close, and it certainly can be, and in no case would a native speaker of English be expected to pronounce /treɪn/, with or without night preceding, with [t] or [tʰ] in normal speech (for me, native Lower Midwestern, it's all but impossible; I can come very close with a "foreign accent", though: "I am from [ˈiːtali]. I would like to take a nigh[t] [t]rain, please."). A pair with simply /t#t/ and /t#/ (# signifying word boundary), both surrounded by vowels, illustrates more cleanly: that turn and that urn, for example. (Fussy detail: Worth nothing, too, that /t#t/ and its phonetic realization exemplify geminates, but not a process of gemination.)--47.32.20.133 (talk) 18:33, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Um?

"With affricates, however, this does not occur. For instance: orange juice [ˈɒrɨndʒ.dʒuːs]" The English section says "this does not occur" with affricates, but then shows an instance in which gemination does, in fact, occur with affricates. I'm confused. 69.34.174.2 (talk) 21:51, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, that's a good question. It's confusing, as you say. I think perhaps it's because gemination of an affricate is supposed to result in doubled stop portion, rather than the whole affricate being repeated. So, if orange juice had gemination, it would be pronounced as [ˈɒrɨnddʒuːs] or [ˈɒrɨndːʒuːs] with the [d], the stop part of the affricate, doubled, instead of [ˈɒrɨndʒ.dʒuːs] where the whole affricate is repeated. So that might be why the article says affricates aren't geminated. — Eru·tuon 00:16, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

wordinhasprob

although several languages feature both independently (as in Arabic, Japanese, Finnish, and Estonian), or have interdependent vowel and consonant length (as in Norwegian and Swedish).81.11.230.198 (talk) 12:41, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Geminized stops seem to have nasals ie. [bː] vs /mb/

[bː] appears to be a /mb/ just as /tː/ appears to be /nt/ GamerGeekWiki (talk) 02:57, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

- I could be articulating it wrong, but I doubt it. GamerGeekWiki (talk) 03:03, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Problem with Finnish example

The article mentions the Finnish word-final archiphonemic glottal stop, which lengthens the first consonant of the following word. The example given is:

|otaʔ se| > ota se "take it!"

This looks wrong because the lengthening of the /s/ is not shown. Should it be:

|otaʔ se| > otas se "take it!"

or something like that? Jan Arvid Götesson (talk) 10:33, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't know Finnish well enough to vouch for the example, but it looks like a classic case of assimilation producing a geminate phonetic outcome: /ˈotaʔ se/ → [ˈotasːe]. If that's the case (and if phonemic /ʔ/ is accurate), it's useful as an example of one source of phonetic geminates in Finnish.--47.32.20.133 (talk) 17:04, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

consonant elongation, consonant lengthening

In 40 years of doing both synchronic and diachronic phonology, I don't recall ever encountering the term consonant elongation. I've changed it to consonant lengthening, which in my experience is standard terminology as a frequent alternative to gemination (or, phonetically, a specific type with regard to manner of articulation). If there are arguments in favor of preferring consonant elongation, please present them here.47.32.20.133 (talk) 13:43, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Two problems haunt this article: phonetics/phonology, geminate/gemination

Phonetics/phonology: It's not all that difficult to find languages in which geminates are underlying, don't surface phonetically long, but do surface as phonetically distinct from underlying non-geminates. (And, of course, phonologists will quibble about whether the underlying form really is a geminate, with evidence usually leaning in the direction of yes, it is.)

And, unless the topic is intended to be purely phonetic only...

Geminate/gemination: This is more serious to the basic purpose of the article in that the two are conflated at various points and readers can be left confused and/or misinformed. Basic example: the frequent pronunciation of English prime minister as [ˌpraɪˈmɪnɪstər] is a case of degemination /mm/ → [m], whereas [ˌpraɪmˈmɪnɪstər] is a straightforward projection /mm/ → [mː], not a case of anything (/mm/ or /m/) undergoing gemination. A geminate is a form, whether phonological or phonetic, whereas gemination is a process; a phonetic geminate may or may not be the result of (synchonic) gemination. (Vocalic correlates of the principle process/non-process would be raising in /e/ → [i], no raising in /i/ → [i].) A phonological geminate is a geminate, e.g. Italian /ˈfatto/. If that's pronounced [ˈfatːo], as it normally is, in what sense does gemination occur? None: phonological geminate /tt/ projects as phonetic geminate [tː]. Sticking with Italian, non-stress-conditioned RS does normally involve gemination: /a ˈkasa/ 'at home' and /la ˈkasa/ 'the house' normally surface with distinct realizations of /k/: [aˈkːaːsa], [laˈkaːsa] with no source for [kː] identifiable synchronically (other than noting that preposition a triggers RS). Gemination can occur diachronically, such as Latin /ˈfemina/ > Italian /ˈfemmina/; once the form is accepted as /ˈfemmina/, the pronunciation [ˈfemːina] with phonetic geminate no longer reflects a process of gemination (just as /i/ → [i] does not instantiate raising). There's no need to get deeply into the technical weeds for the article, but it should be possible to execute clarifications for a general readership not steeped in phonetics or phonology, and by doing so also reveal phenomena of interest to them. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:46, 4 July 2018 (UTC)