Does English have Geminates?

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

What is a Geminate in linguistics?

The term ‘geminate’ when applied to consonants refers to at least two distinct phonetic realities. Firstly, for continuants, i.e. fricatives and sonorants, a geminate will simply be a longer form of the corresponding simple consonant.

What is lengthening in phonology?

Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable.

What does gemination mean in phonetics and phonology?

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. In phonetics and phonology, gemination ( / ˌdʒɛm -/ ), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a single instance of the same type of consonant. It is distinct from stress.

Where does a geminate occur in a word?

As shown in (9), clusters (a) and geminates (b) trigger metathesis of the final vowel and consonant of a preceding morpheme. In this paper we provide new and striking evidence for the view that geminates are non-moraic and may occur in syllable-initial position.

Are there any languages where vowel length is independent of gemination?

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.

Which is longer a geminate or a non geminate consonant?

Firstly, for continuants, i.e. fricatives and sonorants, a geminate will simply be a longer form of the corresponding simple consonant. Thus the geminate nasal in [inˈnato] innato‘innate’ is essentially an articulation of /n/ that has a longer duration than the corresponding non-geminate sound [n].