Sunday 5 October 2014

a classic case of degemination?

credit: blogjam.name
Degemination, as John Maidment describes it in his Speech Internet Dictionary (= SID), is the

"[...] change from a geminate (long) sound to the equivalent single (short) sound. [...] An example is the pronunciation ˈpraɪ ˈmɪnɪstə instead of ˈpraɪm ˈmɪnɪstə."
Consequently, a geminate is a
"sequence of two identical sounds."
Canon Tilby in her Thought for the Day of the 30th of September pronounces the following sentence:
credit: Christ Church, Oxford
"In Christian spirituality this is a classic case of failure to resist one of the universal temptations."
I highlighted the phrase in which a word-final /k/ and a word-initial one abut. Pronounced as a geminate plosive the hold stage would be longer than that of a singleton. Listen to the whole sentence and then to the phrase "classic case" in isolation. After this decide if it's an instance of degemination:



Is it an easy decision to make? BTW, the hold stage is ~94ms long. For comparison I've cut out other phrases containing a word-final /k/ pronounced by her (hold stage durations in parentheses):
1. public life (~48ms)



2. comic story (~95ms)



3. public interest (~38ms)



4. psychic space (~66ms)



5. risk of (~56ms)


The longest hold stage is that of the /k/ in comic stage. This and the auditory impression rather indicate degemination. What's your opinion?

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