Where does gemination collide?

In phonetics gemination is the lengthening of a consonant so that a long or doubled consonant contrasts phonologically with its short counterpart, as the long /pp/ of Italian nonno against the short /n/ of nono. Ladefoged and Maddieson's 1996 The sounds of the world's languages documents such contrasts of consonant length across languages and the durational cues that signal them. The referent is a durational property of a speech segment, a construct that shares its Latin root for twinning with a dental anomaly but nothing of its substance.[1]

Unit

The contrastive extra duration that makes a consonant long rather than short

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Measured by closure or constriction duration and the ratio of long to short consonants in controlled speech

In dentistry gemination is a developmental anomaly in which a single tooth germ attempts to divide, producing one tooth with a partially or fully doubled crown that usually shares a single root and pulp canal. Neville, Damm, Allen, and Chi's Oral and maxillofacial pathology describes it among the anomalies of tooth number and shape and distinguishes it from true fusion of two separate germs. The referent is a malformation of dental development, counted and classified clinically and radiographically, entirely unrelated to the lengthening of a consonant in speech.[2]

Unit

A single tooth germ's incomplete division into a doubled crown

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Diagnosed clinically and radiographically by crown morphology and by counting whether the dental arch retains its normal tooth number