phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, length or quantity is a

feature Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing characteristic of a software item ...

of sounds that have distinctively extended duration compared with other sounds. There are

long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...

as well as long consonants (the latter are often called ''geminates''). Many languages do not have distinctive length. Among the languages that have distinctive length, there are only a few that have both distinctive vowel length and distinctive consonant length. It is more common that there is only one or that they depend on each other. The languages that distinguish between different lengths have usually long and short sounds. The Mixe languages are widely considered to have three distinctive levels of vowel length, as do Estonian, some Low German/ Low Saxon varieties in the vicinity of

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

and some

Moselle Franconian __NOTOC__ Moselle Franconian (german: Moselfränkisch, lb, Muselfränkesch) is a West Central German language, part of the Central Franconian languages area, that includes Luxembourgish. It is spoken in the southern Rhineland and along the ...

and Ripuarian Franconian varieties. Strictly speaking, a pair of a long sound and a short sound should be identical except for their length. In certain languages, however, there are pairs of

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s that are traditionally considered to be long-short pairs even though they differ not only in length, but also in quality, for instance English "long e" which is (as in ''feet'' ) vs. "short i" which is (as in ''fit'' ) or German "long e" which is (as in ''Beet'' 'garden bed') vs. "short e" which is (as in ''Bett'' 'sleeping bed'). Also, tonal contour may reinforce the length, as in Estonian, where the over-long length is concomitant with a tonal variation resembling tonal stress marking. In transcription in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

, long vowels or consonants are notated with the length sign (

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

U+02D0 MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON) after the letter.

Diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s may occur over either the base letter, the length sign, or both. For example, in some non-rhotic varieties of English the /t/ of the word ''party'' may be nearly

elided In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...

, with just some breathy-voice remaining, in which case it may be transcribed .Heselwood (2013) ''Phonetic transcription in theory and practice'' p. 13. When both length and tone are moraic, a tone diacritic may appear twice, as in (falling tone on a long vowel). A morpheme may be reduced to length plus nasalization, in which case a word might be transcribed . If the length is morphemic, the morphemes would be and . In this non-linear

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, the feature of length is often not a feature of a specific sound segment, but rather of the whole syllable.

References

{{Suprasegmentals Phonology

See also

References