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In phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that have distinctively extended duration compared with other sounds. There are long vowels 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. According to some linguists, Estonian and some Sami languages have three phonemic (meaning-distinguishing) lengths for consonants and vowels. Some Low German/Low Saxon varieties in the vicinity of Hamburg〔Stellmacher, 1973〕 and some Moselle Franconian〔Page 116 in Elmar Ternes: ''ドイツ語:Einführung in die Phonologie.'' ドイツ語:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1987, ISBN 3-534-09576-6〕 and Ripuiarian Franconian varieties do, too. 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 phonemes 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, diacritics 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, with just some breathy-voice remaining, in which case it may be trascribed .〔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 non-linear phonology, the feature of length is often not a feature of a specific sound segment, but rather of the whole syllable. ==See also== * Chroneme * Extra-short 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Length (phonetics)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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