Re: Diphthongs (was Re: 3 q's - X-Sampa)

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004 <Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:
> What about the Kiribati sentence Iai uou aia uee ao aua aia ie,
> meaning 'They had two flowers and four sails'!
  Do you know what's the maximal length of a vowel sequence in a
single word in Kiribati? My sources know only clusters of four,
like <tauia> 'to beat (more animate object with an instrument)',
but maybe the construction <tauia-ia> 'to beat them (with an
instrument)' is possible.

  The above word "beats", indeed, the Hungarian <fiaiéi> but in
Hungarian you may repeat predicative possessive suffix <-é> /e:/
and the plural marker of the possessed <-i> infinitely:
<fiaiéiéiéiéiéiéiéiéiéiéi> 'the ones belonging to the ones
belonging to .... his/her sons' is still a well-formed word (but,
of course, is not used in practice).