Re: mora

From:    "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 02:07:24PM -0700, Emily Zilch wrote:
> > i have a linguistic-technical question: i learned that the plural of
> > mora is 'mora' - that it is a native japanese word - when i was
> > learning japanese. you could say 'moras' because that would be normal
> > english (though i'd be more likely, contrarian that i am, to say meren
> > or something similarly irregular - anyone know the cases of earliest
> > Middle English?).
>
> All my references say that the word "mora" is from the Latin word for
> "delay" or "pause".
Yes.  In keeping with this, many prosodic phonologists use <morae>
as the plural of <mora>; <moras> is about equally common in my
experience.

> I assume the Japanese word is a borrowing.
I would think so.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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