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Re: What is gemination? What are geminates?

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 7, 2000, 6:07
Kristian's reply to me:
>>Interesting ex. Any idea how [b:ulE] is pronounced? .... I'd be
willing to bet this plural form
>>originated as a reduplicated form.... bVbulE. (First thought was, this
is
>>*bulan with an odd, but not impossible, sound change; is [-an] > E seen >>elsewhere? There's also *bulaj (= US usage *bulay) 'white, pale', much >>easier phonologically. > >Here is what Ladefoged writes in "The Sounds of the World's Languages": > >"Word-initial long stops are rare, but they exist, for example, in Pattani >Malay, which has a length distinction for initial consonants. Illustrative >examples are given... > > SHORT LONG > [bulE] "moon" [b:ulE] "many months" > [kato?] "to strike" [k:ato?] "frog" > [labO] "to make a profit" [l:abO] "spider" > [makE] "to eat" [m:akE] "to be eaten" > [siku] "elbow" [s:iku] "hand tool" >
(snip interesting details) Ho! On the basis of two examples, a generalization: evidently Pattani Ml. _does_ shift [-an] > [E]; [bulE, makE] = Ml. bulan, makan. And these strengthen my theory that the C: probably arises from reduplication, which can be seen throughout the AN area as a means of forming plurals, animal names, and instrumentals inter alia. Only "passive" [m:akE] < ?mV-makE is a little odd. Some Ml. dialects, and the oldest Ml. inscriptions, have a passive formant ni-; I wonder if this could be <*/ni-makan/ (via **n@makan > **nm.... > mm.... ) I've said it before: despite Malay being well-known and widely spoken, we know shockingly little about its dialects.