Re: Bisyllabic or Disyllabic?

On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 09, 2000 at 06:51:08PM +0100, Raymond Brown wrote:
> >
> > Therefor IMHO 'disyllabic' is the preferred form (indeed, my dictionary
> > does not list *bisyllabic); to me saying 'bisyllabic' would be just as odd
> > as saying *biphthong   ;)
>
> LOL!! "biphthong" sounds funny, indeed. Almost sounds like a pun on
> "beef-thong"... Though I wonder, are there such things as triphthongs?
As a matter of fact, Shoshoni shows the following (where <e> is a
high, central unrounded vowel):

        teaih 'small'
        peaittempeh 'old'
        neaippeh 'wind'
        tiai 'die.SG-SUBJ'

If I had the dictionary handy, I could give you a handful of others.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu