Re: [QUESTION] Initial Geminants

There's a polynesian language - name 'scapes me - that permits initial
geminants.  It's mentioned in - o blow I've forgotten its name as well - a
book on the Polynesian language family written by a Russian with |k| as the
initial letter.

Those initial geminants are the result of dropping the vowel in those initial
syllables.

Sorry I can't be more helpful than that, but my memory's not up to scratch.

Wesley Parish


On Tue, 04 Jun 2002 21:07, Y.Penzev wrote:
> Shalom y'all!
>
> I had an idea last night to include in one of my conlang projects geminants
> (doubled consonants) like /pp/, /ss/ as separate fonemes, and to have them
> both in intervocal position (like /tassa/:: /tasa/) and in initial position
> (/paka/::/ppaka/). In all my rich collection of data about different
> natlangs I can not find a natlang that permits initial geminants. Have any
> of you ever heard about any natlang that has such feature?
>
> Regards,
> Yitzik
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."