Re: THEORY: final features, moras, and roots [was: it's what I do]

Togonakamane@AOL.COM wrote:

>hiragana: syllabic characters, used for native words and for grammatical
>affixes on words written in kanji. When hiragana are written small beside or
>above kanji to mark pronunciation, they are called (I think) rubii or
>okurigana (I might be wrong; okurigana may refer to hiragana used in affixes).
The pronunciation markers are called "furigana". "Okurigana" are the affixes.

>I'm afraid I don't know what the roots in the words mean, aside from the fact
>that "kana" in general covers all the syllabic characters,
"Kana" refers to the character, the first part of the words explain what
kind of kana it is. Hiragana (k > g, the general process of "rendaku")
refers to the "stylized" or "cursive" kana. Katakana refers to the "plain"
or "simple" kana. I don't know the exact meaning of those, but those are
the meanings my Japanese Prof told us. "Furi" is a root also found in
_furi_ 'appearance' and _furikae_ 'alternative; substitute'. I haven't the
slightest idea regarding the meaning of "okurigana".

>  from both sets
>(and I suspect "kana" is related to "kanji").
Nope, sorry to say. "Kana" comes from an older form "karina". High vowels
often dropped out of Old Japanese words, and the resulting consonant
cluster simplified. "Kanji" is a compound. "Kan" is found in words
referring to Chinese things, such as in _kanpooyaku_ 'traditional Chinese
medicine'. My Japanese prof told me that it is the same root in _Kankoku_
'Korea'. She said kanji were introduced to Japan through Korea, so "kanji"
actually means "Korean character". This could be true, but I have my
doubts. "Ji" is the word for "character, letter" or "handwriting".




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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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