Estelachan@AOL.COM wrote:
>well, most of this final features evades me completely, but mora I know
>about. Japanese is a nice example because there's no such thing as syllables
>(internally)....only moras.
That's debatable. As a matter of fact, I find it easier to discuss the
distribution of consonants and vowels in terms of syllables than in morae.
> "mora" may actually be the Japanese term.
>Japanese "syllable" structure is (C)(y)V(same V/n)..... but something that
>went C(y)Vn would actually be two moras, because a mora is strictly C(y)V, V,
>or "n".
You are forgetting geminates -- they are also moraic.
>The Japanese syllabry (hiragana) actually has characters for moras,
>not syllables....
Indeed. So don't forget the _tu_ character used to mark geminate consonants.
>so the word "kanji" or "kanzi" (Japanese ideogram[s]) is three mora: ka-n-zi.
>the borrowed word for party, "paatii", is four mora: pa-a-ti-i.
And the word _chotto_ is also three morae: cho-t-to.
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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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