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

In a message dated 10/3/00 2:00:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
dirk.elzinga@M.CC.UTAH.EDU writes:

>  I'm especially confused about the part involving counting
>  > morias... what *are* root nodes and morias??
>
>  A mora is a unit of syllable weight. A syllable with a long vowel has
>  two moras, while a syllable with a short vowel has one. In many
>  languages, syllables which are closed or checked by a consonant also
>  have two moras. Linguists often refer to syllables with two moras as
>  "heavy" and syllables with a single mora as "light."
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. "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". The Japanese syllabry (hiragana) actually has characters for moras,
not syllables.... if you've ever heard singing in Japanese, you'll hear each
mora as a seperate syllable, including "n". In fact, "n" can be a whole word.

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.
...even though they have only two *syllables* each.

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