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

Togonakamane@AOL.COM wrote:
> well, let's see.....the "t/ts" part I leave to someone with a better
> idea of why
Because you can't have "tu".  [ts] is an allophone of [t] when followed
by u.  Presumably, it was originally [tu], then became [tsu].  But
anyway, the important thing is that [t] and [ts] are the same phoneme
/t/.

> there's really "desu ka" with an almost silent "u".)
Voiceless to be precise.  I've never heard of it actually being omitted,
just made voiceless.

But anyway, the question still holds - why is something like _appa_
written as a-tsu-pa?  And was there always the distinction of size, I
wonder?  Or was there a period when there'd be ambiguity between
_atsupa_ and _appa_?

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