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

Nik Taylor wrote:


> > 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.
It is omitted quite frequently by younger speakers.

>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_?
None of my references say, but the following looks promising.

Many of the geminates are the result of deleting a high vowel (u and i),
and then assimilating the first consonant.  For example, _kekka_ 'result'
comes from _ketuka_ which was a Chinese-Japanese compound.  The same is
true of _kokkoo_ 'diplomatic relations' from _kokukoo_ and _hatten_
'development' from _hatuten_.  The word _kana_ 'symbol, character' (as
found in katakana and hiragana) comes from _karina_ -- presumably it went
to _kanna_ > _kana_.  Perhaps they just generalized the _tu_ character for
all such occurrences once the origin became opaque.


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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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