# Verbs with heavy penult



## Saley

Hello!

Does Japanese have any verbs whose penultimate* syllable in the dictionary form is heavy**?
* second to last
** bimoraic, i.e. contains a long vowel or ends in a consonant​
Some hypothetical examples of the verbs I’m looking for:
いたあく _i.taa.ku_
いたっく _i.tak.ku_
いたんく _i.tan.ku_
(periods mark syllable boundaries)​
If such verbs exist, how do they look like in the past tense (with the た _-ta_ suffix)?


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## 森人さん

Please provide an example if possible.　Cooljugator: The Smart Conjugator in Japanese


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## Saley

I can’t give an example of a real verb of this kind because I don’t know any, and this is the reason for my question.

Any verb with the same composition of the last two syllables as in my pseudo-verbs in the original post will work for me.


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## Flaminius

How about too.ru (pass; itr.), too.su (pass; tr.), koo.ru (freeze; itr.)?


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## Saley

Flaminius said:


> How about too.ru (pass; itr.), too.su (pass; tr.), koo.ru (freeze; itr.)?


Thank you! So these verbs are of the structure *[...].Cvv.Cv* and they have the _godan_ conjugation.

通す _too.su_ (the stem ends in _s_) doesn’t present any problems in the formation of the past tense: 通した _too.shi.ta_.

But 通る _too.ru_ and 凍る _koo.ru_ (the stem ends in _r_), if we followed ordinary rules, would produce 通った _toot.ta_ and 凍った _koot.ta_ with a super-heavy (trimoraic, CvvC) initial syllable. Are these past forms nevertheless correct? I thought there were no words with super-heavy syllables in Japanese apart from recent borrowings.

And can you think of any *[...].CvC.Cv* verbs in the dictionary form?


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## Flaminius

The past forms for 通る and 凍る are regularly derived as you say.


Saley said:


> with a super-heavy (trimoraic, CvvC) initial syllable. Are these past forms nevertheless correct?


I never knew of discussions on the length of Japanese syllables, but are you saying that long syllables are somehow unacceptable according to phonetics?

I can clearly differenciate _totta_ (took) from _tōtta_ (went past) in production and comprehension.  Maybe the long vowel for _tōtta_ is slightly less long than that in _tōru_, but of course I haven’t used any device than my senses.

It is also possible that diaeresis comes into play to divide a long syllable for an easier pronunciation.  In a conscious or careful speech, you may say; to.ot.ta with the pitch accent on the first, and the stress accent on the second, syllables.

The vowels are separated by either a glottal stop [ʔ] or a bilabial approximant [w].  An example for the latter epenthesis is _bawai_ (< _baai_; 場合), where accidental juxtaposition does not lead to a long vowel, but to emphasis of the syllabic division.

By the way, I cannot recall polysyllabic verbs with the long penultimate syllable.


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## Saley

Flaminius said:


> I never knew of discussions on the length of Japanese syllables, but are you saying that long syllables are somehow unacceptable according to phonetics?


I had an impression that trimoraic syllables are rare based on what I had read about Japanese, but I can’t remember where exactly I might have read it.

I’ve just found some information about this kind of syllables in Алпатов, Вардуль, Старостин (2000). _Грамматика японского языка_. Here’s my translation of an excerpt from the chapter called _Syllable Structure_ (p. 83):


> 3) Frequently enough one finds combinations of two consecutive final morae (the first of them is always vocalic and the second one is always consonantal). Such combinations occur in onomatopoetic lexicon (_poottoo akarameru_ ‘to blush strongly’), in some verbal forms (_háitta_ ‘came in’), in expressions like _siróinda_ (‘(This) is white’), and in modern loanwords (_kuintetto_ ‘quintet’).





Saley said:


> And can you think of any *[...].CvC.Cv* verbs in the dictionary form?


Perhaps they don’t exist, since in the past tense they would have three consonants in a row which seems to be impossible in Japanese.


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## 森人さん

@Saley regard instead of regarde!


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## Saley

Thou shalt not regarde my signature as an example of moderne spellynge.


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## Flaminius

> 3) Frequently enough one finds combinations of two consecutive final (comment by Flam: long?) morae (the first of them is always vocalic and the second one is always consonantal). Such combinations occur in onomatopoetic lexicon (_poottoo akarameru_ ‘to blush strongly’), in some verbal forms (_háitta_ ‘came in’), in expressions like _siróinda_ (‘(This) is white’), and in modern loanwords (_kuintetto_ ‘quintet’).


@Saley Of the three cases, only the first one _poott*o*_ is valid. Other examples are in fact pairs of two short vowels.  Japanese does not have diphthongs.



Saley said:


> And can you think of any *[...].CvC.Cv* verbs in the dictionary form?


You cannot have a long-by-position penultimate syllable for a conjugated item (verbs and adjectives).  I am surer of this than my judgment about the non-existence of a verb, with a penult long by nature, that is three or more syllables long.



Saley said:


> I thought there were no words with super-heavy syllables in Japanese apart from recent borrowings.


It's not a verb but there is a type of emphasis that triggers a trimoraic close syllable.  In colloquial Japanese, _hontō_ is ellipted to _honto_, so that the stress accent on the first syllable is slightly more pronounced.  When used emphatically (E.g., He is really a busybody), you can elongate the pause between N and T while building more air pressure behind your alveolar.  In the Japanese glyph, it is written by a small <tsu> after N:
Colloquial: 彼はほんとに口うるさい。
Coll. Emphatic: 彼はほんっとに口うるさい。


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## Saley

Thank you for the information, Flamini!


> combinations of two consecutive final (comment by Flam: long?) morae


I’m not sure I understand your comment. The authors distinguish between two types of morae: *initial* of the shape *Cv* (e.g. _ta_, _ki_, _ʔo_) that every syllable must contain, and *final* subdivided into vocalic of the shape *v* (e.g. _a_, _e_, _o_) and consonantal of the shape *C* (e.g. _m_, _k_, _t_) that are optional. So a super-heavy syllable _poot_ is composed of an initial mora _po_ and two final morae, _o_ and _t_.

For those who didn’t know (like me): ‘long by nature’ = Cvv; ‘long by position’ = CvC.


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## 森人さん

I wonder if these types of words are more common in Japanese dialects.


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## Flaminius

I see, Saley.  Thanks.


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