and as consonant-vowel sequences rather than rising diphthongs. In that interpretation, Italian has only falling diphthongs (phonemically at least, cf. Synaeresis) and no triphthongs. Coda Italian permits a small number of coda consonants. Outside of loanwords, the permitted consonants are: The first element of any geminate, e.g. tutto ('everything'), avvertire ('to warn'). A nasal consonant that is either (word-finally) or one that is homorganic to a following consonant. E.g. Con ('with'), un poco ('a little'), ampio ('ample'). Liquid consonants and . E.g. per ('for'), alto ('high'). (though not before fricatives). E.g. pesca ('peach'); but asfalto ('asphalt'). There are also restrictions in the types of syllables that permit consonants in the syllable coda. explains that neither geminates, nor coda consonants with "rising sonority" can follow falling diphthongs. However, "rising diphthongs" (or sequences of an approximant and a following vowel) may precede clusters with falling sonority, particularly those that stem historically from an obstruent+liquid onset. For example: biondo ('blond') chiosco ('kiosk') chiostro ('cloister') chioccia ('broody hen') fianco ('hip') Syntactic gemination Word-initial consonants are geminated after certain vowel-final words in the same prosodic unit. There are two types of triggers of initial gemination: some unstressed particles, prepositions, and other monosyllabic words, and any oxytonic polysyllabic word. As an example of the first type, casa ('house') is pronounced but a casa ('homeward') is pronounced . This is not a purely phonological process, as no gemination is cued by the la in la casa 'the house' , and there is nothing detectable in the structure of the preposition a to account for the gemination. This type normally originates in language history: modern a, for example, derives from Latin AD, and today's geminate in is a continuation of what was once a simple assimilation. Gemination cued by final stressed vowels, however, is transparently phonological. Final stressed vowels are short by nature, if a consonant follows a short stressed vowel the syllable must be closed, thus the consonant following the final stressed vowel is drawn to lengthen: parlò portoghese 's/he spoke Portuguese' vs. parla portoghese 's/he speaks Portuguese'. To summarize, syntactic gemination occurs in standard Italian mainly in the following two cases: After word-final stressed vowels (words such as sanità, perché, poté, morì and so on). After the words a, che, chi, come, da, do, dove, e, fa, fra, fu, gru, ha, ho, ma, me, mo' (in the phrase a mo' di), no, o, qua, qualche, qui,