Long vowel followed by っ


I've noticed that it seems rare to have a long vowel followed by a geminate
consonant (っ + consonant). The only example I can think of is when attaching a
suffix like 〜って to a word ending in a long vowel (e.g. 東京って). Does this ever
occur word-internally in Japanese? If so, is there a list of examples of this?




Yes, it happens word-internally in Japanese, but it's quite rare. As you
probably know, Old Japanese had neither geminate consonants nor long vowels
(as far as the best contemporary reconstructions can determine). Pretty much
all the geminate consonants in today's Japanese can be traced to (i) more or
less well-understood series of changes like the one that turned /omopite/ into
modern /omoQte/ "thinking"; (ii) features of vernacular speech like the one
that turned /futofara/ into /futoQpara/ "generous"; or (iii) loanwords like
/kappa/ "raincoat" (< Portuguese "capa") and /ryuQkusaQku/ "rucksack".

Meanwhile, long vowels are similar: they're mostly places where an intervening
consonant was lost (/opo/ -> /oo/ "big"), vernacular features like /kakaa/
"mother", or from loanwords (Japanese pronunciations of Chinese words,
basically). (Oh, and I guess you can add onomatopoeia to both those lists of
sources, since anything can happen in onomatopoeia.)

So to have a single word which has a long vowel followed by a geminate
consonant, you need to have two such places occurring in succession, which is
relatively rare but not unheard of. One places you might predict their
presence, and be correct, is in the -te form of non-vowel-stem verbs
containing a long vowel before an /-u/ or /-ru/ or /-tu/ ending, and indeed
this is what you find: /oou/ "cover" or /hooru/ "release", become /ootte/ or
/hootte/ respectively.

Similarly, there are plenty of vernacular words (or ex-vernacular words long
since accepted into the standard written register) where a long vowel happens
to come just before a geminate consonant: /ooQpira/ "open(ly)", /tookyooQko/
"Tokyo native".

(There are probably also loanwords containing this pattern in their original
form, although none occur to me right now.)

I'm not aware of any list of words like this. Someone studying a particular
type of construction, like the gemination of the second item in compound
vernacular words like /ooQpira/, would make such a list to trawl it for
unexpected regularities, but a comprehensive list of any /V:Q/ sequences would
have so many different types of words in it it's hard to see what use it could
be.




Yes, it happens word-internally in Japanese, but it's quite rare. As you
probably know, Old Japanese had neither geminate consonants nor long vowels
(as far as the best contemporary reconstructions can determine). Pretty much
all the geminate consonants in today's Japanese can be traced to (i) more or
less well-understood series of changes like the one that turned /omopite/ into
modern /omoQte/ "thinking"; (ii) features of vernacular speech like the one
that turned /futofara/ into /futoQpara/ "generous"; or (iii) loanwords like
/kappa/ "raincoat" (< Portuguese "capa") and /ryuQkusaQku/ "rucksack".

Meanwhile, long vowels are similar: they're mostly places where an intervening
consonant was lost (/opo/ -> /oo/ "big"), vernacular features like /kakaa/
"mother", or from loanwords (Japanese pronunciations of Chinese words,
basically). (Oh, and I guess you can add onomatopoeia to both those lists of
sources, since anything can happen in onomatopoeia.)

So to have a single word which has a long vowel followed by a geminate
consonant, you need to have two such places occurring in succession, which is
relatively rare but not unheard of. One places you might predict their
presence, and be correct, is in the -te form of non-vowel-stem verbs
containing a long vowel before an /-u/ or /-ru/ or /-tu/ ending, and indeed
this is what you find: /oou/ "cover" or /hooru/ "release", become /ootte/ or
/hootte/ respectively.

Similarly, there are plenty of vernacular words (or ex-vernacular words long
since accepted into the standard written register) where a long vowel happens
to come just before a geminate consonant: /ooQpira/ "open(ly)", /tookyooQko/
"Tokyo native".

(There are probably also loanwords containing this pattern in their original
form, although none occur to me right now.)

I'm not aware of any list of words like this. Someone studying a particular
type of construction, like the gemination of the second item in compound
vernacular words like /ooQpira/, would make such a list to trawl it for
unexpected regularities, but a comprehensive list of any /V:Q/ sequences would
have so many different types of words in it it's hard to see what use it could
be.

