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Re: [westasianconlangs] Gemination in Ethiopic (was: Gedeh letters)

On Tuesday, January 13, 2004, at 10:06  PM, Isaac Penzev wrote:

Yitzik adds:
On Tuesday, January 13, 2004 9:45 AM I wrote:

Steg Belsky wrote:

If i remember correctly, i think my Comparative Semitic Languages
professor said that Ethiopic (or at least Ge`ez) lost gemination at
some point in history, so the script has no way to represent it.
I'm not sure it's true at the moment. From what I heard, both Ge`ez and Amaregna has gemination, but it is not represented in script. When I come home, I'll give 
a look into my Linguistic Dictionary for more accuracy.


The passage from the Linguistic Dictionary says:
"Ethio-Semitic verbal system is characterized with gemination of penultimate root consonant in forms without meaning of 'intensive', 'full-voweled' model of imperfective (yə1ä22ə3) [...] Affirmative perfective stem in South E.-S. langs with gemination of the second root consonant is opposed to a non-geminated stem in North E.-S. langs." 
-- Yitzik


Ohwell, guess i did misremember.  Bleah.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "i am... me."
     ~ 'eden' by guster