Siouan Long Vowls

[Rankin, Robert L]

> As far as I can tell Crow has only two degrees of length.  High and
low pitch vowels may be either long or short; falling pitch vowels are only
long.

>Are there ever cases of two adjacent identical vowels?

The cases I was thinking about were those in which a morpheme begins or ends
with a long vowel and the adjacent morpheme has the same vowel. This
threesome may just resolve into one long V however. that's pretty common in
languages with length. Contour pitches requiring long vowels (or other heavy
syllables ending in a sonorant) is another common feature.

My limited listening to Chiwere and Dhegiha has some long vowels involving
falling pitch but others having level pitch. We can't assume that the two
are necessarily concommitant.

I guess it's time to encourage some poor soul to do a dissertation on
accent, length and laryngeals alone. :-)

Bob