peninitial

English

Etymology

Blend of penultimate +‎ initial, treating pen- (from Latin paene (“almost”)) as a prefix.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌpɛnɪˈnɪʃəl/
• Hyphenation: pen‧ini‧tial
• Rhymes: -ɪʃəl

Adjective

peninitial (not comparable)

1. (chiefly linguistics) Falling in the position after initial position; second.
   • 2009, Stéphanie J. Bakker, The Noun Phrase in Ancient Greek: A Functional Analysis of the Order and Articulation of NP Constituents in Herodotus (Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology), Brill, →ISBN, page 74:

     In examples (81) and (82), the postpositive possessives do not occupy the peninitial position in the clause, nor the peninitial position of the NP.

   • 2014, Matthew Gordon, “Disentangling stress and pitch-accent: a typology of prominence at different prosodic levels”, in Harry van der Hulst, editor, Word Stress: Theoretical and Typological Issues, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 109:

     Because the factors conditioning edge repulsion of the pitch peak are relatively weak at the left edge, it is not surprising that peninitial prominence is rare cross-linguistically.

   • 2018, Moreno Mitrović, “Configurational change in Indo-European coordinate constructions”, in Word Order Change (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics), volume 29, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 36:

     I have empirically established that there were two canonical constructions available in IE languages: a head initial and a head peninitial one, the latter with the two mono- and polysydentic subtypes.