On exceptional stress assignment in Latvian: the case of prefixes (original) (raw)

Interaction between word accent and intonational boundaries in Latvian

TAL2018, Sixth International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, 2018

In Latvian, primary stressed long syllables of content words bear either a level or a falling pitch contour, due to a lexical tonal accent contrast. In this paper we examine the interaction between word accents and intonational boundary tones in Latvian. We assume that intonational contours result from the combination of word-level and utterance-level tones and consider how the word accents are realized in utterances with different pragmatic values, which are in part expressed by choice of boundary tone (L%, H%, HL%). The main result of our investigation is that the existence of a lexical tonal contrast in Latvian introduces some incompatibilities between accentual melodies and intonational boundary tones (e.g. a lexical falling contour on a phrase-final syllable is incompatible with an intonational rise on the same syllable), which are resolved in different ways. Tentatively, we conclude that one resolution is to alter the tonal values of the word accents, in some instances leading to the potential positional neutralization of the contrast. Another strategy is assimilation between boundary tone and word accent. Which tone assimilates to which is left as an open question here.

Structure and stress in the phonology of Russian

1989

This thesis investigates the interaction between phonology and morphology in the stress system of Russian. Russian has an accent-based stress system, in which morphemes are characterized by two accentual properties: [+accented, ±dominant]. Dominant morphemes trigger deaccentuation of the stem to which they attach. Words surface with one stress, regardless of whether they contain zero or several lexically accented morphemes. I show that the stress rule in Russian applies cyclically, assigning stress to the leftmost accented vowel, Words with accented roots have stress fixed on the root. In the inflectional paradigm of words with unaccented roots, stress alternates between the initial and final vowels, depending on the accentual property of the inflectional suffix. I refer to this as mobile stress. In Chapter One I observe an important correlation between stress and the derivational status of words. The generalization is the following: mobile stress occurs only in nonderived words or ...

Lexical Accent in Languages with Complex Morphology

Doctoral Dissertation, UConn, 2020

This dissertation develops a theory of lexical accent where the central role is given to the notion of accent competition as the defining property of lexical accent systems. Languages with complex morphology (traditionally known as ‘polysynthetic’) are the empirical basis for this study as they provide a particularly fruitful ground for investigating the effects of both phonological and morphological factors in the assignment of lexical accent. Novel in-depth analyses are developed for Arapaho (Plains Algonquian), Nez Perce (Sahaptian), Ichishkiin Sɨnwit (Sahaptian), and Choguita Rarámuri (Uto-Aztecan). I argue that accent competition across languages is resolved in formally similar ways and that no idiosyncratic, language-specific analyses for individual lexical accent systems are warranted. It is thus proposed that the idiosyncrasy in lexical accent systems is found in the distribution of underlying accents, but not in the rules of the systems. I propose a typology of lexical accent systems and argue that they fall into one of two types based on the mechanism of accent competition resolution: I. Cyclic: In an accent competition, accent in the outermost derivational layer within the domain wins, or II. Directional: In an accent competition, either the right-most or the left-most accent within the domain wins. The second group of proposals made in this dissertation concerns the status of fundamental properties of stress and prosody – Culminativity and Obligatoriness of stress (Trubezkoy 1939/1960; Hyman 2006, 2009), and primary versus non-primary stress. It has previously been claimed that Culminativity of stress can be breached in highly synthetic languages (e.g. Blackfoot, Stacy 2004; Arapaho, Bogomolets 2014a,b; Mapudungun, Molineaux 2018; Yupik, Woodbury 1987). I argue that stress is in fact always culminative, but Culminativity should be regarded as a macroparameter allowing for a set of language-specific ways to implement it, including a mechanism of clash avoidance and an enforcement of ‘one and only one’ stress within domains smaller than a morphological word. Finally, this dissertation addresses the general structure of the word-level prosodic system. I propose that the word-level prosodic system is not bipartite: primary stress vs. rhythm, but tripartite: primary stress vs. secondary stress vs. rhythm.

English Stress and Underlying Representations

This paper addresses the issue of underlying representations (URs) from a Guierrian perspective and the necessity of taking into account certain orthographic elements which are associated with phonological behaviours related to English stress. We propose that underlying vowels should be represented as abstract phonological objects and that the inclusion of orthographic consonant geminates and final mute into URs should be considered. Additionally, we argue that the phonology should have access to morphosyntactic information, which implies that the input to the phonology should be polystratal. Eventually, after arguing that vowel reduction should occur after stress assignment, we will report the results of studies on vowel reduction and “stress preservation” showing that reduction is not systematic in unstressed syllables and that non-reduction can, in some cases, be attributed to the existence of a full vowel in a morphologically-related word or to a high frequency of the latter.

The role of syntax in stress assignment in Serbo-Croatian

We present and analyse a set of interface phenomena showing important correlations between certain phonological regularities on the one hand and a set of syntactic and semantic properties of the respective expressions on the other. Serbo-Croatian deadjectival nominalizations typically exhibit two different prosodic patterns: 1) prosody faithful to the base i.e. surface prosody of the lexical adjective (e.g. Ispraavnoost 'correctness', derived from Ispraavan 'correct'), 2) a rising span over a long closed penultimate syllable and the syllable following it (e.g. isprAAvnOOst 'correctness'). We formulate a generalization where, all things being equal, nominalised predicational structures correspond to (1), while nominalised stems correspond to (2). The paper provides a formal model of the syntactic and semantic as well as the phonological reality of these nominalisations, and an attempt at explaining these facts.

German Word Stress in Optimality Theory

1998

Stress has always been a recurrent theme in phonology, even more so since Liberman's dissertation (1975), in which the foundations of the metrical theory were established. Liberman's view of stress as a phonetic means of grouping linguistic elements has found considerable agreement in the phonological community. However, the nature of both the groupings and the elements to be grouped is still a matter of debate. In this paper I make the very conventional assumption that syllables are grouped into feet. Studies on stress systems fall into two classes. First, extensive typological studies, like those of Halle and Vergnaud (1987), Hayes (1980, 1995) and Idsardi (1992) for instance, compare the stress systems of a large number of languages and propose parameters of stress assignment and/or feet inventories. The second class of studies examine in detail the stress pattern of a single language or a language family from a theoretical point of view. The present paper falls into the second class. Close studies of individual language stress systems are important since they are a way of testing the validity of metrical theories. Though some languages have been extensively studied and can be claimed to be fairly well understood, this is far from being true of all languages. This paper shows that Optimality Theory (OT) is able to elegantly capture the intricacies of German stress without too many special stipulations. OT is a theory of grammar recently developed by Prince and Smolensky (1993) and McCarthy and Prince (1993a,b, 1994, 1995), who have applied it to phonological facts from different languages. So far, the theory has been very successful in accounting for different aspects of phonology in several languages, particularly in the area of stress and related phenomena (see for instance the analyses proposed in Hammond 1995,

Morphology-phonology interplay in lexical stress assignment: Ichishkiin Si -nwit

Acta Linguistica Academica, 2021

This paper presents a novel analysis of the stress system of Ichishkiin Sɨnwit (Sahaptian). Ichishkiin Sɨnwit has been previously analyzed as a unique example of a stress system requiring a ranking of the Affix Faithfulness constraints over the Root Faithfulness constraints. I argue, however, that such idiosyncratic stress mechanisms are not necessary. Instead, I propose that accent assignment is cyclic: Underlying accent in the outermost derivational layer within the relevant domain wins. A central role in this analysis belongs to (i) the underlying specification of morphemes for accent, and to (ii) morpho-prosodic domains. The current proposal additionally offers an insight into the role of morpho-prosodic domains in the hiatus resolution strategies.