Re: OT: Spanish "me da feliz"

Tristan McLeay wrote:
>Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
> > Words that end in a consonant other than <n> or <s> have ultimate
> > stress. (And the fact that the <z> is pronounced as [s] in Latin
> > American Spanish doesn't mean it counts as <s> for this purpose)
>
>Why?
Because..........

What is special about n and s that they repel the stress? Is this
>purely historic and more of a coincidence or was there a period in the
>language when n and s actively repelled the stress?
>
It has to do I think with the fact that they are the only final C's to
survive from Vulg.Latin-- -s in plurals and in 1st pl. and 2nd person sg/pl.
verbal endings, and -n reduced from 3d pl. verbal -nt. True, these endings
are very important in the morphology.  IIRC native Span. words may only have
final s, n, r, l, d, z, and rare y (the latter 5 regularly take final stress
(and no need to mark it) because they were usu. followed by a V in Latin, at
least in common nouns/adjs.-- place names like Madrid, I don't know the
origin.) Any other final C takes (unmarked) final stress; if such forms have
penult. stress it must be marked. Ditto for words in -n/-s or a vowel with
final stress-- must be marked.

unmarked final stress:
(rey king) virrey viceroy
final and all N/Adj. with -l
amar (inf.)
hablad (imper. pl), Madrid (monosyl. like sed thirst don't need to be
marked)
feliz, pl. felices
bivac bivouac (a Fr. loan)
reloj watch, clock (the only word with -j, prob. < Fr. orloge)

Marked final
café
Alcalá
alacrán scorpion, melocotón  peach
Tomás
venís you-pl come
baladí nonsense
amó he loved, and all other regular preterit 3sing. in -ó.

Marked penult or other:
día day, continúo I continue-- marked to show non-diphthongal
pronunciation. Note continuo [kon'tinwo] continuous
amábamos, amábais 1pl. 2pl imperf. < from Latin -á:bamus, -á:batis
Cádiz
cáliz chalice (I think; religious vocab.),
álbum
régimen pl. regímenes (learnèd vocab., an exception)
básico and other Greco-Latin derived adjs. in -ico
Gómez, Rodríguez, Díaz and other names in -ez
Most of the exceptions, as you see, are loans of one sort of another, or
proper/place names.

Una de las lenguas más bellas del mundo.
ObConlang!! Prevli: namnu nuStateta prevlit bak pinen