Re: Ustekkli: a new project (longish)

Dirk:
> syllable contact
>
> The driving force of Ustekkli prosody is syllable contact. Syllable
> contact refers to the nature of the connection between a vowel and a
> following consonant. Two kinds of contact are distinguished: close
> contact and loose contact (these are translations of Jespersen's 1912
> 'fester Anschluß' and 'loser Anschluß'). Close contact describes the
> connection between a short vowel and a consonant within the same
> syllable, while loose contact describes i) the connection between a
> long vowel and a consonant within the syllable or ii) the connection
> between a vowel of any length and a consonant in the next syllable.
> (Trubetzkoy 1939 [1969] discusses this kind of prosodic distinction
> and makes the claim that loose contact is the unmarked member of the
> pair -- hence its wider distribution.)
>
> Here is how syllable contact plays out. In Ustekkli, stressed
> syllables must be heavy; this is accomplished by gemination or vowel
> lengthening. The choice between the two depends on if there is close
> contact or loose contact between the vowel of the stressed syllable
> and the following consonant. If there is close contact, the consonant
> is geminated; this creates a heavy syllable:
>
> nikk-r  /nikr/  ["nIk.k=r]  (close contact)
>
> If there is loose contact between the vowel of the stressed syllable
> and the following consonant, the vowel is lengthened, which also
> creates a heavy syllable:
>
> nik-r   /nikr/  ["ni:.k=r]  (loose contact)
>
> Alternations between rising and falling diphthongs also depend on
> close/loose contact: close contact requires a rising diphthong; loose
> contact requires a falling diphthong:
>
> oatt-n  /oatn/  ["wat.t=n]  (close contact)
> oat-n   /oatn/  ["o@_^.t=n]  (loose contact)
>
> The distinction between close and loose contact is represented by
> orthographic gemination; a vowel followed by an orthographic geminate
> is in close contact with the following consonant, while a vowel which
> is not followed by an orthographic geminate is in loose contact with
> the following consonant.
I presume that close v. loose contact makes lexical contrasts? But
what is the rationale for the analysis in terms of syllable contact?
Why not see the oatt:oat contrast as a VCC:VVC contrast that is
neutralized if the syllable loses stress? Is it because there are
morphological alterations that can toggle a single stem between close
and loose, or something like that? If that happens, then the process
looks to me like the morphologically-conditioned alternations of the
CV template that are famous from Semitic.

--And.

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