Re: Nasals (again!) and a stress-question

Markus Miekk-oja wrote:
> I think, however, that this phoneme would easily get assimilated by
> following/preceeding stops, and either prenasalise or "nasally-releasealise"
> depending on position. Also vowels would (probably) be affected. Right?
Quite probably.  I would imagine that "na" or "an", for instance, might
become /a~/.  Or perhaps something like "akna" would become /akNa/.
Perhaps "n" would have no independant pronunciation, but merely nasalize
preceding sounds, so that "akna" = /aNa/ (or /agNa/), "anda" = /a~da/.
Perhaps it couldn't occur intervocalically.  Another possibility is that
when intervocalic, it is a nasal pharyngeal sound?

> The last closed syllable (of the root) is always stressed. If no closed
> syllables exist, the penultimate will be stressed. One-syllable words, are
> only stress accented and several aren't stressed at all (pronouns, etc.).
>
> Does this seem like a naturalistic stress-rule? Why or why not?
I'm not sure what you mean by "stress accented".  But it sounds very
reasonable to me.  Many language tend to place stress on "heavy"
syllables, which often mean closed.