Re: Stress shift

From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
> To continue plague the list with more questions about
naturalness/plausibility,
> the development of Steienzh as currently envisaged requires that the language
> within a relatively short period (a few centuries at the maximum) moved the
> formerly phonemic stress (which could occur on any stem syllable, as well as
on
> certain affixes) to the initial syllable of words, whereupon it started pretty
> drastic reductions of unstressed vowels. Is there any natlang precedent for a
> such change? I'm able to invoke rather heavy substratum influences, if that
> helps.
It happened twice in the (pre?)history of Latin:

First a change from PIE stress to initial stress,
   (after which all short medial syllables were reduced (to e before two
successive consonants (except short *i remains) and before *r, *s > *r, and *N,
and to 'o' > 'u' before *l and *w); then they reduce further, with *e > *i
before other single consonants, hence pairs like amicus/inimicus)

Then from initial stress to the familiar 23/3R(3+) 1L(2-) scheme.  w00t.

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/

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