Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

> From: Matt Pearson
>
> >in amman iar the stress is always penultimate in 2-syllable words, as in
> >niran [nir'an].  In longer words, it occurs penultimately if
> that syllable
> >contains a vowel followed by two or more consonants as in orathval
> >[orrath'val] or a diphthong as in erainin [erain'in].  If the penultimate
> >syllable contains a simple vowel followed by a single consonant
> or another
> >vowel, the stress falls on the syllable before it as in tarnarin
> [tar'narin]
> >and nimroin [nim'roin].  Note that the digrams ch, th, dh, and
> sh represnt a
> >single consonant, tus erathin [er'athin] not [erath'in].  Stress in amman
> >iar is basically quantitative, i.e. syllables are distinguished by vowel
> >length.
>
> Aha!  The old Latin/Quenya stress rule!  A simpler way to state it would
> be:  "Stress the penultimate syllable if heavy, otherwise stress the
> antepenult."  Amman Iar, like Tokana and numerous natlangs, appears to
> distinguish 'heavy' syllables (those ending in a consonant or diphthong/
> long vowel) and 'light' syllables (those ending in a short vowel).
I'd say amman iar is in good company.

> >Case endings (with notable exceptions among pronoun) cause
> gemination of the
> >final root consonant and thereby shift the stress, e.g. adhan [adh'an],
> >adhan+ERG > adhan+e > adhanne [adhann'e].
>
> I wonder if maybe the stress shift is the primary change here, while
> gemination is the concomitant change:  Case endings trigger a shift in
> stress to the final syllable of the root.  Amman Iar metrical rules
> prohibit light penultimate syllables from carrying stress, and so the
> final consonant of the root undergoes gemination in order to transform
> the penultimate light syllable into a heavy syllable.
>
> If I were doing a linguistic analysis of Amman Iar, I might be tempted
> to analyse gemination this way.  I guess the question to ask is:  What
> happens if the root ends in a diphthong or consonant cluster?  Or do
> such roots not exist?
I love it!  I absolutely love it!  Leave it to Matt to come up with a better
analysis of my conlang than I have myself.  In fact, while roots ending in
diphthongs don't exist, those ending in consonant clusters do and lo and
behold, they don't geminate, thus sarn+DAT > sarn+en > sarnen not *sarnnen.
Under my analysis these had to be dealt with as exceptions, under yours,
they are quite regular.  Occam's Razor at its finest.

Thanks Matt
David

David. E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
dbell@graywizard.net
www.graywizard.net

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