Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

Dirk wrote:

>The preference for syllables to coincide with morpheme
>boundaries seems also to be operative in Amman Iar, but in that
>language, the resolution of the conflict is different. Rather
>than delete consonants which find themselves on the wrong side
>of the morpheme=syllable boundary, Amman Iar instead prefers to
>violate NoCoda; that is, the congruence of syllable and morpheme
>boundaries takes precedence over an unmarked syllable structure.
>
>I think this is rather cool, myself.
So do I!  So Dirk:  How can we reconcile all of this with the
tantalising similarities between the Amman Iar stress rule
and the Latin stress rule, as well as the operation of the
Amman Iar gemination rule?

How about this: Inflected words in Amman Iar are initially
syllabified in accordance with NoCoda and other constraints
which enforce an unmarked syllable structure.  Stress
assignment and gemination then operate on the basis of
that representation.  Finally, a "syllable-boundary
readjustment" rule (SBRR) is applied, which reassigns
certain onset consonants to coda position, in accordance
with a constraint which enforces congruence between
morpheme and syllable boundaries.  A sample derivation
would look like this:

Take a noun like "adhan" = "man":

        'a.dhan

Adding the ergative suffix "-e" triggers a stress shift
to the right, together with resyllabification:

        a.'dha.ne

Because of a constraint against stressed penultimate
syllables being light, gemination takes place:

        a.'dhan.ne

Finally, the SBRR is applied, yielding the correct surface
form:
        a.'dhann.e

Something like this might work, yes?

Matt.