Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Matt Pearson wrote:

> 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?
I think so. Of course, in keeping with current fashion in
phonology, I would prefer to handle this all by constraints on
surface strings rather than derivationally, but in this case I
think the end result would be notational variants of the same
analysis.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu