Re: CHAT: Importance of stress

> From: Irina Rempt
>
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Matt Pearson wrote:
>
> > Sounds a bit like Tokana.  Tokana has a regular stress rule ("stress the
> > final syllable if the word ends in a consonant or a glide, otherwise
> > stress the penult")
>
> Valdyan has stress on the stem, or the first syllable of it, with the
> exception that the interrogative prefix _cu-_ ("wh-") wants stress
> and usually gets it, and the diphthong _ai_ is always stressed, even
> when it is not (as it often is) a contraction of -aye-.
>
> There's one notable exception in the pronouns:
>
> ini [i'ni]     - first person dual, "both of us" (regular)
> inini [i'nini] - first person dual inclusive, "you and I" (regular)
> but the latter is shortened to the irregular ['ini] more often than
> not.
>
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.

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].

David

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

"irvorisel in villissen ciroinarrion unastil
senil el findien vivas na elieth en errutharth limie"

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JRRT