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Re: Stress question

From:dirk elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 25, 2001, 17:29
On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Muke Tever wrote:

> How do languages over time change the way their words are stressed? > > That is, if I wanted to change the position of a word's stress (or word > stress in general) in a daughter conlang, what are some realistic ways this > can be accomplished? [Obviously I know nothing about this.] There was talk > about syllables or moras and feet--does that work for this? [Whatever.]
If you have a rule whereby unstressed syllables lose their vowels, the stress will move. For example, imagine that you have a word in some language [.t@.'rI.fIk.], where stress is on the second syllable (by regular rule, presumably). Now if the vowel of the first syllable were to disappear, the stress would then fall on the first syllable of the word: [.'trI.fIk.]. It might seem like a cheap trick, but if it happens frequently enough, new generalizations governing stress placement will be the result. Languages with regular stress systems (meaning that stress is predictably placed in a particular place) usually reckon stress by counting something -- typically syllables or morae. If a language changed what it counted from morae to syllables or vice versa, then the result would be a change in stress patterns. The neutralization of a long/short vowel distinction could trigger a change from mora to syllable counting, for instance. Dirk -- Dirk Elzinga dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu "The strong craving for a simple formula has been the undoing of linguists." - Edward Sapir

Replies

Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
Matthew Kehrt <matrix14@...>