Re: Stress question

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

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