Re: Stress question

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 11:29:36AM -0600, dirk elzinga wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Muke Tever wrote:
>
> > How do languages over time change the way their words are stressed?
[snip interesting stuff]

How about secondary accents? I've been thinking of this accent change
scenario:

To start with, the primary accent must fall on the final, penult, or
antepenult, but never before. Also, secondary accents can occur, generally
every other syllable counting from the primary accent. Thus:

/"ataku/ would be realized as ["ata%ku] (% marks secondary accent)
/a"taku/ would be realized as [a"taku]
/jama"nartaku/ would be realized as [%jama"narta%ku]
*/"afurasi/ would be illegal since the primary accent falls before the
penult
etc.

But clitics and suffixes could break the system. E.g.:
/"ataku/ + /na/ = */"atakuna/ -- illegal
One way to deal with that would be to move the primary stress to the
antepenult, i.e. /a"takuna/. But an idea I tend to prefer is to make the
would-be primary accent secondary, and then place a "new" primary accent
elsewhere. Thus:

*/"atakuna/ -> */%atakuna/ -- according to the rule by which the secondary
accents are separated from the primary-accented syllable by an odd number of
syllables, there is only one position where the primary accent could occur:
/%ata"kuna/.

Does this make sense? Does it seem realistic?

--
Eric Christopherson, a.k.a. Contrarian Conlanger Rakko ^_^

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