Re: Pronouncing Tokana (was RE: Importance of stress)

David Bell wrote:

>> Oh my, all this talk of stress has suddenly made me realize that I have been
>> mispronouncing Matt's conlang all these years.
>>
>> Assuming a VC-avoiding syllabification, we have Tokana [to.ka.na].  With the
>> Latin stress rule we get [to'ka.na].  All these years I have been calling it
>> [to.kan'a].
I'm not sure whether your little apostrophe stress marker is supposed to
go on the preceding or following syllable here, so to avoid confusion I'll
use capital letters to indicate the stressed syllable:  Tokana is [to.KA.na].
The stress rule in Tokana is:  "Stress the final syllable of the word if
that syllable ends in a consonant or diphthong, otherwise stress the
penultimate syllable" (so a bit like the Latin stress pattern, but with
everything shifted one syllable to the right).

Examples:

tana    [TA.na]
malka   [MAL.ka]
totsat  [to.TSAT]
ikoi    [i.KOJ]
malkain [mal.KAJN]
uluma   [u.LU.ma]
ulumat  [u.lu.MAT]

>I don't recall if the following is even vaguely close to what Matt
>intended, but I say (I *think*), in a fairly close x-sampa:
>
>WARNING: This is my first attempt at closer-than-normal transcription!
>
>/t_d_hoU_^<M>"k_hA:\<ML>.n6<L>/
I'm afraid I can't begin to decipher that.  "Tokana" is pronounced with
stress on the penultimate syllable.  The /t/ and /k/ are both unaspirated,
and thus often sound voiced to an English speaker's ear (e.g. my boyfriend
imitates my pronunciation by calling it "Dogana").  As for the vowels,
the /o/ is a short back rounded lax mid-vowel, similar to the "au" in
"caught" (for those speakers who distinguish "caught" from "cot"), or
else like the "o" in "sort".  The /a/ is as in "father".  There is
no appreciable difference in length or quality between the stressed
/a/ in the second syllable and the unstressed /a/ in the final syllable.

Matt.