Re: Stress Borrowing?
| From: | Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, March 19, 2003, 1:56 |
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In a message dated 3/17/2003 6:54:53 AM Eastern Standard Time,
robertg@KNOLOGY.NET writes:
> Is it a normal or natural thing for languages to change word stress
> placement due to contact from surrounding languages? For example,
> let's say language X has penultimate stress and language Y and
> language Z both have ultimate stress. Would it be usual for
> language X to shift the stress to the ultimate syllable?
>
>
I'm almost certain I read about this happening somewhere, but I don't recall
the reference. In general, it would probably be rash to claim that any
feature is absolutely immune from diffusing between languages in contact, so
I'd bet we'd find stress borrowing _somewhere_.
Doug