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Re: Justifying a stress pattern

From:Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>
Date:Saturday, December 29, 2007, 16:20
I didn't understand this particular sentence of yours:
"The oddity, of course, is that a long final syllable doesn't attract the
stress
if it ends in a short vowel followed by a single consonant."

??? Perhaps you could explain it. :-p

Eugene

2007/12/29, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>:
> > One project of mine that has never progressed much beyond the naming > language > stage is Keshean (Kesheâras). One particularity it has is a system of > stress > placement that seemed to make sense at the time but now strikes me as odd. > Now, > certain real-world languages feature stress patterns that alo strike me as > odd, > but can be explained, or at least compactly described, by moraic theory or > the > like - eg. Latin, where stress falls on the second-to-last mora, ignoring > the > final syllable. Perhaps someone can think of a similar compact description > for > Kesheah stress. The noncompact description might be stated like this: > > i) The stress goes on the last syllable if that contains a long vowel (or > diphthong) or ends in a consonant cluster. > ii) Failing that, the next long syllable to the left. > iii) If all nonfinal syllables are short, stress goes on the first > syllable. > > Some examples (colon marks long vowel, accent stress): > élshas > elshá: > elshaís > aréts > áreda > áredikas > stra:gá:nas > reáxtanas > > ('sh'=/S/, the rest more or less = IPA) > > The oddity, of course, is that a long final syllable doesn't attract the > stress > if it ends in a short vowel followed by a single consonant. The > description > would be simplified if the final consonant, if any, of each word were > ignored - > the stress rule would then be stress on the rightmost long syllable, or on > the > leftmost in the absence of long syllables - but that seems very arbitrary. > > Suggestions? Comments? > > Andreas >

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Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>