Re: Justifying a stress pattern

Quoting Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>:

> Andreas:
>
> It seems to be a perfectly reasonable stress pattern. In most versions of
> stress theory, the final consonant or syllable *can* be ignored (or rendered
> "extrametrical" to use the technical term) for the purposes of reckoning
> stress. You mentioned Latin -- Latin is a good example of final syllable
> extrametricality: its description is something like "Stress the penult if it
> is heavy; else stress the antepenult." Notice that the final syllable never
> comes into it. In your system, the word-final *consonant* is rendered
> extrametrical; it doesn't count to make a syllable heavy. Palestinian Arabic
> also has this feature. So you can paraphrase your description as: "Stress
> the rightmost heavy syllable, given final consonant extrametricality (where
> a heavy syllable is a syllable containing a long vowel or diphthong, or one
> which is closed by a coda). If there is no heavy syllable, stress the
> initial syllable."
Thank you! Perhaps because meter traditionally counts syllables, making an
entire syllable extrametrical seemed more natural than excluding just a
consonant, but given the natlang precedent, the problem is clearly with me.

 Andreas