Re: quantity triggered vs. quantity sensitive stress

Kristian Jensen wrote:
> The situation is quite different in Lumanesian. It appears that
> stress is what triggers a heavy syllable and not the other way
> around.  The reason for this is that, unlike quantity sensitive
> stress languages, stress in Lumanesian lexemes is consistently
> penultimate (with the exception of monosyllabic lexemes).
> Furthermore, this stressed syllable is consistently a heavy CVC
> syllable (whereas light syllables are CV only).
Hmm, sounds interesting.  I don't know if there *are* any such langs,
but I can see how one would emerge.  Suppose that an earlier stage of
Lumanesian had lots of closed syllables, in fact, it had very few open
syllables.  Furthermore, stress was consistently penultimate.  Later,
unstressed syllables lost their final consonant.  OR another
explanation: in an earlier stage, stress was consistently
antepenultimate, and there were no closed syllables.  Later, the
penultimate vowel was lost (thus, *taKA?eta --> *taKA?ta), thus making
the previously antepenultimate syllable become penultimate, and closed.

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