Re: quantity triggered vs. quantity sensitive stress

Matt Pearson wrote:

>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).
>
>[snip]
>
>>The result is that all words must have one of the three possible
>>stressed syllable forms. Furthermore, stressed heavy syllables
>>vary in the coda depending on the tone used. All in all, words
>>without a heavy syllable cannot exist. Does this appear natural?
>
>Well, I don't know.  But it's certainly quite natural for stress
>to affect the phonetic shape of syllables.  In some African
>languages (I'm thinking specifically of Setswana) the vowels in
>penultimate stressed syllables are consistently lengthened.  In
>Malagasy, stress patterns determine which vowels will devoice.
>
I have just done a bit more research into the matter and found that
Zulu is another language that does this as well. According to the
"Concise Compendium of the World's Languages" by George Campbell,
qoute: "(Stress) normally on penultimate; the stressed vowel is
long: cf. -bo:na/-boni:sa/-bonaka:la." I should have found this
before I asked.

Back to the drawing board...

Regards,
-Kristian- 8-)