Re: THEORY: Tepa prosody [was: Estonian Quantity]

Catching up on old emails:

--- Dirk wrote:
> Secondly, the renewed emphasis on the prosodic foot has restricted
> application of gradation, now properly seen as lenition. In  Early
> Tepa, voiceless stops alternated with voiced fricatives
> intervocalically; in the modern language, lenition only applies
> within the foot; it may not occur across foot boundaries (somewhat
> like American English flapping):
>
> tapatapa [taBataBa]  'black widow:DIST'
> pitepite [piD1piD1]  'see:DIST'
> tipukankan [tiBukaNgan]  'sage hen:DIST'
>
> In these forms, distributive number is marked by suffixal
> reduplication of the final moraic trochee. The resulting form only
> shows lenition between vowels when those vowels belong to the same foot
--- end of quote ---

Interestingly, I've just discovered that lenition in Tokana is restricted to foot-medial
positions. Tokana has a rule which optionally voices non-coronal stops (/p/ and
/k/) between vowels, or between a sonorant and a vowel:

  sepe "a few" -- ['sE.pE] ~ ['sE.bE]
  tsampa "shape [v]" -- ['tsam.pa] ~ ['tsam.ba]
  talpe "garden plot" -- ['tal.pE] ~ ['tal.bE]

  naka "rock" -- ['na.ka] ~ ['na.ga]
  tunku "pain" -- ['tuN.ku] ~ ['tuN.gu]
  malka "wolf" -- ['mal.ka] ~ ['mal.ga]

This rule fails to apply when the vowel following the stop receives word-level stress:

  sepem "at/with a few" -- [sE'pEm], *[sE'bEm]
  talpem "in a garden plot" -- [tal.'pEm], *[tal.'bEm]
  nakam "on/with a rock" -- [na.'kam], *[na.'gam]

I used to think that was the only environment where voicing was blocked. But
now, as a result of saying words over to myself, I've come to realise that
voicing is blocked whenever the following vowel receives *any* stress--primary
or secondary. Take the following complex verb forms, for example (where "bu",
and "kes", respectively, get secondary stress):

  upusukaima "that I make things" -- [u.pu.su.'kaj.ma], *[u.bu.su.'kaj.ma]
  ukespuhaima "that I want to carry things" -- [u.kes.pu.'haj.ma], *[u.ges.pu.'haj.ma]

Assuming that Tokana has a (trochaic) foot-based rule of secondary stress assignment,
it's looking like stop voicing is permitted only if the stop is not in the head
of a foot. Such a rule seems to accord well with my 'intuitions' about which
stops can and cannot be voiced.

Just thought I'd share...

Matt.

Matthew Pearson
Department of Linguistics
Reed College
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd
Portland, OR 97202
503 771 1112 x 7618