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

[excuse the massive quoting]

Dirk:
> Hey.
>
> What follows is best viewed in a monowidth font. It's also rather long.
>
> At 3:50 AM +0000 11/09/01, And Rosta wrote:
> >Doergkh:
> >>              F                F
> >>             / \              / \
> >>            F   m            F   m
> >>            |   |            |   |
> >>            s   |            s   |
> >>           /|\  |           /|\  | ...
> >>          / m m |          / m m |
> >>          |  \|/           | |  \|/  |
> >>          s   a   [saa:]   l a   k   e   [lak:ke]
> >>
> >>  That is, a foot consisting of a monosyllabic bimoraic trochee with an
> >>  adjoined mora. This conception of the foot and its role in stem
> >>  gradation has (indirectly) inspired some changes in Tepa prosody,
> >  > though I don't have overlong segments.
> >
> >What are the changes to Tepa prosody it has inspired?
>
> I'm glad you asked. The changes in Tepa prosody are the result of the
> introduction of exhaustive foot parsing and the restriction of some
> phonological processes to foot-medial position.
>
> The exhaustivity requirement of Tepa foot parsing means that all
> syllables within a Tepa stem must belong to a prosodic foot; that is,
> syllables may not adjoin directly to the prosodic word (this
> restriction doesn't apply to clitics). There are three kinds of legal
> foot shapes in Tepa:
>
> 1) the canonical moraic trochee
>
> foot        F           F
>              |          / \
> syllable    s         s   s
>             /|\       /|  /|
> mora      / m m     / m / m
>            | | |     | | | |
> segment   c v x     c v c v
>
> (x = vowel or consonant)
>
> 2) the trochee with resolution
>
>      F
>     / \
>    s   s
>   /|  /|\
> / m / m m
> | | | | |
> c v c v x
>
> 3) the augmented foot
>
>        F
>       / \
>      F   \
>     / \   \
>    s   s   s
>   /|  /|  /|
> / m / m / m
> | | | | | |
> c v c v c v
What role does the syllable node play? Is it simply there to
host onsets in representations, or are some phonological
phenomena sensitive to syllables? Apparently so -- e,g, the
rule for unbound phase.

> Insuring that a CV string is exhaustively parsed into licit feet
> requires several kinds of adjustment: 1) suffixation of _-ka_ (this
> is morphologically restricted), 2) final-vowel lengthening, 3)
> light-syllable adjunction.
Is (1) a variety of (3)?

> In Early Tepa, bound phase was marked by a final long vowel. In
> Modern Tepa, unbound phase is marked by an initial heavy syllable
> (moraic trochee).
"Early" and "Modern" in the extrafictional history? Or in the
internally-reconstructed intrafictional history?

> This heavy syllable is usually the result of
> geminating the medial consonant, but may also be from a lengthened
> vowel (voiceless fricatives and glides don't geminate). This prosodic
> marker is accompanied by suffixation of _-ka_ in case parsing the
> initial heavy syllable would leave behind a light syllable; _-ka_
> suffixation thus fills out a prosodic foot:
>
> tukana 'thrush:BOUND'
= [tuGa naa] (2 feet) or [tuGana] (1 foot)?

> tukkana 'thrush:UNBOUND'
= [tuk kana] (2 feet)

> pite 'see:BOUND'
[piDe] (1 foot)

> pitteka 'see:UNBOUND'
[pit teGa] (2 feet)

Are the geminates phonetically long? Or are they normal-length
segments that resist lenition due to being ambisyllabic?

> 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:
>
>      F       F
>     / \     / \
>    s   s   s   s
>   /|  /|  /|  /|
> / m / m / m / m
> | | | | | | | |
> t a p a t a p a  = [taBataBa]
>
>      F     F     F
>     / \    |     |
>    s   s   s     s
>   /|  /|  /|\   /|\
> / m / m / m m / m m
> | | | | | | | | | |
> t i p u k a n k a n  = [tiBukaNgan]
>
> (In the form [tiBukaNgan] 'sage hen', the voicing of /k/ to [g] is
> not the result of lenition, but is due instead to a separate process
> of post-nasal voicing; post-nasal voicing is not restricted to
> foot-medial position.)
>
> When a form has an odd number of light syllables, one of two things
> may happen: 1) the final vowel may lengthen, coercing a final moraic
> trochee; or 2) the final light syllable may be adjoined to the
> preceding foot to create a foot consisting of three light syllables.
> Both options are illustrated with the form _hipite_ 'moon':
>
>                                    F
>                                   / \
>      F     F                     F   \
>     / \    |                    / \   \
>    s   s   s                   s   s   s
>   /|  /|  /|\                 /|  /|  /|
> / m / m / m m               / m / m / m
> | | | | | |/                | | | | | |
> h i p i t e   = [hiBit1:]   h i p i t e  = [hiBiD1]
>
> In the first form, the final long vowel creates a monosyllabic moraic
> trochee. There are two feet, thus lenition will not apply to /t/,
> since it is not between vowels belonging to the same foot. In the
> second form, the final light syllable is simply adjoined to an
> existing foot to form a single augmented foot; since the /t/ is
> between vowels belonging to the same foot, it is lenited.
>
> As far as I can tell, both realizations are in free variation.
It's very satisfying to see Tepa evolving, and to see its soul,
its tepanicity, evolving. There is something about the [hiBit1:]
~ [hiBiD1] alternation that feels to me in my guts deeply Right.

OTOH, my guts haven't quite apprehended the gemination pattern.
/hitte/ feels like an augmented foot, which is right, but /hittete/
would be two feet, and it feels to me like a kind of stress clash
between adjacent syllables, and I feel I want to parse it as
necessarily containing augmented foot /hitte/.

> >Where is up-to-date info on Tepa? It must be six or seven years since
> >I last read the full description of Tepa.
>
> Right now it's on my hard drive; Jeffrey Hennings has some stuff on
> his Langmaker.com pages, but for some reason the inflectional
> morphology of nouns and verbs never made it there. I'm still working
> out some changes to the derivational morphology. Once they are done,
> I'm planning on writing up the phonology and morphology and posting
> it here. I'm still thinking about where to get web space; I don't get
> any from BYU for personal pages. I'll probably have to go with a free
> service.
We ought to have some collective space at conlang.org or suchlike,
a default place for assembling conlang materials and links.

--And.

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