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

Hey.

I'd like to thank And for the follow-up questions on Tepa prosody.
Considering the recent discussion of X-SAMPA and transcription
standards, I've come up with a compromise solution for CONLANG
discussions of Tepa. Underlying forms in Tepa are given in my
transcription scheme (which is intended to be a Romanization of Tepa)
and the phonetic transcription will be given in X-SAMPA, as far as I
can stomach it.

At 8:16 PM +0000 11/11/01, And Rosta wrote:
>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.
I think that the rule for unbound phase could be recast to refer
specifically to the rime, in which case the syllable wouldn't
necessarily play a role other than to host onsets. However I'm used
to thinking in terms of syllables (and morae), so I described the
prosodic phenomena accordingly.

>  > 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)?
No. Suffixation of _-ka_ only occurs in connection with the prosody
of unbound phase, where light syllable adjunction is not confined to
a particular morphophonological environment. In standard generative
phonological terms, _-ka_ suffixation is a lexical rule, while light
syllable adjunction is a postlexical rule.

There are stems which mark unbounded phase by suffixation alone. For example:

/kenki/   [k1Ngi:]   'cliff:BOUND'
/kenkika/ [k1NgiGa]  'cliff:UNBOUND'

/tampa/   [tamba:]   'potato:BOUND'
/tampaka/ [tambaGa]  'potato:UNBOUND'

/qeppi/   [N1ppi:]   'mosquito:BOUND'
/qeppika/ [N1ppika]  'mosquito:UNBOUND'

In each case, the final long vowel of the bound forms is dictated by
the requirements of exhaustive footing ([CVXCV] is not a legal foot).
In the unbound forms, bound phase is marked solely by the suffix;
while the forms happen to have a heavy initial syllable, it doesn't
uniquely identify unbound phase since the bound phase forms also have
an initial heavy syllable.

>  > 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?
Extrafictional. I couldn't think of another concise expression to use
to indicate the distinction between the earliest version of Tepa and
my current conception. Perhaps I should use 'Tepa 1996' and 'current
Tepa' to avoid potential ambiguity ...

>  > tukana 'thrush:BOUND'
>
>= [tuGa naa] (2 feet) or [tuGana] (1 foot)?
Either. It's probable that the second variant is more common.

>  > 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?
The geminates are phonetically long. There are intervocalic singleton
voiceless stops which occur between foot boundaries, so there is a
genuine length distinction in voiceless stops. (Hmmm. Is this really
true? Do singletons and geminates occur in the same environment? I
think so, but I'm not sure right now.)

>  > 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.
I agree (of course). This was an inadvertent result of toying with
possible footing procedures and it immediately appealed to me as
being a  good thing to keep.

>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/.
/hitte/ is not a legal foot. The augmented foot is only possible with
three light syllables, but I don't have a good reason for that right
now. The stress clash is resolved by destressing the second of two
adjacent stressed syllables (I'm using the apostrophe to indicate a
following stressed syllable):

        'hit'tete -> 'hittete ["hitt1D1]

>We ought to have some collective space at conlang.org or suchlike,
>a default place for assembling conlang materials and links.
That would be a good thing, and I would be happy to make Tepa
materials available there. For the time being, I'm going to find a
free hosting service; several have been recommended to me. Of course,
this will all have to wait until I can finish the description of
phonology and morphology (at least!).

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                              Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead;
therefore we must learn both arts."            - Thomas Carlyle