Re: Stress placement systems

2006/9/19, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>:
> I've been wondering a lot about stress lately.
>
> 1.  What different "systems" there are for stress placement?  I know
> there are languages where the stress is determined by lexical or
> morphological factors, and there are also languages where it is
> determined by the position and lengths of syllables in a word, e.g.
> in Latin it's the antepenultimate, if the penultimate is light;
> otherwise the penultimate; and in Finnish, it's always initial.  I
> suppose there are some where the accent is always on the second
> syllable, etc.  So I'd like to know of the different types of systems
> that exist.
You can't do much better than this!
http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ssd/index.html

It introduces a systematic way to describe stress systems. In this
system, Latin is 23/3R, Finnish is 1L. Simple, isn't it?

Piraha is described as 123/123/123/123/1R where syllable weights are
KVV > GVV > VV > KV > GV and K=-voice, G=+voice.

Seo Sanghyeon

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