Word-prosodic typology

Abstract

Numerous proposals have been advanced as to how prosodic systems should be typologised. In this paper I distinguish two prototype systems, tone and stress accent, which, unlike systems analysed as ' pitch accent', have two inviolable, definitional properties : (i) obligatoriness (every word has at least one stress accent) ; (ii) syllable-dependency (the stress-bearing unit is necessarily the syllable). In contrast, the oft-cited criterion of culminativity (every word has at most one tone/accent) not only includes tone/accent systems that are neither obligatory nor syllable-dependent, but also culminative non-prosodic features that are clearly not accentual. I argue that there is no one pitch-accent prototype. Instead, since tone and stress accent may co-occur, and since languages may ' pick and choose ' between the non-definitional properties that tend to cluster within the tone vs. stress-accent prototypes, there is a range of intermediate (and possibly indeterminate) word-prosodic systems which may or may not be best seen as ' types '. If stress is monarchic, and length oligarchic, we may say that tone is democratic. (Greenberg & Kaschube 1976 : 9) * This paper was first presented as an invited talk at the conference Between Stress and Tone (BeST). I would like to thank Bert Remijsen and Vincent van Heuven for the invitation and those in attendance for their helpful comments. I have particularly profited from extended discussions with Carlos Gussenhoven and José Hualde on the tone vs. accent question and good Bantu exchanges with David Odden and Gérard Philippson. I also would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very thoughtful comments on the original manuscript.

Between stress and tone in Nubi word prosody

“…"8), rather than by arbitrary lexical marking of the accent. However, while falling within the definition of a stress-accent language given by Hyman (2006), reproduced in (23), Nubi is not a typical stressaccent language.…”

“…As a result, a reformulation of Beckman's (1986) criterion of the difference between 'stress accent' and ' pitch accent' will be offered, one that states the difference in structural rather than phonetic terms, while a more finegrained version of Hyman's (2001) definition of a tone language will be presented, one that excludes Nubi. I follow Hyman (2001Hyman ( , 2006 and Gussenhoven (2004 : 41), in assuming that the notion 'non-stress accent', or equivalently 'pitch accent' in the non-Pierrehumbertian sense of one F0-related prominence per word, does not define a typologically coherent class of languages.…”

Against Root Faithfulness in Cupeño Stress

“…The majority of roots are accented on either the first or second sylllable, while a smaller set of roots -traditionally referred to as "stressless" (Hill & Hill, 1968) -are unaccented. 11 Some accented and unaccented roots are given in (8): discussed by Hyman (2006). It is the obligatoriness parameter that differentiates Cupeño from an LA system like Japanese, where words may surface without a primary prosodic prominence (Ito & Mester 2016, i.a.).…”

“…Golla 2011) -is FREE, CULMINATIVE, OBLIGATORY, and UNBOUNDED (Hyman 2006, van der Hulst 2014. Every word bears a single primary stress, realized principally by increased duration and intensity of the stressed syllable.…”

The Importance of Accuracy in the Use of Grammatical Terms and Concepts in the Description of the Distinctive Properties of Plains Algonquian Languages

“…The problem is, however, that there is a great deal of controversy concerning the demarcation between the terms stress, pitch and tone, especially regarding the definition of the term "pitch accent" (Hyman, 2006 andSalmons, 1992).…”