[etnolinguistica] onset-sensitive stress

[Nina Topintzi]

Dear all,

Prior to this message I have recently contacted some of you 
individually, so you may not wish to read this message again. A 
couple of you also suggested that I pose this question to the list 
too and this is what I do now.

I am PhD student in Phonology at UCL in London working on my thesis 
on onset sensitive stress. I am currently working on Piraha, which 
seems to have some onset sensitivity on stress, but my hunch is that 
other South American - most likely Amazonian - languages may show 
similar effects (Karo and Arabela are potential candidates in some 
way). 

I was wondering if anyone knows of any other languages with some kind 
of onset sensitivity for stress, e.g. do onsetful syllables 
(generally or of a certain quality) attract (or even reject) stress 
more than onsetless or onsetful but with a different type of onset do?

Those of you who find this question interesting and know what I mean 
by onset-sensitive stress don't need to read the next two paragraphs. 
Those of you who find this question interesting, but are not sure of 
what I mean by onset-sensitive stress, below you may find a summary 
of the Piraha stress system. 

In Piraha for instance (Everett 1988), if all syllables are of equal 
weight, then the rightmost within the last three syllables of the 
word gets stress, e.g. gi.go.'gi  'what about you' (I use the 
apostrophe just before the stressed syllable to indicate that it gets 
stress). If weight among the syllables is unequal then there is the 
following scale in terms of syllable and stress interactions: PVV > 
BVV > VV > PV >BV (where P=voiceless stop, B=voiced stop, VV=long 
vowel, V=short vowel, > = the syllable on the left of the symbol 
attracts stress more than the one on its right). Some examples are:

(1)    '?a.ba.gi    'toucan'
(2)   ?a.ba.'pa    'Amapa (city name)'
(3)    pia.hao.gi.so.'ai.pi    'cooking banana'
(4)    ho.aa.'gai       'species of fruit'

In (1) the first syllable has a PV and this is better stress 
attractor than BV, so gets stressed, in (2) there are two PVs and one 
BV. The competition is between the two PVs. The last one gets it as 
it is the rightmost one. In (3) the penult VV competes with two PVs 
(one in the antepenult, the other in the ultima) and it wins. This 
also shows that there is a trisyllabic window effect at the right 
edge. If any syllable could get stress, then 'hao' would be the best 
one, because it is PVV. However, it doesn't get stressed because it 
is further to the left than the three last syllables. Finally, in (4) 
BVV competes with PV and VV, but given the scale above, it takes 
stress.

Essentially, Piraha has a system where the presence of an onset 
counts, the weight of the vowel matters and also the quality of the 
onset has an effect. These interact in some ways and yield the above 
facts. I have a possible story for this system and I am also looking 
for other systems which have similar stuff. There has been work done 
on this domain by Rob Goedemans and Stuart Davis, but all the systems 
they explore could be re-analysed in some other way (and that's 
indeed what they do). But I believe that languages like Piraha resist 
an adequate analysis and now I try to locate more of the same or 
similar type.

I would be most grateful if anyone could assist me on this matter.

I could compile a summary of the replies I receive later on.

Many thanks in advance.

Best wishes,
Nina




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