[Lingtyp] Stress/syllable/mora-timed languages

[Martin Haspelmath]

Dear all,

Not only the "stress-timed/syllable-timed" typology is questionable, but 
it seems that the very notion of "word stress" or "word accent" (as a 
general concept) is not yet generally agreed upon by phonologists, as is 
noted in the following papers (among others):

Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 2022. On the comparability of prosodic categories: 
why ‘stress’ is difficult. LingBuzz. (https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006684)
van der Hulst, Harry. 2014. The study of word accent and stress: Past, 
present, and future. In van der Hulst, Harry (ed.), /Word stress/, 3–55. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Himmelmann (2022), in particular, notes that well-designed comparative 
concepts (such as "stress") must be defined in the same way for all 
languages, and that a "stress" concept that is based on English and 
German will not necessarily generalize to all languages:

"It should be clear that this language-specific category needs to be 
taken apart and individual component properties have to be carefully 
assessed as to whether or not they may serve as a useful basis for 
cross-linguistic comparison. Major problems for cross-linguistic 
comparison arise when phenomena from different dimensions are 
arbitrarily chosen and included in a comparison set of examples for 
stress. That is, for language X, phonotactic constraints are counted as 
evidence for stressed syllables, while in language Y it is the 
association with intonational pitch accents. Such a procedure will not 
provide the basis for a sound and productive comparison." (p. 9)

Best,
Martin

Am 04.07.22 um 20:05 schrieb Michael Fiddler:
> Hi Volker,
>
> The attached references review much of the previous literature on the 
> topic and describe the recurrent problems in identifying measurable 
> correlates of the purported rhythm classes.
>
> I would also point out that the research on rhythm classes has worked 
> almost exclusively with languages of Eurasia. I imagine the results 
> would be even more chaotic if this supposedly universal distinction 
> had been evaluated using sets of languages that were actually 
> representative of the areal and typological diversity that's out there.
>
> Cheers,
> Michael
>
> On Mon, Jul 4, 2022 at 9:36 AM Volker Gast <volker.gast at uni-jena.de> 
> wrote:
>
>
>     Thanks!
>
>     Would you have any pointers to relevant literature?
>
>     Volker
>
>     On 04.07.22 18:34, Ian Maddieson wrote:
>>     A better question to ask is whether this classification has any
>>     meaning. Numerous efforts to look
>>     for measurable properties correlating with the alleged categories
>>     have failed to find anything at
>>     all reliable. Different studies result in quite different
>>     groupings of the same languages.
>>
>>>     On Jul 4, 2022, at 10:26, Volker Gast <volker.gast at uni-jena.de>
>>>     wrote:
>>>
>>>     Dear all,
>>>     A friend has asked me if there is any way of determining how
>>>     many languages in the world are stress/syllable/mora-timed.
>>>
>>>     Is there a database with this information? Has anybody looked
>>>     into this question?
>>>
>>>     Best,
>>>     Volker
>>>
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     Lingtyp mailing list
>>>     Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>     https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>     Ian Maddieson
>>
>>     Department of Linguistics
>>     University of New Mexico
>>     MSC03-2130
>>     Albuquerque NM 87131-0001
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> -- 
> Michael Fiddler
> PhD student
> Department of Linguistics
> University of California, Santa Barbara
>
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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