More on Long Vow (e)ls

[Rankin, Robert L]

Everyone,

I've been trying manfully not to weigh in on the vowel length business
because I have a bunch of deadlines that have to be met over Spring Break
(which it is here this week). BUT I can no longer resist. I will handle the
correspondence in reverse chronological order because that's how our brand
new, crappy email program makes me do it from "dial-in".

> I have the impression
>that some of these stems have initial stress when the plural/proximate
>marker is missing, e.g., ga'ghe, daN'be, etc.  But dhathe'?

I certainly always hear(d) first syllable accent in these.  But then I
nearly always marked initial accent with the plural/proximate too -- lots of
ga'gha=i=the etc. in my texts.  As John knows I sometimes hear(d) accent
on a different syllable than where he marks it, perhaps because I expected
stress instead of pitch accent...

I do too. But gaaghe always has a long vowel for me (that's in Kaw, of
course).  It's conjugated ppaaghe, $kaaghe, gaaghabe, oNgaaghabe, with
accent on the long V throughout. doNbe 'see' also has initial accent
throughout the 1st, 2nd, 3rd person. I am not so sure about 'chew, eat'. I
am pretty sure though that it is conjugated bláche, hnáche, yachábe, but I
am uncertain of the vowel length here. I think the á is long in the 1st and
2nd person forms.

Bob