BL accent patterns. The real results.

[Rankin, Robert L.]

> Now I’m wondering what your model is for the accent when the *GL or *BL is preceded by a syllable.  Second syllable accent would land on a squeezed out schwa, which presumably nobody wants to accent.  If the accent then jumps to the primordial third syllable (as I think it would—correct me if I’m mistaken), wouldn’t that support the view that speakers at that point consider primordial third syllable to be synchronic second syllable?

There is no "schwa" there phonologically.  That's confusing phonology with phonetics.  So of course the GL or BL syllable gets accent if there's another prefix.  But what I'm saying is that the CL syllable gets the accent anyway.

Also, granted that most *GL and *BL initial words take their accent on the primordial second syllable immediately following these clusters, how does that show that speakers still perceive the sequence as two syllables?

I'm not saying anything about "perception" at all.  This is about "competence", not "performance", to quote Chomsky.  CL-initial words get accent on the first syllable because there used to be a vowel where just the B or G is now.  Accent is still assigned on that basis.  (And I'm leaving aside the whole problem of vowel length here.)

If the accent started out on the second syllable, and the vowel of the first syllable goes away by syncope, we continue accenting the same vowel we always have.

Exactly.

But why should that mean that synchronically we still consider it to be second syllable rather than first syllable?

Because it behaves like a second syllable with regard to accent.  Don't get confused about the differences between phonetics and phonology.  Morphophonology can still be affected by things that happened a couple of thousand years ago.

Bob

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