Siouan accent and long syllables

[Bryan James Gordon]

It seems like there is some variation about how vowel length interacts with
stress. I never have managed to figure out a simple, neat explanation for
how it works in Ponca and Omaha. It seems like if one of the first two
syllables has a long vowel, that one usually gets stressed, but not always.
Sometimes the stress placement is more an indicator of morphology than
phonology, e.g. "itháe" "I speak" vs. "íthae" "you speak". And when both
vowels are underlyingly long it seems to me like there are morphological,
phonological and "free" (across- and within-speaker) variations. And then
there's the question of why "wa-" "them" seems to like stress more than
"wa-" "us". Is "wa-" "them" underlyingly long?

I understand the situation in Ioway, Otoe and Missouria even less. Jimm may
be able to help out here. I often notice when comparing recordings with
each other or with Jimm's dictionary that words like "Baxoje" "Ioway" are
stressed on different syllables by different speakers or even by the same
speaker in different contexts. It seems like the first vowel in "Baxoje" is
long, so there may be some sort of tension going on here between "Put
stress on the third mora" and "Put stress on the first long vowel". The
dictionary orthography (I think) puts stress on the first syllable.
On May 21, 2014 7:55 AM, "Rory Larson" <rlarson1 at unl.edu> wrote:

>  I have a question about the Siouan accent rule that I should know, but
> don’t.  Generally, Siouan accent likes to go on the second syllable.  Also,
> Siouan vowels are sometimes long.  Does a long vowel count as one syllable
> or two for purposes of the Siouan accent rule?  If we have a word with the
> vowel of the first syllable long,
>
>
>
>                 cvvcv
>
>
>
> should Siouan accent it as
>
>
>
>                 cvvcV
>
>
>
> or as
>
>
>
>                 cvVcv
>
>
>
> ?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rory
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