Siouan accent and long syllables

Wed May 21 19:36:17 UTC 2014

Regarding Bryan's discussion of the conflict between syllable weight and
expected μμμ́ pattern in Chiwere, it could simply be that the
Weight-to-Stress Principle of Prince (1990) is ranked higher than the μμμ́
pattern, if we put this in the context of OT tableaux:

WSP>> μμμ́
 /baaxoje/ WSP μμμ́  -> a. báaxoje   *    b. baaxóje *!
It is thus more important that heavy syllables attract stress than adhere
to the on-the-third-mora tendency we see. This hierarchy could help start
to explain the disconnect between when to stress what in Chiwere. I haven't
looked much into Hoocąk, so I don't know if this brief observation would
hold true there as well.

In Mandan, there is a preference for left-aligned iambs, where long vowels
are well-formed iambs: LĹ, LH́, H́.
/istawį/  -> [(i.stá).mį] 'eye'
/ruwąk/ -> [(nų.mą́k)] 'man'
/wį-ta-wįįh-e/ -> [(pta.mį́į).he] 'my sister'
/pąąpi-oʔš/ -> [(pą́ą).piʔš] 'he is thin' (said to male listener)

The only two exceptions to this is in compounds and in words involving
preverbs/applicatives /i, e, aa, o/. In compounds, primary stress is
assigned to the leftmost-available iamb. If no iamb is available, the
stress does not cross the word boundary, resulting in deficient feet, i.e.,
a foot containing just a stressed Ĺ.

COMPOUNDS:

/paʔ/ 'head' + /hį/ 'hair' -> [(páʔ).hį] 'porcupine'
/wįʔ/ 'stone' + /ti/ 'house' -> [(mį́ʔ).ti] 'village'
/ho/ 'story' + /kirąąr/ 'tell' -> [(hó).ki.nąa.roʔš] ’he is
story-telling’ (said to male listener)

PREVERBS

/i/ directional + /aaki/ `be above' + /ta/ locative -> [(í).ʔaa.ki.ta]
’upward’
/o/ inessive + /wa/ 1st active + /kųh/ `want something' + /oʔš/ ->
[(ó).wa.kų.hoʔš] 'I want something'

The stress placement in constructions with preverbs suggests that the
phonology is sensitive to the morphological structure of non-simplex words.
In Anderson’s (1992) *A-Morphous Morphology*, he calls words like those in
the preverbs 'composites,' meaning that there is some internal structure:
[ó- [wakųhoʔš]] ’I want something.’ The preverb isn't in the same domain
as the inflected root is, and the left-aligned iambic stress assignment
cannot corss over into the next domain to create a well-formed iamb, due to
what Ito and Mester (1999) call a CrispEdge constraint, where some
phonological processes are unable to cross certain boundaries.

I haven’t looked super seriously at other Siouan languages’ stress
patterns, but I think that Lakota/Dakota likewise prefers iambic feet (sans
the long vowels like in Mandan) except for cases of compounds and
composites, but I'd be interested to see how well that guess plays out.

-Ryan

On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Bryan James Gordon <
linguist at email.arizona.edu> wrote:

> 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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