FW: Siouan accent and long syllables

Rory Larson rlarson1 at unl.edu
Wed May 28 20:05:37 UTC 2014 


From: Emilia Aigotti [mailto:aigotm at yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 2:59 PM
To: Siouan Linguistics
Subject: Re: Siouan accent and long syllables

This sample is phrase initial actually. And I would be game for anything you suggest Bryan. The only problem is that the elicitations I have are single words, phrases or sentences. There is nothing longer. Although I have the 7 minute video (story) from Saul I haven't looked at yet. But that sample is comparatively small and limited.

My second inquiry is looking into the Chiwere word 'waruje' which has various accent marks and numerous meanings and word forms. I know this is Proto-Siouan as well. So any insights from others into this word would be helpful as I begin.

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014 2:44 PM, Bryan James Gordon <linguist at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU<mailto:linguist at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>> wrote:

Thanks for noticing this Emilia!
We need to run some quantitative analysis to figure out whether vowel length distinctions like this are categorical, let alone phonemic. In the case of final particles like continuative "na", a likely explanation is phrase-final lengthening, which is an ordinary process in all languages as far as I know. Phrase-final lengthening is our tendency to slow down towards the end of a prosodic unit (a sort of melodic/rhythmic "chunk"). Since final particles are often at the end of a prosodic unit, quantitative analysis would look like finding a sample that includes a good number of them both at the end of a prosodic unit and in the middle of one, as well as sampling the "wood" examples both at the end of a prosodic unit and in the middle of one.
It's hard to do this in a corpus by just looking at one example pair like "na" vs. "na", because corpora don't tend to have enough examples in enough contexts to rule out huge sampling biasses and unanticipated confounds. Instead, what we need to do (maybe you and me could collaborate on this Emilia) is look at entire groups of words and morphemes and see if there's evidence for a categorical length distinction. Acoustic fun!
Bryan
On May 28, 2014 2:12 PM, "Rory Larson" <rlarson1 at unl.edu<mailto:rlarson1 at unl.edu>> wrote:


From: Emilia Aigotti [mailto:aigotm at yahoo.com<mailto:aigotm at yahoo.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2014 2:04 PM
To: Siouan Linguistics
Subject: Re: FW: Siouan accent and long syllables

On the topic of "extra long" vowels as Armik discussed in Witchita, I found a long and extra long sample of the word ná in Chiwere. The long vowel belongs to the word 'tree' and the extra long vowel is a continuative particle. The sample I have is of ná ná side by side so the comparative length is quite obvious. I am wondering if any other Siouan languages have vowel length and "extra long" length.

Emilia

On Thursday, May 22, 2014 12:23 AM, Rory Larson <rlarson1 at unl.edu<mailto:rlarson1 at unl.edu>> wrote:

Bryan, Ryan, and Emilia, thank you very much for your kind responses and good advice.  I will plan to steer clear of the subject of the influence of vowel length on accent in Siouan in my presentation.  :)

See you all soon, hopefully!

Best,
Rory


From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Bryan James Gordon
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 10:08 PM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU<mailto:SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU>
Subject: Re: FW: Siouan accent and long syllables

I'm aware of good arguments that vowel length doesn't really function to distinguish word pairs in Ioway, Otoe and Missouria, and very rarely serves a distinguishing function in Omaha or Ponca either. However, what I hear in listening to recordings and speakers for both groupings is a bimodal distribution of length on unaccented first syllables. If length is ever "really" distinctive, it's probably first and foremost on unaccented first syllables. At some point I'll get my act together and provide quantitative support for all this speculation.
BJG
On May 21, 2014 9:59 PM, "BJG" <egonxti at gmail.com<mailto:egonxti at gmail.com>> wrote:
I'm aware of good arguments that vowel length doesn't really function to distinguish word pairs in Ioway, Otoe and Missouria, and very rarely serves a distinguishing function in Omaha or Ponca either. However, what I hear in listening to recordings and speakers for both groupings is a bimodal distribution of length on unaccented first syllables. If length is ever "really" distinctive, it's probably first and foremost on unaccented first syllables. At some point I'll get my act together and provide quantitative support for all this speculation.
BJG
On May 21, 2014 4:19 PM, "Loren Frerichs" <lhf at unl.edu<mailto:lhf at unl.edu>> wrote:

________________________________
From: Emilia Aigotti <aigotm at yahoo.com<mailto:aigotm at yahoo.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 15:46
To: Siouan Linguistics
Subject: Re: Siouan accent and long syllables

Did you read about Dorsey's Law? Wolff 1950 has a good explanation of it although I haven't totally wrapped my head around it. Don't forget though, it is believed that Chiwere doesn't have vowel length. Here is an excerpt from my paper from Miner 1979. Not sure this helps at all. I just jumped in on this conversation…

Emilia

3.1.3 Hypotheses on Chiwere/Hoocąk Relationship.  Miner (1979) gives examples of the relationship between accent and stress patterns between Hoocąk and Chiwere.
1. third-mora accent in Winnebago  matches second-syllable accent in                                        Chiwere
2. Chiwere accented initial syllables correspond to Winnebago long                      initial syllables
3. Point two above corresponds to the instrumental prefixes.
This means, accented instrumentals in Chiwere closely resembled lengthened prefixes in Winnebago (and the same being true for unaccented and short vowels). The following is an excerpt from the chart Miner provides (p. 31) on the similarities between Hoocąk and Chiwere instrumentals.

________________________________
From: Ryan Kasak <ryan.kasak at GMAIL.COM<mailto:ryan.kasak at GMAIL.COM>>
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: Siouan accent and long syllables

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.na<http://ki.na/>̨a.ro<http://a.ro/>ʔš] ’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<mailto: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<mailto: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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