Siouan accent and long syllables
Bryan James Gordon
linguist at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU
Wed May 28 19:44:07 UTC 2014
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> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Emilia Aigotti [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> 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<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
> *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> 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> wrote:
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Emilia Aigotti <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>
> *To:* 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.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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