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ROA:502
Title:A corpus-based approach to Tahltan stress
Authors:Tanya Bob, John Alderete
Comment:Published in Sharon Hargus & Keren Rice (eds.), pp. 369-391, Athabaskan prosody, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005
Length:28
Abstract:The purpose of this paper is to document and refine
hypotheses concerning stress in Tahltan (Northern Athabaskan).
An analysis of the field data collected in 1980-83 by
Patricia A. Shaw (University of British Columbia)
reveals a set of correlations between stress assignment
and the morphological and phonological composition of a
string. Morphology affects stress in that the syllable
dominating the morphological stem is obligatorily stressed.
Following McCarthy & Prince's 1994 analysis of Diyari stress,
this fact is analyzed by requiring the left edge of every
stem to coincide with the left edge of the prosodic word,
which effectively makes the stem a separate stress domain.
Stress on non-stem syllables is assigned on alternating
syllables counting from the stem stress, with a stress clash
in words in which only one syllable precedes the stem.
These phonological generalizations are handled by assigning
trochaic feet from left-to-right in a fashion that respects
the Stem-to-ProsodicWord alignment principle and other
constraints on metrical structure, i.e., Foot Binarity and
Strict Layering. Exceptions to this analysis are also
identified in the corpus, and they are shown to follow
straightforwardly from minimal modifications of the
assumptions that explain the core data.
Type:Paper/tech report
Area/Keywords:Phonology, Morphology
Article:Version 1