Summary Details
| Query: |
VOT and stress
|
|
| Author: | Joaquim Brand㯤e Carvalho | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
General Linguistics
|
|
| Summary: |
Last week I posted the following question to the List: - --------- Dear colleagues, I am working on the possible relationships between VOT and stress. I am concerned in particular with alternations as the one shown by proto-Germanic (Verner's law) or by chinook (E. Sapir, Sound patterns in language, 1925) : WApul "night" / waBULmax "nights" (capitals = stressed syllable) My questions are : (1) Do you know of other examples of such alternations? (2) Do you know of cases in which VOT either behaves differently : i.e. *WAbul / *waPULmax, or involves another feature : e.g. *WAphul / *waPULmax ? (3) In any case, could you please let me know the basic rule governing stress directionality in the language(s) at issue (left>right or right>left)? Thank you very much for your help. I'll post a summary of the responses. - --------- I wish to thank those who responded to my query : Michael Johnstone Robert Port Daniel Loehr As can be seen, the number of responses is rather small, and only one deals with VOT proper. Are the facts involved by Verner's law and Chinook alternations so rare in the world languages? Furthermore, two of the responses mention related facts in English phonology that, in some way, seem contradictory with respect to the WApul / waBULmax pattern. I was aware of such phenomena, and this was one of the reasons of my query. Here are the three responses received. I shall add a brief comment at the end of each one. - ------------- [Robert Port] The question that occurs to me is that you don't really mention anything about VOT. Have you looked at it? That is, is the P in wapul aspirated or unaspirated? On the assumption that you are a Portuguese speaker, I am assuming that the P is unaspirated and the B is fully voiced. This alternation reminds me of Korean where they have an unaspirated stop in initial position that becomes fully voiced intervocalically. But the alternation you report here is definitely unusual. [End of quote] I suppose, according to Sapir's quotation, that Chinook [p] is not aspirated. In this sense, this alternation resembles that of Korean, where only the 'weakest' member of the well-known triplet /ph, p*, p/ has voiced allophones. However, as far as I remember, voiced alternants occur intervolically therein, regardless of any prosodic factor such as stress, but I may be wrong. - -------------- [Daniel Loehr] This may not be quite what you're looking for, but there is the familiar American English alternation: atom ['aeD @m] ('ae' = low front vowel, 'D' = flap, '@' = schwa) (stress on the first syllable, and the 't' is a voiced flap) atomic [@ 'tam ik] (stress on the second syllable, and the 't' is voiceless aspirated) This is an alternation in the other direction from your example - i.e. the change is from voiced to voiceless when you add the suffix. The stress directionality would be from left to right in this case, since both words are following an English rule of stress (for these words anyway) of stress on the penultimate syllable. Adding a suffix moves the stress to the right. If I remember correctly (I don't have my notes in front of me), the usual explanation for this is that flapping in American English is sensitive to foot boundaries. In "atom" the 't' is inside a foot and is flapped. In "atomic" the 't' is at a foot boundary and is not flapped. Again, I'm not sure if this is relevant to your inquiry, but thought you might be interested. [End of quote] Indeed, this is interesting, since, as Daniel Loehr notes, the weak term of the alternation ([D]) occurs in the context where Chinook has the strong (voiceless) obstruent. Hence my question (which is a mere conjecture) about the directionality of stress in Chinook-type languages, if any. - -------------- [Michael Johnstone] Pre-glottalisation of stops in certain dialects of English e.g. in London is sensitive to stress. This pre-glottalisation (a creaky end to a preceding period of voicing, transcribed here as [?]) only occurs with [p,t,k] when followed by a consonant or pause. (This covers also the affricate [tS].) However, pre-glottalisation cannot occur when stress follows, IF the stop + following consonant could form a valid syllable onset. Hence 'kitchen' [?tS], 'diploid' [?pl], 'beetroot' [?tr] with preceding stress, vs. 'achieve' [tS], 'deploy' [pl], 'betray' [tr] with following stress. This produces alternations in related words such as 'apply/ application'. But 'atlas' [?tl] with preceding stress and 'atlantic' [?tl] with following stress. (Note that [tl] is not a valid onset.) This is similar to those accents where complete replacement of [t] with [?] occurs - 'better' [?] and preceding stress, but 'attack' [t] and following stress; and accents where pre-glottalisation occurs before vowels - 'paper' with [?p] but 'appear' [p]. In these examples of pre-glottalisation and glottal replacement, both phenomena occur word-finally but not word-initially, and word-medially before unstressed vowels but not stressed ones. The Verner's / Chinook pattern is similar to this in as much as the voiceless consonant occurs word-medially before unstressed vowels, and voicelessness is elsewhere associated with word-final consonants (German, Russian etc.) The link, I suppose, is increasing articulatory effort when a stressed vowel follows, vs. decreasing effort when an unstressed vowel or pause follows. [End of quote] Here, the relationship between the English facts and the Chinook alternation may not be opposite, as in the previous case, but, assuming that pre-glottalisation or glottal replacement are weakening phenomena, one can ask whether final devoicing is to be viewed as a lenition process. The same question arises from [p]-preservation in WApul, while voiced consonants are usually said to involve less effort than their voiceless counterparts. - --------------------- In sum, too many things remain problematic about these stress-sensitive alternations, which is, of course, exciting for the phonologist. Once again, many thanks to those who responded. - Joaquim Brandao de Carvalho 320, rue des Pyr?n?es 75020 Paris France Tel./fax : 01 43 66 95 24 (If calling from outside France, please replace the prefix '0' with the country number '33'.) jbrandao@ext.jussieu.fr Departement de linguistique Faculte des Sciences Humaines et Sociales - Sorbonne Universite Rene Descartes - Paris V CNRS : UMR 7018, GDR 1954 ** If you send an attachment, please use the RTF format ** |
|
| LL Issue: | 13.565 | |
| Date Posted: | 01-Mar-2002 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
|
Back |
||
|
|
||
|
Sums main page
|
||
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
