The Stress and Length Patterns of Paka
Nazarre Merchant
August 2021
 

This workbook presents a property analysis (Alber & Prince ms., Alber & Prince 2021) of the Paka system (Tesar et al. 2003). The system models stress and length interaction. Words in the Paka system are comprised of two syllables -- each input is a two-syllable word and each output is also a two-syllable word. A syllable is fully determined by the two binary features stress and length, with free combination of the featural values in syllables in the input. Output words exhibit culminativity: exactly one of the two syllables is +stress. There are 24 languages in the Paka system. The system exhibits perfect left/right symmetry: there are 12 left-aligned languages in which default stress is on the left-most syllable and 12 mirror right-aligned languages with default stress on the right-most syllable. Languages are further divided by whether they are faithful to underlying stress and faithful to underlying length. Languages that are faithful to underlying length are either faithful to underlying length everywhere length occurs or are faithful only when the syllable is stressed. Faithfulness to length can drive stress off of the default stress position (called length-driven stress throughout). DelBusso 2019/2021 also presents a property analysis of the Paka system, produced independently of the work presented here. Of the many things of interest in her work is that her primary analysis of Paka is structurally identical to the analysis given here. Acknowledgments This work has greatly benefited from discussions with Natalie DelBusso and Alan Prince. It has been partially supported by NSF grant #1823827. The work does not necessarily represent the opinions of the NSF.
Format: [ xlsx ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006118
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:
keywords: property analysis, optimality theory, phonology, phonology
Downloaded:172 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]