A Tonal Analysis of Lithuanian Nominal Accent

Bibliographic Data

ID2882432
AuthorsJuliette Blevins (0000-0002-2063-4778, corresponding author)
Year1993
Volume69
Issue2
Pages237
Publication date1993-06-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/416534
OpenAlexW2082124653
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited12

In this paper I present a tonal analysis of inflection, derivation, and compounding for Standard Lithuanian nominals. I argue that nominal accents in this language surface as a result of rules of high tone insertion and high tone deletion, and that accented morphemes are represented with underlying high tones linked to the appropriate moras. The predictability of circumflex accents in stem-initial and stem-final contexts for unaccented stems is handled by invoking limited use of extraprosodicity and floating high tones. In addition to improving the empirical coverage of earlier proposals, this analysis offers three central arguments for underlying tones as opposed to accentual diacritics or metrical representations. First, the general status of diacritic accents is suspect; various pitch-accent systems have been successfully reanalyzed without the use of such diacritics, and independent motivation for such diacritics outside the realm of pitch-accent systems is meager. Second, there is evidence of tonal stability under segment-deletion and demorification in Lithuanian, while other accentual alternations such as that captured by de Saussure's Law have markedly tonal characteristics. Finally, tonal representations are supported by data from a Zhemayt dialect in which words may surface with multiple accents

Linguistics · Lithuanian · Stress (linguistics) · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Speech and dialogue systems · Speech Recognition and Synthesis

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