Stress patterns in Nivacle

ANALÍA GUTIÉRREZ

Austin, Texas

Conferencia; The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas Annual Meeting; 2017

The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas/Linguistic Society of America

The goal of this presentation is to account for the internal structure of the Prosodic Word and of stress assignment in Nivaĉle (Mataguayan) in both the nominal and verbal domains. The data is based on original fieldwork done by the author, with several Nivaĉle speakers in the communities of Uj?e Lhavos and Santa Teresita (Paraguay). First, while many languages require that every content word either contain at least two moras (1) or two syllables (2), Nivaĉle presents an interesting case study in this regard. Specifically, in Nivaĉle, what is found is that a CVC syllable, despite being monomoraic and monosyllabic, constitutes a Minimal Word and functions also as a minimal well-formed foot (3a-c). Crucially, a CV syllable never stands alone as a word. Nor does a CV syllable function as a foot in the stress system, whereas a CVC syllable can do so. In polysyllabic words, an initial CVC foot receives secondary stress (3d).Second, it is proposed that glottalized vowels, which are underlying sequences of a vowel plus a moraic glottal stop /Vʔ/, bear weight, that is, they only surface under stress, in conformity to the WEIGHT-TO-STRESS Principle (Prince & Smolensky 1993). Only when parsed to the head of a foot do glottalized vowels get realized.Third, is posited that Nivaĉle has a quantity-sensitive stress system, and that the rhythmic type is iambic. The following foot types are thus attested Heavy (H), Light-Heavy (LH), and Light-Light (LL) (4).Fourth, it is advanced that stress assignment is edge-based, aligned with the edges of hierarchically nested morphological categories (MCat), specifically: Root (Rt), Morphological Stem 1 and 2 (MSt1, MSt2), and Morphological Word (MWd). The role of prefixes and suffixes with regards to stress placement are thus discussed. A major generalization at the uppermost prosodic level is that primary stress falls on the rightmost foot of the PrWd.(1)FT-BIN-μ: Feet are binary at the moraic level. (Kager 1999)(2)FT-BIN-σ: Feet are binary at the syllabic level.(Kager 1999)(3)a. (tós) ?snake?b. (ɬ-ɑ́k)3.POSS-food?his/her food?c. (∅-túx)3.S-eat?s/he eats? d.(kʼùt)(xan-ís) thorn-PL?thorns?(4)a. (méμʔμ)Hb. (k?uμt.xá̰μμn) LHc. (peμk͡lóμ)LLReferencesKager, R. (1999). Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. ([1993] 2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar (2nd ed.) Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.