| ROA: | 273 |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Puzzle of Kashmiri Stress: Implications for Weight Theory |
| Authors: | Bruce Moren |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 24 |
| Abstract: | The Puzzle of Kashmiri Stress: Implications for Weight Theory Bruce Morén University of Maryland, College Park Kashmiri, a Dardic Indo-Aryan language, shows an interesting relationship between vowel length, consonant weight, and stress assignment. Stress predictably falls on the left-most non-final heavy syllable (CVV, CVC). However, if both long vowels and closed syllables are found in the same word, stress falls on the left-most long vowel even if there is an available closed syllable even farther to the left. This is a puzzle given standard assumptions about syllable weight. Currently there are many proposals for analyzing cross- linguistic vowel length and consonant weight distributions within Optimality Theory. The basic claim is that vowel length and consonant weight are determined by the interaction of markedness constraints on moraic content and constraints requiring faithfulness to underlying moraicity. In this paper, I show that the constraints used in one such proposal (Morén 1996, 1997) provide an analysis of the core syllable weight of Kashmiri, and that the inclusion of a few other constraints proposed in the literature provides an analysis of the previously puzzling distribution of stress in this language. The theoretical importance of this paper lies in the demonstration that closed syllables may vary in weight depending on surface stress assignment. This is in contrast with previous weight theories which treat consonant weight for a particular segment in a given syllabic position as static within a given language. Using Optimality Theory and Correspondence Theory, I show that complex distributions of moraic segments in Kashmiri are the result of the interaction of a limited number of general constraints. In addition, I demonstrate that reranking these constraints cannot lead to a pathologic (unattested) interaction between stress and weight. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |