Volapűük nulíik: Difference between revisions
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===Prosody=== | ===Prosody=== | ||
====Stress==== | ====Stress==== | ||
The term ''stress'' refers to an articulatory phenomenon that causes one syllable in one word to be spoken at a higher pitch than all other syllables in a word. In Volapȕük nulíik this syllable is in defined position in verbs and nouns. Verbs feature a main stress and, under certain conditions a second, less higher pitch. Nouns only have one stressed syllable. The main stress is marked by an acute accent (´) on a vowel, giving [á, é, í, ó, ú] and on vowels with a trema [··] [ȁ, ȍ, ȕ]. The main stress is always set first. The second stress is uniformously marked by grave accent [`] giving [à, è, ì, ò, ù, ȁ, ȍ, ȕ]. In handwriting, the main stress is also done with a double acute accent on [ä, ö, ü], yet due to technical restriction this has not been possible and thus the language board has decided to allow a grave accent to mark main stress on these three vowel letters. | |||
History | |||
The main stress used to fall always on the last sylable in Volapük. This means that nouns used to have a main stress on its stem, e.g. dóm 'house', however when a case ending was added to the stem, it shifted from the stem to the last vowel, giving e.g domá 'of the house', domí 'the house (acc.)' This principle is still visible in the present noun declension: dóom : domá : domí : niđomé. In nouns this main stress on monosyllabical words led to a lengthening of the consonant and created finally the length distinction between nominative / vocative and all other oblique cases and nounforms with a reduced [unshortened] stem vowel. With verbs this principle gave the following pen'ön 'to write' : pen'ob 'I write' : epen'ob 'I have written'. Due to a reanalysis of the future forms, e.g. open'ob 'I will write', the second vowel before the personal pronoun suffix was reanalysed as the carrier of the tense information and thus changed analogically: epen'eb, open'ob, ipen'ib, etc. The first letter was abandoned leaving only the vowel before the personal pronoun suffix with the information concerning time. This gave rise to the present situation that the mains tress falls on the time slot and also explains why a tense has always to be stated in every verb. | |||
Verbs | |||
In conjugated verb forms falls the main stress on the first vowel after the stem and before the personal pronoun suffix: penáb 'I write', löfábaf 'I love her'. kabenbóleb. 'You will be able to write me.' In non-conjugated forms, however, not the tense marker is not stressed but the last suffix: pen'ön 'to write', pepen'öl 'written'. This main stress is however not marked on the last syllable as this rule dates back to the very beginning of the language. | |||
====Intonation==== | ====Intonation==== | ||