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→‎Stress and Tone

Linguist Wannabe

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 Words with Falling Tone always have stress on the second last syllable. Their pronunciation depends on the vowel length of the stressed vowel. If the vowel is short and non-nasalised, there is high pitch on all syllables up to and including the stressed syllable, and low pitch on the final syllable e.g./tsaˈɲeɳə/ (HL) - "channel", "strait" is pronounced [tsǽˈɲéɳʌ̀]. However, if the stressed vowel is long or nasalised, then it has falling pitch e.g. /ʔwaˈbiːdˤə/ (HL) - "boat" (genitive) is pronounced [wáˈbêːdˤʌ̀].
+====Evolution====
+This system evolved via the following stages:
+) English stress became entirely regular, being assigned to the heaviest of the final three syllables of a word via the following rules:
+* A phonemic distiction between long and short vowels emerges. English */æ/ is always lengthened to /æː/. The only places where this distiction is not phonemic are before nasal codas and at the end of words. In both of these cases only short vowels occur.
+* Diphthongs contract to short vowels in (originally) unstressed syllables. In syllables that were originally stressed, they are split into two syllables with a glottal stop intervening. So "mountain" is pronounced as *[ˈmaʔunten].
+* Diphthongs, coda consonants (including coda /r/, which has survived in some words) and long vowels each contribute an additional mora to a syllable. So for example, in the word "mountain", the first syllable has one mora, and the other two have two morae.
+* The final mora of a word is extrametrical. For the purposes of assigning stress, it doesn't count. So "mountain" effectively has two morae on the middle syllable, and one mora on each of the final syllables.
+* The syllable with the most morae gets assigned stress. So "mountain" is now *[maˈʔunten]. Likewise "bullet" is now */buˈlet/. There are some cases where the stress stays the same e.g. "doctor" is */dokta/.
+) Phonotactics become much stricter. The only syllables permitted are CV and CVN (where N is a nasal). Wherever a violation of this rule would occur. So "bullet" is now *[buˈletə], and "doctor" is now *[ˈdokəta].
+) Pitch becomes assigned to syllables via the following rules:
+* Word final syllables that end in a nasal are assigned low pitch.
+* Word final syllables that ended in schwa, */a/, */i/ or */u/ are assigned low pitch (these vowels all merge to schwa, though often modifying the previous consonant).
+* Other word final syllables are assigned high pitch.
+* Stressed syllables are always assigned high pitch when not word final.
+* Unstressed syllables before the stressed syllable receive high pitch.
+* Unstressed syllables after the stress syllable take the same pitch as the final syllable of a word.
+So "doctor" is now */ˈdókə̀tà/ HLL, "mountain" is now */máˈʔúntèn/ HHL, "bullet" is now /búˈlétə̀/ HHL, "llama" is */ˈjə́má/ HH (it begins with an initial /j/ because the word is borrowed from Spanish).
+) If a word has stress on any syllable before the penultimate, the word was truncated so that stress falls on the penultimate syllable. However, this truncation does not delete tone, which is mapped to syllables from right to left. So "doctor" is */ˈdòkà/ HLL, where the initial H tone is a floating tone that only surfaces when the noun takes a prefix.
+) All tones except the final two are lost. So "doctor" now just has a LL melody, without a floating tone. Likewise "bullet" now just has a HL melody, as can be seen from its final form /pəˈʎedˤə/ HL.
 ===Phonotactics===

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