3.3 Accent 872MaPl Imperative -aet (63.e) requires accent on the preceding syllable.
Example: aras 'repay!' (Sg imperative, default accent), but arss-aet 'repay!-
MaPl' with penultimate accent. Likewise for 2FePl Imperative -maet, as in
arss-maet 'repay!-FePl'. The unsuffixed singular imperative has default accent
(except as indicated in the following sections).
While some of these suffixes and clitics have accentual effects suggestive
of a lost V, there are difficulties in formalizing such representations. For one
thing, when two such elements occur on a single word, they do not both
behave as having the extra V. An example is (64)(64) aeqr-ahr-et-M:
kill.ShImpf-lSgS-Hort-\3MaSgO
'let me kill him!'If we were to represent the Hortative suffix as /-etV-/ and the 3MaSg
object clitic as /-tV-/, the word form would be underlying /aegr-asr-etVAtV/.
The default accent should be on the underlying antepenult, i.e. on the e of the
Hortative suffix. In fact, accent is assigned to the preceding syllable. In other
words, the special accentual effect of the Hortative is overridden by the special
accentual effect of the following clitic. This cannot be captured by a
"phonological" solution involving ghost V's on all of the accent-restricting
suffixes and clitics, which do their work and then disappear.3.3.1.2 Accentual implications of Stem-Final i/A-Deletion
Inflectable verb stems have no lexical accent. Some verb forms do have a
marked accent as the result of an ablaut accent formative (Resit, LoImpfP,
some VblN's, and some other nominals). This formative is analysed in §3.4.4,
and extensive exemplification of relevant verb stems and nominals can be
found especially in §7.2.2.2 (Resit), §7.2.5.1 (Lolmpf), and §8.6 (VblN). In the
present section, and the one that follows, I discuss verb-stem penultimate
accent that is not due to ablaut accent formatives.
There is a class of -vC(C)i> and -uC(C)u- verbs that have final α in the
perfective stems, but lose the stem-final V in some other forms. In the Shlmpf
(including Imprt) and in some derived (e.g. causative) VblN's, the deleted
stem-final V is interpretable as an underspecified high V that I write hi in
underlying forms. There are also a few cases where an underspecified low V is
deleted (in long imperfectives); I represent this as /A/ in underlying
transcriptions. More details and examples are given in §7.3.1.3, below. The
deletion rule is Stem-Final i/A-Deletion (29) (§3.1.2.4), which applies to
unaugmented V-final verb stems.
The relevance of these abstract vocalic segments for accent is that they are
counted for purposes of Default Accentuation, even when they are deleted
word-finally. For the light V-final verbs, like -vksu- 'eat' (PerfP -aksa-), this