3.3 Accent 83The accent of trisyllabic stems may fall on any of the three syllables.
Schematically, we have the three types CvCvCv, CvCvCv, and CvCvCv.
Since antepenultimate accent is unmarked, the first type can be represented as
lexically unaccented /CvCvCv/, the surface accent being attributable to
Default Accentuation. My normal transcription is therefore CvCvCv. Stems
with the shapes CvCvCv and CvCvCv in isolation, on the other hand, have a
phonologically distinctive accent that must be marked in both underlying and
phonemic transcriptions.
Bisyllabic stems can be heard as CvCv or CvCv in isolation. However, the
CvCv type must be divided into a genuine /CvCv/ with fixed accent and a
lexically unaccented /CvCv/ that is realized as [Cv'Cv] due to the default
accentuation rule. In my normal transcription, these are represented as CvCv
and CvCv, respectively. The way to distinguish CvCv from CvCv is to add a
prefix or prepose a particle or preposition (within the accentual phrase). For
example, after a preposition, a CvCv noun will shift its accent to the
preposition, while a lexically accented CvCv noun will keep its accent. A
minimal pair showing this is t-ele 'shade' versus the modern loanword t-ele
'television'. In isolation, the two are indistinguishable. Adding preposition
daer 'in' we get deer t-ele 'in the shade' but daer t-ele 'in the television'.
For verbs, a pronominal prefix or a preverbal particle like Future ad may
be added to test for accent type. Verb stems have no lexical accents, but the
LoImpfP and Resit stems do include a grammatically specified accent. Thus
PerfP "i-kfa 'he gave' and Imprt aekf 'give!' show default accent, and the
accent "jumps" to a preverb: war i-kfa 'he didn't give', ad 0-aekf 'he will
give'. Contrast this with the grammatically accented LoImpfP i-hdkk 'he
gives' (suppletive) and Resit i-kfa 'he has (already) given'.
For monosyllables, only Cv occurs in isolation. We must again distinguish
true Cv from lexically unaccented Cv (/Cv/), by the tests just described for
bisyllables.
The rule assigning default accent to words in isolation is formulated here
as (61).
(61) Default Accentuation (Word-Level)A word pronounced in isolation, or as its own accentual phrase, is
scanned from right to left. Primary word accent is assigned based
on the following hierarchy:
a. a marked (lexical or grammatical accent) on the final or
penult;
b. the third syllable (antepenult), or (if the word has fewer than
three syllables) the word-initial syllableSome examples of the various types are in (62), where "x" represents a
prefix, preposition, or preverbal particle within the same accentual phrase as
the stem, ("x" indicates that phrasal accent appears on this morpheme).