User:MiltonLibraryAssistant/Notes
Phonological rules in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy
- Consonants
- The consonants /p, t, s, t͡ʃ, k, kʷ/ are voiceless if they are part of consonant cluster, and voiced elsewhere. They are also voiced if they form a cluster with the first person prefix n-.
- The ’ at the start of a word represents an underlying /h/, so the following consonant is unvoiced.
- Vowels
- /e/ is usually mid [e̞], however, it is often raised to [e] next to /j/ and lowered to [ɛ] before /m, l/.
- Vowels are long before consonant clusters starting with /h/.
- The penultimate vowel (unless a /ə/) is sometimes lengthened if stressed.
- Pitch accent
- Words are assigned ‘high’ pitch [˧˦] on stressed syllables, that usually fall on the penultimate syllable and on alternate syllables working backwards, though most syllables with /ə/ are ignored. There are some environments in which they are not ignored (see Olson, 2018).
- Some words have low pitch [˨] on the final syllable, that is realised as rising pitch [˨˦] before pauses and at the end of utterances. In this scenario, stress is shifted to the third-last syllable.
- Initial syllables are stressed [ˌ] (though they are not necessarily assigned the [˧˦] pitch contour).
- Primary stress [ˈ] is given to the rightmost stressed syllable and all other stressed syllables are assigned secondary stress [ˌ].
References
- Passamaquoddy-Maliseet language portal
- LeSourd, Philip S. (1993) Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy[1], New York: Garland Publishing
- Olson, Erik (2018 October 2) “Pitch accent drives stress placement in Passamaquoddy-Maliseet”, in MIT Linguistics[2] (Manuscript)