UC Santa Cruz Prosody Reading Interest Group (PRIG)
1/22/09

Presentation by Tomas Riad (University of Stockholm, Swedish Academy)

"The lexical stress system of Swedish"


Germanic stress systems are typically described by
phonological generalizations/rules, exceptions being lexically marked
in different ways (e.g. extrametricality). This mode of description
misses important generalizations relating to the distribution of
morphemes in relation to syllables that contain prosodic information.
For instance, many suffixes only occur in a syllable directly
following a stress. Also tonal generalizations are implicated in the
distribution of tone-inducing morphemes. In my talk, I explore a more
morphologically based way of describing the stress system of Swedish,
where morphemes may be specified as pretonic, posttonic or tonic, or
remain unspecified.One goal of this account is to get away from the
common view that there is a synchronically valid etymological divide
in the vocabulary (e.g. [±native]), with separate stress rules to
describe the different parts (e.g. 'French' rule). While the
patterning as such may be valid, it should be traced to surface
prosodic properties, that are possible to acquire. I will comment also
on how the so-called tonal accents mimic locality conditions present
in the stress system. However, while lexical stress may be said to
have a constitutive role in the morphology, tones have at best a
reactive role.