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Lexical specification of tone in North Germanic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2005

Aditi Lahiri ,
Allison Wetterlin  and
Elisabet Jönsson-Steiner
Aditi Lahiri
Affiliation:
University of Konstanz, Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, D-186 Konstanz 78457, Germany. E-mail: aditi.lahiri@uni-konstanz.de, allison.wetterlin@uni-konstanz.de, elisabet.joensson-steiner@uni-konstanz.de
Allison Wetterlin
Affiliation:
University of Konstanz, Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, D-186 Konstanz 78457, Germany. E-mail: aditi.lahiri@uni-konstanz.de, allison.wetterlin@uni-konstanz.de, elisabet.joensson-steiner@uni-konstanz.de
Elisabet Jönsson-Steiner
Affiliation:
University of Konstanz, Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, D-186 Konstanz 78457, Germany. E-mail: aditi.lahiri@uni-konstanz.de, allison.wetterlin@uni-konstanz.de, elisabet.joensson-steiner@uni-konstanz.de
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Abstract

Accent 1 is very much accepted in the literature as the default tonal marker in Scandinavian languages. Consequently, stems and affixes are almost always specified for accent 2. Only rarely in some analyses is accent 1 specified for affixes, but never for stems. We believe that under these conditions, the resulting morphology/phonology interaction is rather complex, having to include special rules of accent marking, floating tones, deaccenting together with inexplicable exceptions. In our analysis of the tonal systems of Swedish and Norwegian, accent 1 is the lexically specified accent and accent 2 is postlexically assigned. Words and affixes may be lexically specified for accent 1, which inevitably dominates. Consequently, if a morphologically complex word includes a lexically specified affix or stem, the entire word will bear accent 1, giving us patterns of alternations like beskriva1, skriva2. This analysis enables us to account for all the facts almost exceptionlessly, with no special tonal rules, constraints or templates.

Keywords

accent 1 & 2affixeslexical accentNorwegianSwedishtonal accent
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , June 2005 , pp. 61 - 96
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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