Common Contracts

Persistence and change in stem prominence in Athabaskan languages Keren Rice, University of Toronto

Research Presentation • August 14th, 2014

• Contract Type
  Research Presentation
• Filed
  August 14th, 2014

General agreement exists on one major point regarding prominence in Athabaskan languages, the importance of morphology. In particular, the stem is agreed to be prominent (see Leer 2005). This is signaled in several ways, depending on language: the stem stands out in terms of phonotactics (at least historically it has a bimoraic weight requirement), it allows for greater contrasts in terms of the consonant inventory and vowel inventory in many languages; tonal contrasts are more frequent in stems than in prefixes in tone languages. Phonetically, reports of stem prominence identify duration of both consonants (stem‐initial consonants are reported to be longer in many languages) and vowels, among other factors.