Re: [tied] the rhythm and stress in Latin

Message

I said "tonal accent" to make it clear that this kind of accent is primarily marked by tonal features (F0 movements) linked to accented moras. "Pitch accent" is a more technical term for the same. What the Chinese languages have is simply called _tone_ (to be sure, there is also phrasal/compositional stress in Chinese, independently of tone). In languages without tone systems phonetic tone is "unemployed" and therefore readily available as an accent marker or a correlate of stress. What I personally advocate is that the distinction between "stress" (a rhythmic phenomenon) and "accent" (underlying phonological prominence, however it manifests itself) should be rigorously observed to avoid more confusion than already exists. This may be difficult, because stress is often aligned with accent (or, to put it differently, accent attracts stress), though the correlation is far from universal. Phonologists working with theories of stress and prominence are usually careful about such distinctions, but historical linguists tend to ignore them.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----

From: Sergejus Tarasovas

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 8:58 AM

Subject: RE: [tied] the rhythm and stress in Latin

Has the terminology stabilized in that sphere? I've read somewhere that, eg, Greek and Baltic have _pitch accent_ vs. eg. Chinese wich has _tonal accent_ (1. strictly one pitch accent in one phonetic word vs. [generally speaking] more than one tone accent in one word. 2. in tone languages, it's indeed the fundamental frequency that signals, while in pitch languages, the fundamental frequency plays a (secondary) phonetic role, not being an inherent phonological feature (duration, tension or loudness, probably combined, may be utilized as well, and the specific combination depends on subdialectal if not individual moments).

Or what?

Sergei