Re: Verner's Law could be a result of interfamilial contact

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:

>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "jouppe" <jouppe@> wrote:
> >
>
> <snip>
>
> A further observation: Early levels of reconstructed Proto-Finnic

had

> rather different phonotaxis for quantity in the first and the
> following syllables, which could point to a conclusion that the
> essence of "stress" may also have been different.
>
> What remains is that for modern Finnic stress is not composite as

in

> Germanic languages but almost exclusively uses the feature of

pitch,

> as opposed to duration or expiratory emphasis. In addition the

pitch

> pattern is 100% conditioned and therefore non-distinctive, which we
> would observe in Proto-Germanic as well.
>
> Jouppe
>
> ***
>
> Patrick
>
> Would you go into a little detail on the pitch patterns?
>
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> ***
>

High pitch ("stress") is always on the first syllable. Main rule for
semihigh pitch ("secondary stress") is on third, fifth, seventh etc.
If the word has an even amount of syllables the last semihigh pitch
rolls over to the last syllable. c.f. 'väsy,mättö,myyttä,ni "because
of my untiredness"
The transparancy of the conditioning rules is in some words
complicated by the fact that many long syllables are contracted from
historically two short ones. Some suffixes have been
subject to morphophonemics as well.
Pitch is still today strictly conditioned but for the above reasons I
am not sure I could present an unchallengable set of rules in toto,
especially if I had to avoid morphophonemic explanations.