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Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran
Toimituksia 246
Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne
246
Dennis Estill
Diachronic change in Erzya word
stress
Abstract
Mordvin is a Finno-Ugrian language pair
that is considered to be more closely related to the Saami and
Finnic groups than any other language. Nevertheless,
Erzya-Mordvin has word stress that does not conform to any
previously described system, and which cannot be categorised
as either fixed or free stress in the conventional meanings of
these terms. No comprehensive diachronic description of Erzya
word stress has yet been published. In investigating word
stress in Erzya the historical analysis in this study has been
based on documentary evidence extant from the late 18th
century, specifically the Damaskin Dictionaries commissioned
for Catherine the Great and a short catechism, both of which
documents are marked for word stress, and the modern state of
word stress has been determined using auditory and acoustic
methods. For the present day analyses modern material was
supplemented, for comparison purposes, with extracts from the
Damaskin Dictionaries and the Short Catechism. F or the
interim period reference has been made to the work of Heikki
Paasonen, collected approximately 100 years ago. The results
have shown that (1) word stress in Erzya was and is based on
the speaker's individual preferences, (2) speakers generally
prefer to stress the initial syllable today whereas 200 years
ago the second syllable was usua11y stressed, (3) Moksha has
probably undergone a similar development, (4) Mordvin cannot
be convincingly used to support theories of initial stress in
Proto- Finno- Ugrian, and (5) in modern Erzya, contrary to
what is generally considered of most other languages, it is
intensity when combined with duration rather than fundamental
frequency that seems to be the main acoustic parameter of word
stress.
Contents
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