CUMPLIMIENTO DE OBJETIVOS

Accent in Greek is phonetically manifested as stress. The acoustic correlates of word stress are duration, amplitude and pitch. Stressed syllables have longer duration and higher amplitude than unstressed ones and are associated with F0 rises (Arvaniti 1991). Greek syllable structure lacks distinctions of phonological

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weight; all syllables are of equal phonological weight (Joseph and Philippaki 1987).

Greek is a bounded system; the scope of primary stress is limited to the last three syllables of the word. Feet in Greek are trochaic. As I show in the following sections, antepenultimate stress is analyzed with a syllabic trochee and extrametricality of the final syllable. More importantly, stress shifts triggered by semivocalization show a rightward movement, e.g. trapezíu > trapezjú ‘table-GEN.sg’. According to Halle and Vergnaud (1987), rightward stress movement emerging from the loss of the stressed vowel indicates a left- headed (trochaic) grouping of syllabic constituents.

MalikoutiDrachman and Drachman (1989) and Drachman and Malikouti Drachman (1996) have argued that Greek lacks word minimum, therefore monosyllabic feet under primary stress are permitted (Hayes 1995, Kager 1995). There are some monosyllabic verbal forms, e.g. 'és ‘see-2sg.IMP’, pés ‘say- 2sg.IMP’, zó ‘live-1sg.PRES’ and a few archaic nouns, e.g. fós ‘light’, kó ‘Kos (name of island)-ACC.sg’.

Greek is a language with fusional morphology. Words usually consist of several morphemes such as, for instance, a root and an inflectional ending.2 Nominal roots are followed by a suffix that designates number and case, e.g. án7rop-os ‘man’, and verbal roots are followed by an aspectual morpheme and a personal suffix, e.g. aγap-ús-a-me ‘love-PAST CONT-1pl’. As in all fusional languages, a single suffix can represent number and case simultaneously. For example, the ending /-o/ in án7ropo indicates accusative case and singular number and the ending /-on/ in an7rópon indicates genitive case and plural number.

It must be made clear right from the beginning that in this thesis I treat the vowel /-o-/ in forms like án7ropos as part of the inflectional suffix and not as part of the root (as it used to be in Ancient Greek). There are a number of reasons that suggest this segmentation.

First, if we consider the vowel /-o-/ to be part of the root, án7ropo-s, we have to implement a truncation rule to account for the fact that in most cases of the paradigm, as well as in derivation, this vowel is lost:

(2) a. an7rópu /an7ropo-u/ ‘man-GEN.sg’ b. an7ropinós /an7ropo-in-os/ ‘human’

2

Greek does not assign inflection to unassimilated loan words. There is also a class of neuter nouns ending in /-ma/ which have zero inflection in some grammatical cases, e.g. kíma (NOM.sg) but kímat-os (GEN.sg) ‘wave’ (Ralli 1994).

LEXICAL ACCENTS AND PROSODIC FORM 87 c. an7ropákos /an7ropo-ak-os/ ‘little man’

d. an7ropévo /an7ropo-ev-o/ ‘humanize’

As obvious from the above examples, the thematic vowel /-o-/ is always truncated. One would expect the thematic vowel to surface at least in some cases, namely before consonant initial suffixes. However, it is puzzling that the majority of suffixes are vowel initial. If roots had thematic vowels, it would have been natural to expect at least some consonant initial suffixes. The fact that all Greek suffixes are vowel initial indicates that the thematic vowel has been morphologically reanalyzed and introduced as part of the suffix.3

Second, in compound words of the type [[root + synthetic vowel + root] suffix], roots are consonant final, therefore, the synthetic vowel /-o-/ intervenes to connect them. Note that the synthetic vowel /-o-/ can also occur with feminine roots of the -a class, e.g. petr-o-kéras-o ‘type of cherry’ from pétr-a ‘stone’ (class -a feminine noun) and kerás-i ‘cherry’ (class -i neuter noun). The point becomes clearer when the aforementioned example is compared to the compound makrimális ‘long-haired’. Here there is no need for a synthetic vowel because the root has the thematic vowel /-i-/, makri-s (NOM.sg.masc), makri-a (NOM.sg.fem) makri-i (NOM.pl.masc) ‘long’.

The theoretical assumptions just presented receive additional support from current views on the morphological structure of Greek words, expressed in the work of Ralli (1986, 1988, 1993) and Anastasiadi (1993). It should be mentioned though, that a different morphological segmentation that accepts the independent notion of thematic vowel does not contradict the accentual analysis proposed in the following sections. It only implies a different representation for unaccentable (post-stressing) morphemes according to which the morpheme at issue is just accented on the thematic vowel. However, for the reasons just presented, I assert that the vowel /-o-/ is part of the inflectional suffix and not the root.

Before delving deeper into the analysis of the Greek facts I give an overview of previous analyses of Greek stress in §3.3. The analysis of Greek advanced in this study is set out in §3.4.

3

One may wonder why the thematic vowel is taken as a unit with the inflectional suffix. There is little, if any, gain from the segmentation /an7rop-o-s/ since each thematic vowel must choose a particular set of inflectional endings. For example, /-o-/ chooses the endings {-s, -u, -“, -i, -n, -us} whereas /-a-/ chooses the endings {-“, -s, -“, -es, -on}.

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