Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Accent In Uspanteko, Ryan Bennett, Robert Henderson

English Faculty Research Publications

Uspanteko (Guatemala; ∼2000 speakers) is an endangered K’ichean-branch Mayan language. It is unique among the K’ichean languages in having innovated a system of contrastive pitch accent, which operates alongside a separate system of non-contrastive stress. The prosody of Uspanteko is of general typological interest, given the relative scarcity of ‘mixed’ languages employing both stress and lexical pitch. Drawing from a descriptive grammar and from our own fieldwork, we also document some intricate interactions between pitch accent and other aspects of the phonology (stress placement, vowel length, vowel quality, and two deletion processes). While pitch accent is closely tied to morphology, …

Morphological Alternations At The Intonational Phrase Edge, Robert Henderson

English Faculty Research Publications

This article develops an analysis of a pair of morphological alternations in K'ichee' (Mayan) that are conditioned at the right edge of intonational phrase boundaries. I propose a syntax-prosody mapping algorithm that derives intonational phrase boundaries from the surface syntax, and then argue that each alternation can be understood in terms of output optimization. The important fact is that a prominence peak is always rightmost in the intonational phrase, and so the morphological alternations occur in order to ensure an optimal host for this prominence peak. Finally, I consider the wider implications of the analysis for the architecture of the …

Bulletin Of The Amerindian Languages Project Vol. 3 No. 4, October, 1979, Walter Edwards, Amerindian Languages Project, University Of Guyana

English Faculty Research Publications

Table of Contents:

Some general information about the Wapishanas

Some words and phrases with Wapishana equivalents

An Introduction To The Akawaio And Arekuna Peoples, Walter F. Edwards, Amerindian Languages Project, University Of Guyana

English Faculty Research Publications

The present monograph focusses on the Akawaio and Arekuna tribes who inhabit the Upper Mazaruni area of Guyana. We have tried in this effort to provide the kind of basic cultural and linguistic information about Akawaios and Arekunas that non-Amerindian people including teachers, administrators and employers should find valuable and we have tried to present these ideas in as non-technical a style as possible. Section II of this work is devoted to lists of words which we think would help Coastlanders and other non-Amerindians to begin to interact socially with Akawaios and Arekunas. In the early chapters we have presented …