Lexical Accent in Languages with Complex Morphology Ksenia Bogomolets, PhD University of Connecticut, 2020 This dissertation develops a theory of lexical accent where the central role is given to the notion of accent competition as the defining property of lexical accent systems. Languages with complex morphology (traditionally known as ‘polysynthetic’) are the empirical basis for this study as they provide a particularly fruitful ground for investigating the effects of both phonological and morphological factors in the assignment of lexical accent. Novel in-depth analyses are developed for Arapaho (Plains Algonquian), Nez Perce (Sahaptian), Ichishkiin Sɨnwit (Sahaptian), and Choguita Rarámuri (Uto-Aztecan). I argue that accent competition across languages is resolved in formally similar ways and that no idiosyncratic, language- specific analyses for individual lexical accent systems are warranted. It is thus proposed that the idiosyncrasy in lexical accent systems is found in the distribution of underlying accents, but not in the rules of the systems. I propose a typology of lexical accent systems and argue that they fall into one of two types based on the mechanism of accent competition resolution: I. Cyclic: In an accent competition, accent in the outermost derivational layer within the domain wins, or II. Directional: In an accent competition, either the right-most or the left-most accent within the domain wins. The second group of proposals made in this dissertation concerns the status of fundamental properties of stress and prosody – Culminativity and Obligatoriness of stress (Trubezkoy 1939/1960; Hyman 2006, 2009), and primary versus non-primary stress. It has previously been claimed that Culminativity of stress can be breached in highly synthetic languages (e.g. Blackfoot, Stacy 2004; Arapaho, Bogomolets 2014a,b; Mapudungun, Molineaux 2018; Yupik, Woodbury 1987). Ksenia Bogomolets – University of Connecticut, 2020 I argue that stress is in fact always culminative, but Culminativity should be regarded as a macroparameter allowing for a set of language-specific ways to implement it, including a mechanism of clash avoidance and an enforcement of ‘one and only one’ stress within domains smaller than a morphological word. Finally, this dissertation addresses the general structure of the word-level prosodic system. I propose that the word-level prosodic system is not bipartite: primary stress vs. rhythm, but tripartite: primary stress vs. secondary stress vs. rhythm. Lexical Accent in Languages with Complex Morphology Ksenia Bogomolets B.A. Saint Petersburg State University, 2011 M.A. University of Colorado, Boulder, 2014 M.A. University of Connecticut, 2017 A Dissertation To be submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2020 i Copyright by Ksenia Bogomolets 2020 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Lexical Accent in Languages with Complex Morphology Presented by Ksenia Bogomolets, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor_______________________________________________________________ Harry van der Hulst Associate Advisor____________________________________________________________ Jonathan David Bobaljik Associate Advisor____________________________________________________________ Matthew Gordon University of Connecticut 2020 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am endlessly grateful to my advisor Harry van der Hulst for teaching, supporting, and mentoring me for all these years. I am thankful for our inspiring discussions in person and across distances and for always considering and critiquing my proposals. I would have certainly given up on finishing this dissertation multiple times along the way if not for Harry’s patience and encouragement. I am thankful to Jonathan Bobaljik for teaching me so much in different linguistic subfields and in the general approach to linguistic research. Both in my work on the dissertation and in various other projects, Jonathan’s guidance has taught me a lot about the kinds of questions I should be asking. I am very grateful for all his guidance and support. I want to thank Matt Gordon for the much-needed encouragement along the way, for always offering a different perspective, and for sharing the immense knowledge of prosody and phonology with me. This work has benefitted greatly from his insights, comments and suggestions, thank you! Next, I would like to thank Andrew Cowell who has shaped my linguistic interests in many ways. I am very thankful to him for introducing me to the Arapaho language and its speakers and for the countless times when he was kind to share his expertise in Arapaho with me or to read and comment on my work. I am grateful to all the past and present faculty members at UConn for being as understanding and supportive as an academic environment can get, and for contributing so much to my research and teaching training. I am particularly grateful to William Snyder, Susi Wurmbrand, Diane Lillo-Martin, Željko Bošković, Jon Gajewski, Jon Sprouse, Magda Kaufmann, Stephan Kaufmann, and Andrea Calabrese. iv My research has also been inspired by and benefitted from discussions with other experts in the field. I especially thank Laura Kalin, Claire Moore-Cantwell, Ian Roberts, Doug Whalen, Ives Goddard, Peet Klecha, Kadir Gökgöz, and Bruce Hayes for inspiring conversations. I am thankful to the great colleagues and friends at UConn, and I want to thank Christos Christopoulos, Sabine Laszakovits, Hiroaki Saito, Laura Snider, Zheng Shen, Akihiko Arano, Renato Lacerda, Hiromune Oda, Emma Nguyen, Vanessa Petroj, Aida Talić, Lyn Tieu, Roberto Petrosino, Yuta Tatsumi, Beata Moskal. A special thank you goes to Abigail Thornton and Neda Todorović for all the non-academic fun and all the academic discussions that we had. I owe a very special thank you to Paula Fenger and Adrian Stegovec. I could not imagine that I would find a friendship like this when I started my PhD journey, and I am very grateful for it both personally and professionally. I am very happy to have friends like you and I am thankful to be learning from you both whenever we get to work together. Thank you to my linguist friends in Los Angeles, where a large part of my preparatory research for this thesis was done. Our brew crew times were some of the best all thanks to Caitlin Smith, Ana Basserman, and Brian Hsu. Thank you to friends and colleagues at the University of Auckland for their support and encouragement, especially Logan Carmichael, Nicole Perry, Maria Mitenkova, and Bernadette Luciano. I am grateful to my family for always believing in me and supporting me in pursuing my ambitions. Спасибо, мама, папа, Катя и Настя! Lastly but importantly, I would like to thank my husband Saurov Syed. I don’t think I could finish this enterprise without your love and support, thank you. v CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND .................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 Goals .......................................................................................................................... 2 1.1.2 Outline of the thesis ................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Assumptions about stress ................................................................................................. 6 1.2.1 Accent and stress ....................................................................................................... 6 1.2.2 Lexical Accent ......................................................................................................... 10 1.3 The Proposals ................................................................................................................. 11 1.3.1 Typology of Lexical Accent languages ................................................................... 13 1.3.2 Demarcative function of stress and levels of prominence ....................................... 23 1.4 Prosody in highly synthetic languages: Overview ......................................................... 28 1.4.1 Geographic and genetic coverage of prosodic studies on languages with highly synthetic morphologies ..................................................................................................... 28 1.4.2 Topics in the study of prominence in highly synthetic languages ........................... 31 CHAPTER 2. DIRECTIONAL ACCENT ....................................................................................... 40 2.1 Directional lexical stress systems ................................................................................... 40 2.2 Case study: Stress in Arapaho ........................................................................................ 40 2.2.1 Phonemic inventory, syllable structure ................................................................... 44 2.3 Prosodic system .............................................................................................................. 50 2.3.1 Lexical stress: Acoustic correlates .......................................................................... 51 2.3.2 Phonology of stress in Arapaho: Stress in nominals ............................................... 56 2.3.3 Stress in verbs .......................................................................................................... 73 2.3.4 Arapaho as a Directional Accent system: