Okay, everyone, in
Round 13, we voted on the Weight-sensitive stress runoff, and the winner is
E) Unbounded: Stress can be anywhere in the word. Here is
what WALS says about unbounded weight-sensitive stress systems:
These systems are especially interesting because the location of stress is not restricted to syllables that are near the edge of the word. [...]
It turns out that the location of stress in unbounded systems follows exactly the same principles that determine stress location in bounded, weight-sensitive systems. Again there are four types, as shown in (9) (compare (3)). The only difference is that the domain can now contain more than two heavy syllables (since its size is not limited to the size of two syllables):
This gives us an additional thing to vote on in
Round 14:
Unbounded stress types
A) Right/Left - Stress the rightmost heavy syllable in the word, and if there are no heavy syllables, stress the first syllable
B) Right/Right - Stress the rightmost heavy syllable in the word, and if there are no heavy syllables, stress the last syllable
C) Left/Left - Stress the leftmost heavy syllable in the word, and if there are no heavy syllables, stress the first syllable
D) Left/Right - Stress the leftmost heavy syllable in the word, and if there are no heavy syllables, stress the last syllable
And since I don't think unbounded stress type if particularly consequential for this, we can go ahead and start voting on rhythm types. This is based on Chapter 17 in WALS and pertains to the assignment of secondary stress. First, we must vote on whether there will be secondary stress or not.
Secondary Stress
A) Secondary stress is present
B) Secondary stress is not present
We also took submissions for vowel length inventories.
Vowel length inventories
Each user may vote for two (but you may not vote for the same one twice).
A)
/i ɨ u/
/e eː/
/a aː/
/ei əɨ ou/
B)
/i i: ɨ u u:/
/e e:/
/a a:/
/ai au ei/
C)
/i iː ɨ ɨː u uː/
/e eː/
/a aː/
/ai au ei eu iu ui ɨu ɨi/
D)
/i iː ɨ ɨː u uː/
/e eː/
/a aː/
/iu ui eu au ei ai ue ua ie ia/
E)
/i iː ɨ ɨː u uː/
/e eː/
/a aː/
Also, as promised, we will also finally start voting on the inflectional questions. We will start with Chapter 20: Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives. The data in this chapter is based on case marking and tense-aspect marking, as outlined on the page
Sampling Case and Tense Formatives. As you may recall, in the very first round, we voted on Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology, and opted for the category Consistently head-marking. What this means is that there is no case-marking, or at least no case marking in nouns. Even if there is case-marking on pronouns, it is ignored in the sampling procedure for Chapter 20. (We can approach the topic of case-marking on pronouns later.)
So what we are doing is voting on the fusion of tense-aspect marking in this language. The "mixed" categories in the WALS sample are for languages where the fusion of case marking and tense-aspect marking differ. We do not have case marking, so these categories will be excluded from the vote.
Chapter 20: Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives
A) Exclusively concatenative
B) Exclusively isolating
C) Exclusively tonal
D) Exclusively ablaut
Edit: Another note for clarification. The term "exclusively" here refers to the single sampled TAM formative, which, as described in the link above, is by default the past tense. If there is no past, it refers to the future; if no future, it refers to the present; if no tense, it refers to aspect, and so on. So if we vote "exclusively concatenating", that means the past tense (or whichever other formative) is concatenating, but it still allows for the possibility that other formatives could be tonal, and vice versa. Also, I have added an "ablaut" category - it doesn't appear on its own as a category, but it appears in one of the combined categories, so heck, why not provide it as an option?
(I am not sure what a head-marking isolating language looks like, but I checked WALS and apparently at least some exist...)
Okay! That's a lot. In Round 15 we will continue with the secondary stress/rhythm process and possibly vote on Chapter 21: Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives. And after that will come the long-awaited allophony, phonotactics, and tone system submissions.
Voting for Round 14 will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, March 3.