Okay, the votes are in for Round 12! Sorry for not getting to this till later. For Chapter 15: Weight-sensitive stress I deeply regret to announce that we have a tie, in this case between
D) Right-oriented and
E) Unbounded. So, that triggers a runoff in
Round 13
Weight-sensitive stress runoff
D) Right-oriented: The antepenultimate is involved
E) Unbounded: Stress can be anywhere in the word
Some discussion of "unbounded" weight-sensitive stress systems
from WALS:
This category, also represented on Map 15A, has an unbounded stress window comprising the whole word (with the possible exclusion of a peripheral syllable). These systems are especially interesting because the location of stress is not restricted to syllables that are near the edge of the word.
There are in fact four types of unbounded weight-sensitive stress systems that we would have to vote on if we selected this option. I will provide descriptions of them based on the WALS descriptions if it comes to that. (They are simple enough, however.)
For Chapter 16: Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems, the winner is
C) Long vowel + Coda: long vowels or closed syllables.
WALS explains:
For languages that do count codas for weight, and which do have long vowels, the default option is that either one can make a syllable heavy by itself.
So, basically, heavy syllables are defined as in Latin and many other languages we are familiar with.
But what this now means is that the language must have long vowels. And that means we must decide on a vowel length system. It is possible that it may be a perfectly symmetrical system, with the five phonemic vowel qualities each having long and short versions; or it may be asymmetrical to one degree or another, with certain vowel qualities only appearing in short or long form. But I will leave it to you all to propose a symmetrical system or some other system.
Open submission: Vowel length systems
- The vowel system must include at least one minimal contrast between a long and short vowel of the same quality.
- All of the following vowel qualities (and no others) must be present:
(edit: since we've had no defined point at which to address the possibility of diphthongs, and I'm not actually sure how/if they're counted in WALS, you may include diphthongs when submitting a vowel length inventory - though we may also address the topic of diphthongs in the allophony and phonotactics round)
/i ɨ u/
/e/
/a/
Everyone may submit as many vowel length systems as they want.
Next week we will vote on vowel length inventories, and finally vote on Chapter 20: Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives. The week after that, we will address the tonal system, and syllable structure and allophony.
Voting for Round 13 will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, February 24.