Pintupi, A Pama-Nyungan Language

533 Words3 Pages

Foot type:

In Pintupi, a Pama-Nyungan language of Australia; accented syllables are denoted by an acute accent (a ́) which is used to denote primary stress, while a grave accent (à) is used to denote secondary stress.

Iambic and trochaic feet are important building blocks in the stress systems of most languages. Feet are different from all other levels of phonological organisation. Pintupi, is a typical example of a language with trochaic feet. (Hayes, 1995). Trochaic, left-aligning systems parsing binary feet are among the most wide-spread stress systems of the world 's languages.

From the data provided, it can be concluded that words with an even numbered string of syllables show us that Pintupi can be analysed as parsing left-headed, …show more content…

This is because it puts stress on the first vowel, which is always the most stressed. This can be shown through metrical grids (as seen below).

According to Hayes (1991, 1995) and Kager (1992), Pintupi has a bimoraic word minimum (Hammond). This indicates that Pintupi is a mora-counting language where long vowels are linked to two moras and short vowels are linked to one mora.

All feet left (AFL) and All feet right (AFR) align the feet in words with either the right or left word edge. (Kula, Botma and Nasukawa)
To ensure that feet are built from left to right, AFL has to outrank AFR. If we were to go from right to left, it would be concluded as:

The examples marked with an (*) would be incorrect. As Trochaic is assigned a violation mark by right-headed binary feet, for example, */tʲuʈayá/, while Iambic is assigned a violation mark by left-headed binary feet, such as, /tʲúʈaya/. Since Pintupi has a strong-weak pattern, Trochaic has to outrank Iambic. This is similar to the stress pattern of Garawa as found by Furby 1974 and Hayes 1995.

Open Document