consonants lack laryngeal features and glottal stops lack oral features, the anticipatory assimilation of the former to the latter is phonetically natural (Ibid. 314).

### 4.5.2.4 Affricates

Affricates are plosive articulations which include a period of frication following the release of the occlusion. The stop and fricative portion of an affricate are very often produced at the same place of articulation. The most frequent types of affricates, those produced in the palato-alveolar or dental/alveolar regions, are commonly attested to arise from stops in a process called assibilation (Hall & Hamann 2006; Telfer 2006). In a typical assibilation process, a dental/alveolar stop is realized as an affricate preceding a high front vowel.<fnref n="8" /> This sound change is documented in the history of Romance, and is also a common allophonic process. For example, in Kalaallisut, voiceless alveolar stop /t/ has an allophone [ts] obligatorily preceding a high front vowel /i/ and optionally in word-final position (Fortescue 1984: 333). Assibilation processes may also be triggered by high vowels more generally, as in the Japanese example in (45).

(45) Japanese (Japonic; Japan)
/itu/
[itsu]
‘when’ (Tsujimura 2013: 22)

Because palato-alveolar consonants are so often affricates, some of the processes which commonly give rise to palato-alveolars may also produce affricates.<fnref n="9" /> Dental/alveolar or velar stops may be shifted to the palato-alveolar place of articulation and affricated adjacent to a (high) front vowel (see example from the history of Romance in §4.5.2.1). Due to the large contact area for stops in this region, affecting the extent to which the release can be abrupt, affricates may also come about through variation with a palatal stop, as in Yine, where /c/ varies freely between [c] and [çc] (Hanson 2010: 17–18).

<footnote n="8">⁸Note that assibilation processes may often result in sibilant fricatives, in addition to affricates.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹This brings up the question of whether the higher proportions of palato-alveolars and affricates in the Highly Complex category are essentially an artifact of higher rates of palato-alveolar affricates (/tʃ/ and /dʒ/) in those languages. This is not the case. In all syllable structure complexity categories, most of the languages with affricates do not have them solely at the palato-alveolar place of articulation, and most of the languages with palato-alveolars do not have them solely for the affricate manner of articulation.</footnote>
Additionally, affricates may arise from glide strengthening: e.g. Late Latin
[j]am > Gallo-Romance [dʒ]am ‘already’ (Berns 2013: 132). A similar process,
perhaps along the same cline, involves the strengthening of a palato-alveolar
fricative to an affricate. In Sheko, the voiced palato-alveolar fricative [ʒ] is in
free variation with an affricate counterpart and a voiced palatal stop in most
syllable-initial contexts (46).

(46) Sheko (Dizoid; Ethiopia)
/bāʒà/
[bāʒà]~[bādʒà]~[bāʃà]
‘work’ (Hellenthal 2010: 86)

Other historical sources of affricates show them occasionally arising from con-
sonant coalescence and stop intrusion. In the history of Romance, the deletion
of unstressed vowels created consonant clusters which merged into affricates in
some contexts: Classical Latin *nātus* > Gallo-Romance *ne[ts]* ‘born’ (Berns 2013:
128). Vowel deletion in Romance could also condition stop intrusion when occur-
ring between a coronal sonorant and /s/, resulting in an affricate: Classical Latin
*annos* > Gallo-Romance *an[ts]* ‘years’ (Ibid.).

The environments conditioning the development of affricates are frequently
similar to those conditioning the development of palato-alveolars: an adjacent,
but usually following, high and/or front vowel, and/or syllable-initial position.
Again, there are both acoustic/perceptual and articulatory accounts for these
phenomena. Hall et al. (2006) argue that the turbulence occurring when a den-
tal/alveolar stop is released into a high front vowel or glide can be reinterpreted
as affrication. In articulatory terms, the highly constricted nature of the high
front vowel configuration may contribute to a brief period of actual frication
during and after the release of the stop. In either account, the stop is assimilat-
ing to properties of the following vowel. Lenition may play a more minor role
in the development of affricates. The unconditioned variation between a palatal
stop and palato-alveolar affricate can be, as discussed above, seen as a case of
weakening of the abrupt stop release. The development of affricates out of coa-
lescence processes is an effect of vowel deletion, a type of lenition. Finally, the
development of affricates out of intrusive stops can be considered fortition, but
is probably better understood as an effect of gestural retiming than insertion of
a new gesture (Bybee 2015b: 43–44).
### 4.5.2.5 More post-velar distinctions and pharyngeals

Languages with Highly Complex syllable structure are more likely to have more than one post-velar articulation, defined here as uvular, pharyngeal(ized), and glottal articulations, than languages in the other categories examined. The development of uvular consonants has been described in §4.5.2.2 above. As described in §4.4.4, there is no apparent relationship between syllable structure complexity and the presence of glottal consonants. Therefore I focus here on the development of pharyngeals.

Pharyngeal consonants are articulated with a constriction, usually fricative or approximant, at the pharynx. The term is often used to describe consonants articulated at the pharynx or epiglottis, because there are very few languages in which a distinction is made between these two places (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996: 167–168).

In a typological study of post-velar consonants in 291 languages, Sylak-Glassman (2014: 49) reports that languages with pharyngeals but no uvulars or glottals are extremely rare. Likewise, languages with uvulars and pharyngeals but no glottals are rare. He takes these distributions to suggest that pharyngeals are likely to develop from uvulars in languages in which both uvulars and glottals are already present.

Jacobsen (1969) uses comparative and morphophonological evidence to show that pharyngeals in Nuu-chah-nulth and Nitinaht very likely developed out of uvulars in the recent history of Nootkan. The pharyngeal consonants in these languages correspond to uvulars in Makah and other members of the family. This account is supported by the more recent merger in Nuu-chah-nulth, briefly described in §4.2.1, in which ejective uvulars have merged with /σ/ in the present language. A pharyngeal may be found as an allophonic variant of the voiced uvular fricative in consonant clusters in Rgyalrong Zbu (47).

Similar observations have been made regarding the relationship between glottals and pharyngeals in some Semitic languages. One proposal for the development of secondary pharyngealization in the family argues that these consonants were originally ejectives which gradually took on pharyngealization and lost the

<footnote>(47) Rgyalrong Zbu (Sino-Tibetan; China)
/vĕ-ʔgəvĕ/
[vĕʔgəvĕ]
'his/her funeral' (Gong 2018: 62)</footnote>
glottal closure (Zemánek 1996). In Neo-Aramaic, it has been proposed that pha-
ryngeal [ɣ] and glottal [?] were in complementary distribution at one historical
stage (Hoberman 1985).

Jacobsen makes the following typological generalization regarding the devel-
opment of pharyngeals:

...[t]wo preconditions would be necessary to the development of pharyngeals: the presence of glottalized consonants, and of contrasting k- and q-series of consonants. Occasionally some languages meeting these specifications, such as early Nootka, must have experienced undue crowding of consonants at the back of the mouth and relieved this by moving some of them back to the pharynx. (Jacobsen 1969: 152)

While it seems likely from the comparative, historical, and distributional ev-
idence that pharyngeals develop out of uvulars and glottals, the specific pho-
netic motivations behind these developments are unclear. The paths posited for
Nootkan and Semitic above seem to be quite general and unconditioned by spe-
cific vocalic or other environments. What Jacobsen describes in the passage
above sounds more like an articulatory- or perceptually-motivated chain shift,
as observed for vowel systems, than any typical process of consonantal sound
change.

4.5.3 Articulations and consonantal contrasts characteristic of the
Simple category

In this section I present historical, comparative, and synchronic accounts of pro-
cesses resulting in articulations and contrasts associated with the Simple cate-
gory, specifically prenasalization and flaps/taps. In contrast to the processes de-
scribed in §4.5.2 above, the processes in this section can often be interpreted as
sonorization or lenition.

4.5.3.1 Prenasalization

Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of homorganic nasals and con-
sonants, usually stops. The timing pattern of prenasalized stops can be similar to
that of nasal+plosive sequences across languages (Browman & Goldstein 1986),
and indeed there are languages in which prenasalized stops derive from such se-
quences. In many Bantu languages, prenasalized consonants are often morpho-
logically derived, but have the phonological behavior of single units (Tak 2011,
see example 48).
(48) Kilega (Atlantic-Congo; Democratic Republic of the Congo)
/n-pene/
cl-goat
[m̥pene]
'a goat' (Tak 2011: 132)

Prenasalized portions of consonants may also arise as intrusive or transitional elements when consonants are found in the context of a nasalized vowel. In Tucano, there is a synchronic process by which a stop acquires prenasalization word-medially following a nasalized vowel (49).

(49) Tucano (Tucanoan; Brazil, Colombia)
/kɔ́pe/
[kɔ́m̥pe]
'left' (West 1980: 11)

More often, synchronic processes yielding prenasalized consonants are reported to occur in specific utterance, word, or morpheme positions. In Sanchong Gelao, for example, initial voiceless stops in isolation forms may be prenasalized (50a–b).

(50) Sanchong Gelao (Tai-Kadai; China)
a. /ta³¹/
   [ⁿta³¹]
   ‘moon/month’
b. /żaw³¹ ta³¹/
   eight moon/month
   [żaw³¹ ta³¹]
   ‘August’ (Shen 2003: 40)

In Mian, the voiced bilabial stop /b/ is prenasalized in the more general word-initial environment (Fedden 2007). In Hup, voiced obstruents are prenasalized morpheme-initially (51).

(51) Hup (Nadahup; Brazil, Colombia)
/du/
[n̥dû:]
‘grandchild’ (Epps 2008: 54)
4 Phoneme inventories and syllable structure complexity

It has been observed that phonemic prenasalized stops often behave phonolog-
ically like voiced stops, rather than nasals or sequences (cf. Iverson & Salmons
1996 for Mixtec). Some languages with a prenasalized stop series lack other
voiced stop series, such that the prenasalized stops effectively take their place
(Maddieson 1984: 67–68).

It has been proposed that prenasalization, though it is a manner feature, is an
articulatory strategy for maintaining voicing on stops (Ohala 1983; Henton et al.
1992). Articulating a voiced stop is complicated by the fact that the increasing
pressure in the oral cavity may approach the subglottal pressure, which reduces
the amount of air flowing through the glottis and thus compromises the phys-
iological requirements for voicing. Ohala notes that languages may “solve the
problem” of voicing maintenance on stops by releasing air through the velic port
during the initial part of the closure (1983: 200). This comes at little perceptual
cost: the main auditory cues of voiced stops can be retained even with initial velic
leakage (Ohala & Ohala 1991: 213). This too might explain why phonetic prenasal-
ization often occurs domain-initially: voiced stops in these contexts may have a
longer duration than their intervocalic counterparts (Flege & Brown Jr. 1982),
and thus may be more prone to articulatory adjustments to extend the voicing.

4.5.3.2 Flaps/taps

Flaps and taps are rapid articulations which involve a movement of the active ar-
ticulator against the passive articulator for a brief period of contact. Sometimes
the terms “flap” and “tap” are used interchangeably, but Ladefoged & Maddieson
(1996) distinguish these articulations according to the angle of approach of the
active articulator. Most flaps and taps, including the crosslinguistically most fre-
quent ones, are produced by the tongue tip in the dental/alveolar region.

Flaps/taps may arise from sounds with various manners of articulation. In
a well-documented sound change, the Spanish trill descended from a geminate
apico-alveolar trill in Latin, while the Spanish tap descended from a trill of nor-
mal length (Hualde 2004: 17–18). There are many allophonic patterns in which
trills vary with flaps in specific phonological environments, intervocalic and
word-marginal contexts being two common ones. In Moro, voiced alveolar trill
/r/ is realized as a flap [r] intervocalically (Black & Black 1971: 7). In Tigak, a
word-initial alveolar trill varies freely with a flap (52).
(52) Tigak (Austronesian; Papua New Guinea)
/rik/
[rik]~[rik]
'they (subj. pr.)' (Beaumont 1979: 14)

Trills may also vary with taps when occurring in a consonant cluster. For example, in Palantla Chinantec an apico-domal trill is realized as an apico-alveolar tap following another consonant in syllable onset (Merrifield 1963: 3).

Other sonorants may vary with flaps/taps as well. For example, in Dan, a lateral approximant is realized as a flap between an alveolar stop and a vowel (Bearth & Zemp 1967). In Car Nicobarese, a voiced alveolar lateral approximant is flapped in syllable final position (53).

(53) Car Nicobarese (Austroasiatic; India)
/tafu:l/
[tafu:I]
'six' (Braine 1970: 45)

Alveolar stops and nasals in intervocalic contexts are common sources of flaps and taps. This occurs in certain stress environments in American English (e.g. *bu[r]er*), and is a characteristic of rapid speech in some languages (e.g. Kadiwéu, Sandalo 1997). Such a process occurs in Pangasinan with voiced alveolar stops (54).

(54) Pangasinan (Austronesian; Philippines)
/madabok/
[marabok]
'dusty' (Benton 1971: 18)

Processes resulting in flaps or taps are often sensitive to the height of surrounding vowels. In Apinayé, a voiceless alveolar stop is realized as a flap adjacent to mid front vowel /e/ (Cunha de Oliveira 2005: 48). In Grass Koiari, a lateral approximant is realized as a flap before front vowels (55).

(55) Grass Koiari (Koiarian; Papua New Guinea)
/leketole/
[reketore]
'evening star' (Dutton 1996: 6)
Due to the highly reduced duration and magnitude of tap and flap articulations in comparison to sounds they derive from, flapping is typically considered to be an unambiguous form of lenition. In an Articulatory Phonology model, flapping may come about through both the overlap of surrounding vowel gestures into the consonant and the reduction of the tongue tip or active articulator gesture.

### 4.5.4 Segmental patterns, sound change, and syllable structure complexity

In §4.4 it was noted that languages on opposite extremes of the syllable structure complexity cline tend to have different kinds of consonant articulations. Languages in the Highly Complex category are more likely to have certain consonant place features and manner features characteristic of obstruents. Languages in the Simple category are more likely to have certain manner features related to sonorants. This segmental distribution prompted an investigation into the common paths by which these specific articulations and contrasts are known to develop, since sound patterns often reflect processes of sound change. The reported historical, comparative, and synchronic evidence presented in §4.5.2–4.5.3 shows a similar divide according to the kinds of processes that most commonly produce the segments characteristic of languages in the Highly Complex and Simple categories.

The consonant articulations and contrasts associated with the Highly Complex category tend to be brought about through processes of *assimilation* and *fortition*. Assimilation is very often to the place of an adjacent vowel: palato-alveolars and affricates typically assimilate to a high and/or front vowel and uvulars to a low and/or back vowel. In the case of ejectives, the assimilation is of an oral obstruent to a following glottal stop. In gestural terms, the assimilatory processes producing palato-alveolars and ejectives, in particular, involve a large amount of temporal overlap of the associated consonantal and vocalic gestures; in fact, Bateman (2007) argues that it is the amount of temporal overlap of the high front tongue gesture of the vowel that distinguishes secondary palatalization from palatalization resulting in palato-alveolars. Affricates and palato-alveolars may also come about through fortition, and specifically processes of glide strengthening. Common conditioning environments for such processes are syllable-initial position and, again, adjacent high and/or front vowels. The syllable-initial position, like the high front tongue body configuration, is argued to be a strong environment for articulation. It is associated with a higher degree and duration of linguopalatal contact, higher tongue pressure against the palate, generally tighter consonant
constriction, and greater synchronicity with vocalic gestures than syllable-final position (Byrd 1996a; Fougeron 1999; Keating et al. 2003; Goldstein et al. 2006).

By contrast, the two consonant articulations associated with the Simple category tend to come about through processes of *lenition*, in which the gestures of affected consonants are weakened or affected consonants otherwise become more vowel-like in their qualities. Processes producing flaps and taps are cases of lenition which involve a reduction in the duration of the consonant gesture and sometimes an accompanying loss of the glottal opening gesture (when voiceless stops become flapped and voiced). Though prenasalization does not necessarily involve a decrease in the magnitude or duration of gestures, it has the effect of facilitating voicing. These kinds of processes can be categorized as *sonorization*, a family of sound changes by which consonants become more vowel-like. Additionally, some of the processes reported in §4.5.3 also occur in weak environments for articulation, such as intervocalic and unstressed positions, which are typically considered to be characteristic of lenition and sonorization processes.

Very generally speaking, languages with different syllable structure complexity are associated with different, specific segmental patterns which are in turn associated with different kinds of sound change processes. Specifically, languages with more complex syllable patterns tend to have consonants which tend to come about through assimilation and fortition in strong environments, while languages with simpler syllable patterns tend to have consonants which tend to come about through lenition or sonorization in weak environments. These sound change processes differ not only in their standard phonological definitions, but also in the physical properties of articulation and gestural organization which are involved.

Of course, sound change may come about through very complex interactions of phonetic tendencies, morphosyntactic patterns, frequency of use, and social factors. Hualde notes that the phonetic mechanisms behind sound change are perhaps more readily transparent than “the psychological and social processes that lead to their conventionalization in specific environments and to the recategorization of sounds” (Hualde 2011: 2222). In a typological study such as this, it is not feasible to consider all of the additional factors which may have contributed to the sound patterns observed. However, it is encouraging that a consideration of phonetic factors alone has yielded the associations with different types of sound change observed here.

It would seem that the development of highly complex syllable structure is likely to be accompanied by processes of sound change which are realized in articulatory terms as extreme gestural overlap and/or increased magnitude of gestures in strong positions. Specifically, the findings may suggest differences in
patterns of temporal organization in the languages with more complex syllable
structure, including more compressed timing relationships between consonants
and vowels or glottal articulations. The question of whether these sound changes
might be an earlier development, a later development, or a secondary effect of
the same processes which result in increased syllable structure complexity will
be explored in Chapters 7 and 8.

The findings here suggest that there is more to be gained from the studies pre-
sented here than just a phonological characterization of languages with highly
complex syllable structure. Languages with simple syllable structure, too, tend
to be characterized by a set of phonological properties. The integrated findings
regarding syllable structure complexity, phoneme inventories, and sound change
evoke the holistic phonological typologies of the speech rhythm literature (Roach
1982; Dauer 1983; Auer 1993) and the Prague School (Isačenko 1939). This raises
the question of whether a holistic phonological typology defined by syllable
structure complexity is tenable. This point will be revisited in the studies pre-
sented in upcoming chapters, exploring suprasegmental features, vowel reduc-
tion, and specific kinds of consonant allophony in the language sample.

I have left undiscussed here the vowel contrasts which were found to be as-
sociated with simpler syllable structure. Two of these contrasts will be revisited
in later chapters. Vowel length will be touched upon in the context of stress and
tone in Chapter 5, while phonation contrasts in vowels will be touched upon in
the context of vowel reduction in Chapter 6.
# 5 Suprasegmental patterns

## 5.1 Introduction

In this chapter I describe and present analyses of suprasegmental properties in the language sample. Specifically, the four hypotheses tested here relate the placement, segmental effects, and phonetic correlates of word stress to syllable structure complexity. The distribution of tone in the language sample is also briefly considered in relation to one of these hypotheses.

The chapter is organized as follows. In §5.1 I describe general properties of word stress and tone, discuss findings in the literature which relate these to syllable structure complexity, and introduce the hypotheses to be tested in the current study. In §5.2 I describe the methodology behind the data collection and coding. In §5.3 I present a brief analysis of the distribution of the presence of tone in the language sample. In §5.4 I present several analyses to test the hypotheses relating properties of word stress to syllable structure complexity. In §5.5 I discuss how the results address the main research questions of the book regarding highly complex syllable structure, and how they relate more generally to the evolution of that complexity.

### 5.1.1 Word stress and tone

In Chapter 4, I presented a study of the segmental properties of the language sample. As discussed there, segments are the more or less discrete units which correspond to contrastive consonant and vowel sounds in a language. In this chapter, the focus is instead on suprasegmental properties of the language sample. The term “suprasegmental” refers to phonological properties of speech which are associated with domains larger than the segment; that is, the syllable, word, or even larger units such as phonological phrases or utterances. In the current study, only two suprasegmental features are considered: word stress and tone. I describe some basic characteristics of these phenomena here.

Not all languages have word stress. In languages in which it occurs, word stress corresponds to the increased perceptual prominence of a syllable with respect to other syllables in a word. This prominence is acoustically salient and may be accompanied by increased duration, differences in pitch (the perceptual analog of
fundamental frequency), higher intensity, and differences in spectral tilt (Gordon 2011). Articulatory properties associated with stress include increased duration of gestures, more extreme articulations (i.e. tighter constrictions for consonants and more open articulations for vowels) and less articulatory overlap between consonantal and vocalic gestures (Beckman & Edwards 1994; Fougeron 1999; De Jong et al. 1993). Many of the findings on acoustic and articulatory correlates of stress are based on studies of individual languages. Languages vary widely with respect to which phonetic properties cue stress. While English uses a combination of duration, intensity, and pitch to signal stress, it is common for languages to rely on just one or two of these cues, or for one to be stronger or more reliable than the others. To illustrate with a language from the current sample: in Lelepa, duration, pitch, and intensity are all used to signal stress, but do not necessarily co-occur, and length is noted to be a weaker correlate than the others (Lacrampe 2014: 58).

Stressed and unstressed syllables may differ in other phonetic and phono-
logical properties as well. Processes conditioned at least in part by the stress
environment, such as aspiration in stressed syllables and vowel reduction and
flapping in unstressed syllables, may provide allophonic cues to stress. Stressed
and unstressed syllables may also show phonological asymmetries. For instance,
vowel quality or length contrasts in unstressed syllables may be reduced to a
subset of those found in stressed syllables (van der Hulst 2010). From a sound
change perspective, such asymmetries reflect the phonologization of previous
stress-conditioned allophonic processes and may suggest a long history of the
effects of word stress in a language.

While languages with word stress may have both primary and secondary stress
patterns, crosslinguistic studies, including the current one, often focus on the
properties of primary stress. This is the strongest and most prominent stress in
the word. Patterns of primary stress placement vary widely among languages.
Sometimes these differences are described in terms of the function of stress. Pat-
terns in which stress predictably falls on the same syllable with respect to a word
edge, such as regular penultimate stress patterns, are said to be demarcative or
delimitative in their function. That is, these patterns are thought to help the lis-
tener identify word boundaries in the speech stream. In other cases, stress may
serve a distinctive function by signaling differences in meaning: e.g. English *ré*-
*cord* (noun) versus *recórd* (verb). However, it is rare for languages to have stress
patterns which are entirely one or the other: most languages with delimitative
stress have exceptions to these patterns, and most languages with distinctive
stress do not have many lexical items which are differentiated solely by stress
(Cruttenden 1997: 14–15).
Stress patterns may also be described in terms of the principles underlying the placement of primary stress. These may include the distance in number of syllables from a specific word or stem edge, the relative weight of syllables, or the structure of tonal sequences, or may be largely unpredictable (van der Hulst 2010). Issues of stress placement will be discussed in greater detail in §5.2.1.

There are several large-scale typological surveys of word stress systems. Hyman (1977) examines the placement of stress in fixed stress systems in 306 languages and shows that initial, penultimate, and final position are the most frequent locations used in these systems. In a 400-language survey of phenomena related to syllable weight, Gordon (2006) examines, among other issues, the crosslinguistic distribution of certain weight distinctions for stress placement. Goedemans & van der Hulst (2013a,b) report on word stress placement patterns in a sample of 510 languages. This database, StressTyp, was later updated to include over 750 languages and includes fine-grained classification procedures for stress placement patterns (Goedemans et al. 2017). Some more general phonological databases also provide information on stress placement (e.g. LAPSyD, Madieson et al. 2013).

Most large crosslinguistic studies and databases of word stress patterns are concerned with issues of stress placement. However, some of the other properties associated with stress have been investigated in smaller typological studies. Barnes (2006) examines the neutralization of contrasts in height, length, and other properties of vowels in unstressed syllables in a diverse array of languages. Similarly, Crosswhite (2001) investigates common neutralization outcomes of unstressed vowel reduction in 40 languages. She finds that two strong crosslinguistic patterns are prominence reduction (centralization, laxing, or raising which reduces the vowel space in unstressed syllables) and vowel peripheralization (neutralization of vowel contrasts to a few peripheral qualities of the vowel space). Fewer crosslinguistic studies have focused on phonetic (that is, not necessarily neutralizing) vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. One such study of these patterns in 81 languages found a predominance of prominence-reducing quality reduction, as well as more minor patterns of vowel raising, unrounding, devoicing, shortening, and deletion (Kapatsinski et al. forthcoming). In a diverse sample of 42 languages, Bybee et al. (1998) report on several properties associated with stress, including predictability of stress placement, lengthening of stressed vowels, unstressed vowel reduction, and consonantal changes conditioned by stress. The relationships between these patterns are used to support a model for the diachronic evolution of unpredictable word stress. This study will be discussed further below.
The analyses in this chapter are concerned primarily with the properties of
word stress. However, tone is additionally considered in several of the analyses.
Tone can be defined as the use of pitch to convey lexical or grammatical con-
trasts. Like word stress, not all languages have tone. Tone is typically described
in terms of contrasts in pitch ranges or pitch contours, with each range or con-
tour being meaningfully distinctive; however, specific tones in a language are
often additionally associated with other phonetic correlates, including duration
and phonation properties such as glottalization (Laver 1994: 477–481). The com-
plexity of tonal systems range from relatively simple, consisting of just two tone
distinctions, to much more elaborated (e.g. six or seven tones in Cantonese, Bauer
& Benedict 1997). There is also wide crosslinguistic variation in the distribution
or function of tone within a language. In some languages, nearly all syllables in a
word have a lexically or morphologically defined tone. In others, the distribution
of tone may be restricted to a single syllable or set of syllables in a word, or there
may be limitations on the combinations of tones found in words (see Hyman
2009 for a discussion of commonly observed restrictions on tonal distribution).

Large-scale crosslinguistic studies of tone include Maddieson (2013c), which surveys the complexity of tonal systems (in number of distinctive tones) in 220 languages and relates the patterns to properties of segment inventories and syllable structure complexity. That study reports a strong geographical component to the distribution of tone languages: they are predominantly found in Africa and Southeast Asia, though they can also be found in parts of New Guinea and the Americas. Tone systems are largely absent in the regions of Australia and most of Eurasia. Other general phonological surveys, such as LAPSyD (Maddieson et al. 2013) and the World Phonotactics Database (Donohue et al. 2013), include information on tonal systems.

Traditionally, linguists have assumed a prosodic typology in which three lan-
guage types can be identified: stress languages, tone languages, and “pitch ac-
cent” languages. The latter group is regarded as having properties of both stress
and tone languages. In practice, the languages described by this term do not form
a coherent group with respect to their accentual patterns. Hyman (2009) argues
that there are no criteria by which such languages can be defined independently
of stress or tone. In his view, languages which are traditionally called “stress” or
“tone” languages just happen to have more prototypical features with respect to
these criteria.
5.1.2 Suprasegmentals and syllable structure complexity

As discussed in §1.3.1, a long-established line of research has related proper-
ties of word stress to syllable structure complexity. The typology proposed by
Pike (1945) distinguished two speech rhythm types: stress-timed languages and
syllable-timed languages. Later refined to include a third category of mora-tim-
ing, this typology assumed isochrony, that is, equal timing between stresses,
syllables, or morae, depending upon the language type. For example, in stress-
timed languages, like English, the intervals between stressed syllables were pro-
posed to have roughly equal durations. Syllable-timed languages, like Spanish,
were proposed to have syllables of roughly equal durations. Isochrony was ulti-
mately disconfirmed (Roach 1982), but related research established that rhythm
plays a strong role in speech perception and language acquisition (e.g. Cutler &
Mehler 1993). Seeking to characterize measurable properties of speech rhythm,
researchers proposed a number of co-occurring phonological features for each
rhythm type (Dauer 1983; Auer 1993). Simple syllable structure was proposed to
co-occur with syllable timing, and complex syllable structure with stress timing.
Additionally, specific segmental properties and processes were suggested to co-
occur with these types: stress timing, for instance, is associated with unstressed
vowel reduction, contrastive vowel length, and more variable word stress pat-
terns. Note that in this typology, syllable-timed languages may have word stress
(e.g., Spanish); it is the different properties and effects of word stress which, in
part, set these rhythm types apart from one another.

A similar holistic phonological typology developed out of the Prague School tradition. Isačenko (1939) proposed a typology of Slavic languages which distinguished between two types: consonantal and vocalic languages. As discussed in previous chapters, these groups of languages were defined according to properties of their phoneme inventories, syllable nuclei, and syllable structure complexity. Additionally, Isačenko considered prosodic features in this classification. Vocalic languages such as Slovene are said to be “polytonic,” characterized by greater distinctions in “musical intonation” in long syllables, along with simpler syllable structure and lower consonant-to-vowel ratios in the phoneme inventory. By contrast, consonantal languages such as Russian are said to be “monotonic,” characterized by either dynamic or fixed stress systems, complex consonant clusters, and higher consonant-to-vowel ratios in the phoneme inventory (1939: 67–69). Interestingly, the latter classification groups together languages like Russian, which has highly unpredictable word stress placement, and Polish, which has predominantly fixed placement of word stress.
More recent research paradigms have attempted to establish the acoustic cor-
relates of speech rhythm. Acoustic metrics corresponding to the proportion of
vocalic intervals and standard deviation of consonantal intervals in speech, when
plotted against one another, are said to index traditional rhythm categories of
stress timing and syllable timing (Ramus et al. 1999). These metrics have been
suggested to relate directly to syllable structure complexity. When measured in
a crosslinguistically diverse sample of languages carefully controlled for syllable
structure complexity, the presence or absence of vowel reduction, and the pres-
ence or absence of contrastive vowel length, it was found that syllable structure
complexity is indeed significantly correlated with these indices (Easterday et al.
2011). However, it should be noted that there is debate in the literature as to the
appropriateness and reliability of these and other metrics used to quantify the
acoustic properties of speech rhythm (Wiget et al. 2010).

A few typological studies of moderate size have investigated relationships be-
tween stress patterns, syllable structure complexity, and phonological properties
and processes. Auer (1993) examines a diverse array of phonological patterns
which include syllable structure, stress, vowel harmony, tone, vowel epenthesis,
vowel deletion, and consonant assimilation in a sample of 34 diverse languages.
He finds a number of correlations and implications between the different mea-
sures. In that sample, higher syllable complexity is correlated with a higher pres-
ence of word stress and vowel reduction processes. However, the languages show
a high degree of variation with respect to most of the measures and do not fall
into narrowly defined types.

Schiering (2007) examines the distribution of ten phonetic and phonological
parameters in a genealogically and geographically diversified sample of 20 lan-
guages. In this study, the parameters which most reliably cluster together are
phonetic correlates of stress, segmental effects of stress, syllable complexity, and
length contrasts. Specifically, languages with a high number of phonetic cor-
relates of word stress are strongly associated with greater segmental effects of
stress, more loosely associated with high syllable structure complexity and
length contrasts, and negatively associated with the presence of tone and vowel
harmony. However, relatively few languages show clusters of all the properties
suggested to be prototypical of any rhythm class, suggesting little evidence for
discrete rhythm categories. Schiering argues that the evidence instead points to
a stress cline, in which gradual increases in the phonetic strength of stress are
accompanied by increased segmental effects. He also raises the point that most
of the proposed phonological correlates of linguistic rhythm are derived from
the patterns of European languages, specifically English and Spanish. That the
expected patterns were not held up in a diversified sample is an important find-
ing.

Bybee et al. (1998) explore implicational relationships among the predictability of stress, vowel length as a phonetic correlate of stress, and stress-conditioned processes of vowel reduction and consonant allophony in 42 languages. They hypothesize that as increased vowel duration gradually becomes the primary correlate of predictable word stress, decreased vowel duration becomes an important property of unstressed syllables. As stress, signaled by vowel duration, becomes incrementally stronger in a language, it conditions segmental effects such as vowel quality reduction and consonant allophony. When eventually these effects culminate in vowel deletion, the predictable stress pattern of the language may be disrupted, yielding an unpredictable stress system and an even stronger reliance on duration as a signal for stress, continuing the cycle. The implicational relationships established in the study support this path of development: for example, languages with vowel lengthening also have vowel reduction, which the authors take to imply that vowel reduction becomes a defining property of unstressed syllables before vowel length becomes a defining property of stressed syllables. While the authors do not consider syllable structure, theirs is perhaps the only study of its kind in that it attempts to reconstruct from synchronic typological evidence a diachronic path along which stress systems and concomitant phonetic patterns may develop. Those phonetic patterns, specifically vowel reduction resulting in eventual vowel deletion, are in turn relevant in the development of the consonant clusters associated with syllable structure complexity.

Comparing the findings of Bybee et al. (1998) and Schiering (2007) raises some points for further investigation. Bybee and colleagues do not report how their results relate to the syllable structure complexity of the languages examined. However, the diachronic path they propose is clearly relevant to the development of syllable structure complexity. Interestingly, though, Schiering did not find the predictability of stress placement to be reliably correlated with segmental effects of stress or with syllable structure complexity. Instead, he found that the relative strength of stress, in terms of the number of phonetic correlates, was robustly associated with both segmental effects of stress and syllable structure complexity.

Regarding relationships between tone and syllable structure complexity, some patterns have been noted in the literature. Specifically, Maddieson (2013c) established an inverse relationship between the elaboration of tonal contrasts and syllable structure complexity in a survey of 471 languages. Additionally, languages lacking tone altogether were found to be much more likely to have complex syllable patterns. This concurs with findings by Auer (1993) and Schiering (2007).
5.1.3 The current study and hypotheses

The findings discussed above indicate that there are at least some crosslinguis-
tic associations between word stress, its correlates, placement, and segmental ef-
fects, and syllable structure complexity. However, none of the studies mentioned
above, apart from the acoustic study in Easterday et al. (2011), were conducted in
a sample carefully chosen to equally represent differing degrees of syllable struc-
ture complexity. Languages with Simple or Highly Complex syllable structure,
as defined here, were particularly rare in the samples of Auer (1993), Bybee et al.
(1998), and Schiering (2007), owing to the methods of sample construction used
and the relatively lower global frequencies of such languages. It is therefore ap-
propriate to explore these issues in the current study, with the aim of addressing
the main research questions of the book. In this chapter I seek to establish the
suprasegmental properties, specifically those related to word stress, associated
with highly complex syllable structure. In turn, these findings will be used to
inform a picture of the diachronic development of these structures.

The first two hypotheses follow from the research of Bybee et al. (1998), as
well as observations of ongoing processes in the current sample and findings
from Chapter 3. Bybee and colleagues found that the segmental effects of stress
were stronger in languages with less predictable stress patterns, which in turn
may come about through segmental effects of stress, namely unstressed vowel
reduction and deletion. In the current sample, there are several examples of re-
cent or ongoing processes which support this diachronic path. For example, in
Imbabura Highland Quichua, the regular penultimate stress pattern has recently
been destabilized as a result of the reduction of validator suffixes: -tʃari- > -tʃa-
‘doubt’ and -mari- > -ma- ‘emphatic firsthand information.’ Cole (1982) reports
that words with the short forms of these suffixes usually carry word-final stress
(1).

(1) Imbabura Highland Quichua (Quechuan; Ecuador)
∫amunga tʃa
∫amu-n-ga-tʃa
come-3-FUT-DUB
‘perhaps he will come’ (Cole 1982: 209)

The process in Imbabura Highland Quichua may illustrate an early stage of the
diachronic path proposed in Bybee et al. (1998), as it is limited to a (presumably
frequent) set of grammatical constructions and the stress pattern of the language
is still largely predictable. A process which may illustrate later stages of this di-
achronic path can be found in Lezgian. In this language, stress placement was
until recently largely predictable within the stem, typically falling on the second
syllable therein. It has recently become more unpredictable with recent and on-
going processes of unstressed vowel deletion. The most productive such process
involves the deletion of high vowels which follow voiceless obstruents in pre-
tonic syllables (Haspelmath 1993: 36). The history of this process is long enough
that it is reflected in the standard spelling for some lexical items. An example of
a word which still shows variation in pronunciation is given in (2).

(2) Lezgian (Nakh-Daghestanian; Azerbaijan, Russia)
    ṯf̂h'i'neba ~ ṯf̂h'neba
    'secretly' (Haspelmath 1993: 38)

As a result of this process, the stress placement, which was already somewhat
unpredictable in that it was associated with position in the stem and not the word,
has become even more unpredictable. Additionally, there is now a tendency in
the language for post-tonic vowels to be deleted in certain consonantal environ-
ments. Haspelmath reports that this process is mostly restricted to inflectional
suffixes, but there are a few cases where it seems to be more general (3).

(3) Lezgian (Nakh-Daghestanian; Azerbaijan, Russia)
di'dedilaj ~ di'dedlaj
'from mother' (Haspelmath 1993: 40)

While the process in (3) does not currently affect word-final syllables, it is
reasonable to imagine that the reductive processes conditioned by stress may
continue to spread to other similar environments in the language, creating more
complex syllable patterns as they phonologize. A natural outcome of such a
scenario in any language, assuming it has affixation and/or polysyllabic stems,
would be large maximal onset and coda structures. This would nicely account
for the strong pattern in canonical syllable shapes discussed in §3.3.2 in which
languages with a large maximal consonant cluster at one syllable margin tend to
have a similarly large maximal cluster in the other syllable margin.

With these points in mind, I formulate the following two hypotheses for the
current study (4–5).

(4) As syllable structure complexity increases, so does the proportion of
languages in which the placement of word stress is unpredictable.

(5) As syllable structure complexity increases, word stress has stronger
phonetic and phonological effects in languages.
Any associations between unpredictable stress and the strength of its seg-
mental effects must be accounted for by some specific property of stress in the
language. Bybee et al. (1998) propose that these effects arise when vowel dura-
tion gradually becomes a phonetic correlate of stress. Schiering (2007), on the
other hand, finds stronger segmental effects of stress in languages with more
co-occurring phonetic correlates of stress. These observations lead to formulate
two additional hypotheses (6–7).

(6) As syllable structure complexity increases, so does the likelihood that vowel duration is used as a phonetic correlate of word stress.

(7) As syllable structure complexity increases, word stress will be signaled by an increasing number of phonetic correlates.

These hypotheses will be tested in upcoming sections. It should be mentioned
at the outset that prominence and accentual and tonal phenomena occurring
at higher levels of phonological organization may contribute to stress patterns,
segmental processes, and articulatory coordination in important ways (e.g. Fou-
geron & Keating 1997). However, the description of such patterns in standard
language references is often impressionistic, inconsistent, or altogether absent.
While the phenomena considered here are limited to stress and tonal patterns
within the word, it is important to acknowledge that there are many additional
factors which might affect the patterns observed.

5.2 Methodology

5.2.1 Patterns considered

In the current study, only primary stress patterns are considered. Furthermore, it
is the dominant patterns which are considered and coded here; that is, patterns
for which there may be exceptions in a handful of words or grammatical con-
structions, but which are not obscured by these exceptions. After excluding such
minor deviations, the stress pattern of each language was characterized accord-
ing to the organizing principles underlying stress assignment. In doing so, it was
useful to first make a distinction between stress patterns dependent upon phono-
logical structure, on the one hand, and those dependent upon morphological or
lexical structure, on the other hand.

Within languages in which stress placement depends upon phonological fac-
tors, several different kinds of phonological factors may determine stress assign-
ment. In a fixed stress pattern, stress always falls on the same syllable of a word
in relation to a word boundary: stress may regularly fall on the initial syllable of a word, for example, or the antepenultimate syllable of a word. This pattern occurs regardless of what kind of morpheme (root/stem or affix) that syllable happens to belong to. For example, in Cocama-Cocamilla, stress falls predictably on the penultimate syllable of each word. Thus stress shifts as additional morphemes are added to a word (8a-c).

### (8) Cocama-Cocamilla (Tupian; Peru)

a. 'kari

‘drag’

b. kari'taka

‘limp dragging a foot’

c. karikari'taka

‘limp jumping on a foot’

(Vallejos Yopán 2010: 121)

As mentioned above, in most languages, some exceptions to the dominant stress patterns are reported. To illustrate this with Cocama-Cocamilla, when one of a small group of morphemes, including the relativizer /-n/, are affixed to a stem, the stress may shift to the final syllable (9c; 9a-b show the typical penultimate pattern).

### (9) Cocama-Cocamilla (Tupian; Peru)

a. 'muna

muna

steal

b. mu'nari

muna-ri

steal-PROG

c. muna'rin

muna-ri-n

steal-PROG-REL

(Vallejos Yopán 2010: 122)

Another stress pattern which is not morphologically or lexically conditioned but predictable from the phonological structure of a word is a weight-sensitive system. In such a system, stress falls on a heavy syllable, usually defined as one having a long vowel or a coda, or occasionally specific vowel qualities (Gordon
5 *Suprasegmental patterns*

2006). Stress patterns which are sensitive to syllable weight are often additionally oriented towards one of the word edges (Goedemans & van der Hulst 2013b). For example, in Kabardian, stress falls on the final syllable of the word if it is heavy. If the final syllable is light, then stress falls on the penultimate syllable instead (10a–b).

(10) Kabardian (Abkhaz-Adyge; Russia, Turkey)

a. lɛ'ʒa:
‘work (PST INTERROG)’

b. ˈməʃɛ
‘bear’

(Gordon & Applebaum 2010: 38)

There are some other less common scenarios in which stress placement is dependent upon phonological factors. In Southern Bobo Madaré, which is reported to have both word stress and tone, the tonal pattern of the word determines the stress placement. Stress falls on the first of two identical tones in disyllabic words (11a), and in phonological words with one or more high tones, stress falls on the first high tone (11b).

(11) Southern Bobo Madaré (Mande; Burkina Faso)

a. ˈbārā
‘work’

b. nìmìsà'lálò
‘boy’ (Morse 1976: 110)

In languages in which the dominant stress pattern is determined by morphological factors, phonological factors may still play a role. For example, in Tehuelche, stress always falls on the initial syllable of a stem. In words without prefixation, stress is word-initial, but in words with prefixation, it is not. While stress is not predictable from the phonological form of the word, it is predictable within the stem itself (12a–c).

(12) Tehuelche (Chonan; Argentina)

a. ˈqampen
‘sheep’
b. 'ješemk'en
ješem-k'en
spring-NMLZ
'spring'

c. ?o'ma:nk
?o-ma:-n-k
NMLZ-kill-NMLZ-M
'assassin'
(Fernández Garay 1998: 107–108)

Similarly, syllable weight may factor into stress placement in languages in which stress is always associated with a root or stem, producing a phonologically predictable stress pattern within the root/stem (e.g. in Mamaindê in the current sample).

Other languages have stress placement which is morphologically conditioned, but much less predictable. In Yakima Sahaptin, all words carry one main stress. All roots have an unpredictable lexically-determined stress, such that there are near-minimal pairs for stress in the language (13a-c). Hargus & Beavert (2005) report that there are statistical preferences for stress placement in roots: it tends to fall in heavy syllables, to be trochaic when syllable weight is not a factor, and to have right directionality within the root. However, besides many exceptions to these patterns within roots themselves, there are additional complicating factors in stress assignment owing to affixation. Some affixes do not alter the stress pattern of the word (13d), but nearly half of the affixes in the language carry stress and cause stress to shift from or within the root. When stressed affixes are attached to a root, stress is preferentially assigned to a stressed suffix over a stressed prefix or root, and to a stressed prefix over a root (13e-f). Additionally, there are some suffixes which do not attract stress to themselves but which shift it to another position within the root (13g).

(13) Yakima Sahaptin (Sahaptian; USA)

a. 'wjanawi-
'arrive'

b. a'nawi-
'be hungry'

c. kʷ'aja'wi
'mountain lion'
d. paˈpˈiχʃa
pa-ˈpˈiχʃa
3.PL.NOM-remember
‘they remember’

e. ˈpapapˈiχʃa
  ˈpapa-ˈpˈiχʃa
RECp-remember
‘they remember each other’

f. piˈtʃaˈla
  ˈpiˈtʃa-ˈla
spear-AGT
‘spearer’

g. at̂lˈaˈwiłam ‘beggar’ (< at̂lˈawi- ‘ask, beg for, request’)
(Hargus & Beavert 2005: 66–67, 77, 92)

In some languages, the stress pattern is unpredictable in a different way: it is highly variable in general. Marmion (2010) describes stress in Wutung as being present in words of two syllables or more, but being neither phonemic nor predictable. The stress pattern of a word may vary freely between speakers and within the same speaker (14a). Nevertheless, stress is perceptually salient and the variable location of its placement may have a strong effect on the realization of certain sequences (14b).

(14) Wutung (Sko; Papua New Guinea)

a. /hlapã /
[ˈhlapã] ~ [hlaˈpã]
‘night’

b. /huwo/
[huˈwə] ~ [ˈhuːə]
‘stomach’
(Marmion 2010: 57, 91)

As the examples above show, there is a great deal of crosslinguistic variation in stress placement patterns. The stress patterns in the language sample must be categorized in a principled way in order to address the hypothesis in (4). In operationalizing stress predictability, I follow Schiering (2007), who in turn follows an earlier version of Goedemans & van der Hulst (2013a). In this system,
three types of stress placement systems are distinguished: fixed stress location, weight-sensitive stress placement, and morphologically or lexically conditioned stress placement. On this scale, fixed stress systems have the highest predictability and morphologically or lexically conditioned stress systems have the lowest predictability. In testing the hypothesis in (4), the few stress placement patterns which do not fit into these categories, such as the tone-conditioned system in Southern Bobo Madaré (11) and the variable system in Wutung (14), are excluded. However, these systems are included in other parts of the study, including the analyses of phonetic correlates of stress and stress-conditioned phonetic processes.

In order to address the hypothesis in (5) regarding the segmental effects of stress, phonetic processes reported to be conditioned by stress were collected. The processes considered include vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and consonant allophony in stressed or unstressed syllables. A reported process of regular vowel lengthening in stressed syllables was considered to be a phonetic correlate of stress (see below) and was not coded as a stress-conditioned process. Like segmental inventories, aliphonic processes are always the result of analyses. In order to avoid some of the better-known pitfalls of synchronic phonological analysis (see §6.2 for more discussion of this point), I have limited the processes examined here to those conditioned solely by the phonological environment. That is, processes described as occurring within specific morphological or morphophonemic environments have been excluded.

Vowel reduction processes here include any process by which the vowel is deleted or reduced in quality, duration, or voicing. Other less common effects such as the loss of tonal contrasts have been considered as well. A reduction in vowel quality typically includes centralization, laxing, or raising towards a more “neutral” or less sonorant vowel quality. However, in some languages, vowel reduction may involve a neutralization of contrasts which maximizes peripheral contrasts (Crosswhite 2001; see discussion in §6.2). I have included raising as reduction when it is explicitly described as such in the reference, but not lowering. This is consistent with the results of Kapatsinski et al. (forthcoming), who only found evidence for the raising component of peripheralization at the phonetic level. In some languages for which vowel duration is a correlate of word stress, the relatively shorter vowel duration in all unstressed syllables is reported as vowel reduction. I have not included such cases here, but have included processes in which the reduced length of a vowel is shorter than what would normally be expected for unstressed vowels: for instance, extra shortening of unstressed vowels in pretonic position. I have included all vowel reduction processes in unstressed syllables regardless of whether stress is the sole conditioning environ-
5 *Suprasegmental patterns*

ment; that is, the processes include those occurring in unstressed syllables but
requiring additional conditioning factors such as word position or consonantal
environment. Additional details on the collection and coding of unstressed vowel
reduction processes can be found in §6.2, where I describe the methodology be-
hind a more general study of vowel reduction in the language sample. Illustra-
tive examples of some of the vowel reduction processes considered in the current
chapter can be found in (15–17).

(15) Bardi (Nyulnyulan; Australia)
Short vowels are reduced in quality in unstressed syllables.
/ˈgama/
[ˈkamʒda]
‘mother’s mother’ (Bowern 2012: 88–90)

(16) Apurinã (Arawakan; Brazil)
Vowels become devoiced in unstressed word-final position, especially in
fast speech.
/mapoˈuɑ̃tsa/
[mapoˈuɑ̃tsa]
‘caterpillar’ (Facundes 2000: 60–61)

(17) Choctaw (Muskogean; USA)
A word-initial unstressed high front vowel /i/ may be deleted before a
sequence of /s/ or /ʃ/ and another consonant.
/iskiti:nih/
[iskiti:nih] ~ [skiti:nih]
‘it’s small’ (Broadwell 2006: 19)

Processes of consonant allophony conditioned by word stress were also con-
sidered in the current study. I did not limit the data collection to specific kinds
of processes, but included any phonetic process affecting consonants which was
reported to be conditioned by the stress environment, either alone or in addi-
tion to other conditioning factors. Processes affecting consonants in unstressed
syllables often include the voicing, flapping, or spirantization of stops, but less
common processes such as spirantization of affricates, debuccalization, and dele-
tion of consonants also occur. See (18–21) for examples of some of the patterns
recorded.
5 *Suprasegmental patterns*

(23) Tu (Mongolic; China)

Palatal glide /j/ may be spirantized word-initially and in syllables which
are stressed.

/ˈja/

[ˈja]

‘what’ (Slater 2003: 31–32)

(24) Nivkh (isolate; Russia)

In stressed syllables, consonants followed by front vowels /i e/ may
acquire secondary palatalization.

/ˈkʰeq/

[ˈkʰjeq]

‘fox’ (Shiraishi 2006: 23)

As discussed above, segmental effects of stress in a language may become
phonologized, which over time may result in phonological differences between
unstressed and stressed syllables. In particular, unstressed syllables may show a
limited range of contrasts in consonants, consonant combinations, vowel quali-
ties, vowel length, and tone (van der Hulst 2010). In addition to considering pho-
netic processes conditioned by stress, I have coded languages for stress-related
phonological asymmetries. In some cases, the asymmetry between stressed and
unstressed syllables is limited to just one contrastive feature. For example, in
Burushaski, vowel length contrasts are limited to stressed syllables in underived
lexical items (Anderson 1997: 1028). However, in some languages there are dra-
matic phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables. Such
systems are common in some of the language families of Southeast Asia, where
words often have a sesquisyllabic pattern: a stressed main syllable preceded by
a presyllable which is unstressed and highly limited in its phonological compo-
sition (Matisoff 1973; Michaud 2012; similar patterns may be found in some lan-
guage families of Mesoamerica, including Otomanguean). For example, presylla-
bles in Koho are limited to three general shapes: a sequence of an unaspirated,
unimploded obstruent, /ə/, and an optional liquid or nasal coda; the sequence
/ʔa/; or a syllabic nasal. By contrast, main syllables show the full range of con-
sonant and vowel contrasts, and may have tautosyllabic consonant clusters. See
(25a-c) for examples.

(25) Koho (Austroasiatic; Vietnam)

a. sənˈdjaŋ

‘steep side of a valley’
b. ?a'suh
‘to blow on a fire’

c. ṁ'poŋ
‘door’
(Olsen 2014: 32, 46, 48)

As discussed in §5.1.2, there may be associations between specific phonetic correlates of stress and the extent to which stress has segmental effects in a language (Bybee et al. 1998; Schiering 2007). This observation motivated the hypotheses in (6–7). In coding for this study, three phonetic correlates of stress – vowel duration, pitch, and intensity – were noted wherever explicitly described in language references. In older language references, in particular, phonetic descriptions of stress are often impressionistic, if they are included at all. More recent works sometimes give instrumental evidence for the phonetic correlates of stress. In coding for the phonetic correlates of stress, I differentiate between reports which were impressionistic and those which were based on instrumental measurements. Where sources disagree on phonetic correlates of stress, I give preference to descriptions based on instrumental measurements, if available.

As mentioned above, relationships between the presence and complexity of tonal systems and syllable structure complexity have been established in the literature (Maddieson 2013c). Because none of the hypotheses in the current chapter are directly related to tone, I do not present a detailed analysis of these patterns here. Degrees of complexity within tonal systems (cf. Maddieson 2013c), for example, are not considered. I also do not distinguish between “prototypical” tonal systems, in which most syllables bear tone and tonal combinations are relatively free, and systems in which tonal patterns are relatively more restricted (cf. Hyman 2009). However, it is important to consider the presence of tone in the languages of the sample. Since tone makes use of pitch contrasts and pitch is often a correlate of word stress, there is the potential that word stress may manifest in phonetically different ways depending on the presence or absence of a tonal system (Gordon 2011). This in turn could be reflected in any associations observed between phonetic correlates of stress and syllable structure complexity in the sample.

5.2.2 Coding

The information gathered on word stress and tonal patterns in the sample was coded as follows. First, the presence or absence of tone and word stress were
5 *Suprasegmental patterns*

noted. If a language was noted as having word stress, the dominant stress place-
ment pattern was coded as one of the following: Fixed, meaning stress falls in
a predictable location with respect to word boundaries; Weight-Sensitive, mean-
ing stress placement is sensitive to factors such as vowel length, presence of a
coda, and/or vowel quality but can be determined from the phonological, and
not morphological, structure of a word; and Morphologically or Lexically Condi-
tioned, in which a description of the stress pattern must refer to the morphology.
As mentioned above, this classification is meant to correspond to a three-point
scale representing the predictability of stress placement (cf. Schiering 2007).

The presence of phonetic processes reported to be conditioned by stress were
coded, and the type of process noted. These include vowel reduction, consonant
allophony in unstressed syllables, and consonant allophony in stressed syllables.
Differences in the phonological properties of stressed and unstressed syllables
were also noted and coded as: vowel quality contrasts, vowel length contrasts,
consonant contrasts, tonal contrasts, and other. Phonetic correlates of stress were
coded as vowel duration, pitch, and intensity. Here the category pitch includes
both level pitch (usually higher than in unstressed syllables) and pitch contours
associated with stressed syllables. Each reported correlate was additionally coded
for whether it was based on impressionistic observations or instrumental evi-
dence.

In (26) I illustrate the coding for Kadiwéu, a language with Complex syllable
structure.

(26) Kadiwéu (Guaicuruan; Brazil)

Tone: No

Word stress: Yes

Stress placement: Weight-sensitive

Phonetic processes conditioned by stress: Consonant allophony in
unstressed syllables

Differences in phonological properties of stressed and unstressed
syllables: (None)

Phonetic correlates of stress: Intensity (impressionistic)

The coding for each language in the sample can be found in Appendix B.

In the following sections I present analyses to test the hypotheses in (4–7).
Because the analysis of tone is brief, I present it first before moving on to the
study of word stress in the sample.
## 5.3 Results: Tone

The distribution of tone in the languages of the sample with respect to syllable structure complexity can be found in Table 5.1.

<table><caption>Table 5.1: Languages of sample distributed according to presence of tone.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">N languages with tone</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>24 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>26 lgs.</th><th>C<br>25 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>25 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Present</td><td>13</td><td>9</td><td>9</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Absent or not reported</td><td>11</td><td>17</td><td>16</td><td>19</td></tr></tbody></table>

Tone is present in 37 languages of the sample. The proportion of languages reported to have tone decreases with syllable structure complexity: more than half of the languages in the Simple category have tone, while only one-fifth of the languages in the Highly Complex category do. This finding is in line with the findings of Maddieson (2013c). As observed in that work, there is a strong areal component to the distribution of tone: 21 of the languages with tone in the current study are located in the macro-areas of Africa and Southeast Asia & Oceania. Within these regions, languages of all syllable structure complexity types can be found to have tone.

The issue of tone will be revisited in §5.4.1, then further in §5.4.5 in an analysis of phonetic correlates of stress.

## 5.4 Results: Stress

The analyses in this section examine properties of stress in the language sample. This section is organized as follows. §5.4.1 presents a general description of the presence of stress in the sample. Stress placement patterns are analyzed in §5.4.2. Phonetic processes conditioned by stress are examined in §5.4.3 and subsections therein. Phonological asymmetries between stressed and unstressed syllables are analyzed in §5.4.4. In §5.4.5 the phonetic correlates of stress in the sample are examined. The results of the analyses of word stress properties are summarized in §5.4.6.
5.4.1 Presence of word stress and syllable structure complexity

The distribution of word stress in the languages of the sample can be found in Table 5.2. In this analysis I have excluded two languages: for Southern Grebo and Qawasqar, there are conflicting reports regarding the presence or absence of stress.

<table><caption>Table 5.2: Languages of sample distributed according to presence of word stress. Southern Grebo (Simple category) and Qawasqar (Highly Complex category) have been excluded.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S</th><th>MC</th><th>C</th><th>HC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>N languages with word stress</th><td>23 lgs.</td><td>26 lgs.</td><td>25 lgs.</td><td>24 lgs.</td></tr><tr><th>Present</th><td>18</td><td>19</td><td>21</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><th>Absent or not reported</th><td>5</td><td>7</td><td>4</td><td>3</td></tr></tbody></table>

Most of the languages in the sample (79/100) are reported to have word stress. While there is a moderate increase in this property from the Moderately Complex (19/26 languages, or 73%) to the Highly Complex category (21/24, or 88%), this trend is not monotonic as the Simple category has an intermediate pattern.

In Table 5.3, I combine the patterns from Tables 5.1 and 5.2 to show how both tone and word stress are distributed in the languages of the sample.

<table><caption>Table 5.3: Languages of sample distributed according to presence of word stress and/or tone. Southern Grebo (Simple category), and Qawasqar (Highly Complex category) have been excluded.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S</th><th>MC</th><th>C</th><th>HC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>N languages with</th><td>23 lgs.</td><td>26 lgs.</td><td>25 lgs.</td><td>24 lgs.</td></tr><tr><th>Word stress only</th><td>11</td><td>15</td><td>15</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><th>Tone only</th><td>5</td><td>5</td><td>3</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><th>Both tone and word stress</th><td>7</td><td>4</td><td>6</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><th>Neither</th><td>-</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>

The pattern in the first row in Table 5.3 indicates that the percentage of languages with word stress but no tonal contrasts increases with syllable structure
complexity (48% of languages in the Simple category versus 71% of languages in the Highly Complex category). This result could reflect the fact that there is little geographic overlap between macro-areas where tonal systems are common and those where more complex syllable patterns are common.

There are four languages in the sample for which neither word stress nor tone are reported to be present: Kalaallisut, Kharia, Oksapmin, and Tashlhiyt. In the case of Kalaallisut, instrumental evidence has been presented to support the analysis of the language as having no stress (Jacobsen 2000). Similarly, instrumental evidence has been used to show that what is often analyzed as word stress in Tashlhiyt is actually an effect of phrase-level accentual patterns (Roettger et al. 2015).

### 5.4.2 Stress assignment

In this section, I present an analysis addressing the hypothesis, formulated in (6), that as syllable structure complexity increases, so does the proportion of languages in which stress placement is unpredictable.

The distribution of the languages with word stress in the sample according to their dominant stress placement patterns can be found in Table 5.4. In this analysis, one language (Menya) has been excluded because the descriptions of stress patterns were too minimal to allow for classification. Thus the current analysis includes 78 languages.

<table><caption>Table 5.4: Languages of sample with word stress distributed according to their dominant stress placement patterns. Menya (Highly Complex category) has been excluded.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Word stress placement pattern</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>N = 18</th><th>MC<br>N = 19</th><th>C<br>N = 21</th><th>HC<br>N = 20</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Fixed</td><td>7</td><td>10</td><td>12</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>Weight-sensitive</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>Morph. or lex. Conditioned</td><td>6</td><td>4</td><td>6</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Variable or other</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>

The patterns classified as “Variable or other” in Table 5.4 are those whose stress placement is determined by phonological factors other than location with respect to the word edge or weight, or whose stress patterns may vary widely according to speaker or situational context, like the examples in (11) and (14) in §5.2.1.
Excluding these languages, I plot the patterns of the remaining 72 languages in Figure 5.1. This figure shows the percentage of languages in each category of syllable structure complexity having the given stress placement pattern.

<figure><img src="image_38.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5.1: Percentage of languages exhibiting each of the given stress placement patterns, by syllable structure complexity.</figcaption></figure>

Recall that the three categories for stress placement employed here can be used as measures for the predictability of stress placement, with fixed systems being most predictable and morphologically or lexically conditioned systems being least predictable. Interpreting the patterns in Figure 5.1, we find that the percentage of languages with the least predictable – that is, morphologically or lexically conditioned – stress placement mildly increases from the Moderately Complex to the Highly Complex category. However, the linear trend is again broken by the pattern in the Simple category, which shows a pattern virtually identical to that of the Highly Complex category. Thus, while the hypothesis in (4) is perhaps weakly supported within the set of languages with non-Simple syllable structure, we do not find general support for the hypothesis.

Recall the discussion of patterns of stress placement determined by morphological factors in §5.2.1. In some languages, stress is morphologically determined but predictable within the morphological domain; for example, in Tehuelche, stress always falls on the initial syllable in the stem (12). In other languages, stress placement may be lexically determined and/or sensitive to morphological factors, but these factors are so complex that stress is largely unpredictable; this is the case for stress in Yakima Sahaptin (13). There are also languages in which morphologically conditioned stress placement is intermediate between these extremes. For example, in Choctaw, accent is predictable for all underived verbs and deverbal nouns, but unpredictable in underived nouns and some other contexts (Broadwell 2006). In Table 5.5, I have distributed the 22 languages with morphologically or lexically conditioned stress by the predictability of those systems. Systems like that of Tehuelche are classified as having stress which is predictable within the
stem. Systems like that of Yakima Sahaptin are classified as having stress which is unpredictable. Systems somewhere in between, like that of Choctaw, are given an intermediate classification. The classification of languages into these categories is impressionistic to some extent.

<table><caption>Table 5.5: Languages with morphologically or lexically conditioned word stress patterns, distributed according to predictability of those patterns and syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Languages with morphologically or<br>lexically conditioned stress placement</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>N = 6</th><th>MC<br>N = 4</th><th>C<br>N = 6</th><th>HC<br>N = 7</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Predictable within stem</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Intermediate</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Unpredictable</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td></tr></tbody></table>

Examining morphologically or lexically conditioned stress systems in more detail in Table 5.5, there may be some additional weak evidence for the hypothesis. Unpredictable morphologically or lexically conditioned systems are more common in languages from the Complex and Highly Complex categories. However, the small sample size makes it difficult to draw strong conclusions from these patterns.

While we do not find strong support for the hypothesis in (4), there are suggestions of associations between unpredictable word stress and highly complex syllable structure. This point will be revisited in §5.4.6, after other phonetic and phonological properties of stress in the sample have been examined.

### 5.4.3 Phonetic processes conditioned by word stress

In this section, processes conditioned by word stress in the language sample are analyzed as a first step in testing the hypothesis that as syllable structure complexity increases, word stress has stronger phonetic and phonological effects in languages.

In this analysis, I include only the 79 languages in the sample which are reported to have word stress. In Figure 5.2, I show the percentage of languages in each category which have unstressed vowel reduction, processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables, and processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables.
## 5 Suprasegmental patterns

<figure><img src="image_39.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5.2: Percentage of languages with word stress in each category of syllable structure complexity exhibiting stress-conditioned vowel reduction or consonant processes.</figcaption></figure>

The patterns in Figure 5.2 indicate that, as syllable structure complexity increases, languages are more likely to have phonetic vowel reduction processes as an effect of word stress. In particular, this pattern shows that languages with Simple syllable structure are much less likely than languages from the other three categories to have unstressed vowel reduction. When the pattern in the Simple category is cross-tabulated against those for the other three categories combined, the result is statistically significant: $\chi^2(1, N = 79) = 5.298, p = 0.02$. By comparison, the trend in processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables shows an erratic, but overall decreasing trend with respect to syllable structure complexity. Processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables are generally rare in the sample and show a level trend.

Thus we find that while the trend in unstressed vowel reduction processes follows the pattern predicted by the hypothesis, the trends in the consonant-affecting processes do not. These results prompt a more detailed analysis of both vowel reduction processes and consonant processes conditioned by stress in the sample.

### 5.4.3.1 Unstressed vowel reduction

General vowel reduction patterns in the sample will be examined in greater detail in Chapter 6, so I present here just a brief analysis of unstressed vowel reduction in the 49 languages of the sample for which it is reported. Here only the outcomes of these processes are analyzed. Specifically, I consider outcomes involving reduction in vowel duration, reduction in vowel quality, vowel devoicing, and vowel deletion. A language may have several unstressed vowel reduction processes yielding different outcomes; each such process and outcome has
been included in the analysis here. The results are shown in Figure 5.3. For each category of syllable structure complexity, the percentage of languages with unstressed vowel reduction resulting in the given outcome is shown.

<figure><img src="image_40.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5.3: Percentage of languages with unstressed vowel reduction having the given outcome of vowel reduction in each category of syllable structure complexity.</figcaption></figure>

There are three interesting patterns in Figure 5.3. The first is that languages in the Moderately Complex, Complex, and Highly Complex categories are much more likely than those in the Simple category to have reduction in duration and quality as outcomes of unstressed vowel reduction. Second, devoicing and deletion outcomes show broadly level trends with respect to syllable structure complexity. Finally, the Simple category is additionally set apart from the others in that all four outcomes of unstressed vowel reduction are roughly equally represented in those languages. That is, languages in the Simple category (which number only seven in this analysis), unlike those in other categories, do not show any strong tendencies in the outcomes of unstressed vowel reduction.

### 5.4.3.2 Processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables

We now turn to an examination of processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables. In the current sample, these processes occur in 22 languages and form a heterogeneous group, with most of the process types occurring in just one or two languages. In Table 5.6, I list the more frequent processes separately and group together the minor trends under the label of “Other.”<fnref n="1" /> In examining the table, note that a language may have more than one process affecting consonants in unstressed syllables; therefore the numbers going down the columns may add up to more than the totals in the column headings.

<footnote n="1">¹Flapping is not a frequent process, but because it is often described as a prototypical process for consonants in unstressed syllables, it is given a separate row in the table.</footnote>
## 5 Suprasegmental patterns

<table><caption>Table 5.6: Processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables in sample, by syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables</th><th colspan="5">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>7 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>4 lgs.</th><th>C<br>8 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>3 lgs.</th><th>Total</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Deletion</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Voicing</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>Spirantization</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Flapping</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Other</td><td>7</td><td>5</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>18</td></tr></tbody></table>

Because the data set consists of only 22 languages and the total number of languages with each kind of process is so small, it is difficult to draw conclusions from the patterns in Table 5.6. However, one interesting pattern is that languages with simpler syllable structure seem to be associated with not only a higher number but also a higher diversity of processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables. Seven languages in the Simple category have such processes. In this group, the more common processes of deletion, voicing, and spirantization occur. However, there are also seven different kinds of “Other” processes represented in this group: devoicing, aspiration, lengthening, glottalization, debuccalization, secondary palatalization, and change in place of articulation.

### 5.4.3.3 Processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables

Processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables are less common than those affecting consonants in unstressed syllables.<fnref n="2" /> In the current sample, 15 languages were reported to have such patterns. The processes examined here form quite coherent groups: all but six of the processes can be classified as glide strengthening, lengthening, aspiration, or affrication. See Table 5.7 for their distribution in the sample. Note again that a language may have more than one process affecting consonants in stressed syllables; therefore the numbers going down the columns may add up to more than the totals in the column headings.

<footnote n="2">²Ian Maddieson (p.c.) points out that this lower number could be an artifact of analysis, in which consonant realization in stressed syllables may be more likely to be taken as the basic form of the phoneme.</footnote>
<table><caption>Table 5.7: Processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables in sample, by syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th><th rowspan="2">Total</th></tr><tr><th>S</th><th>MC</th><th>C</th><th>HC</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>4 lgs.</th><th>4 lgs.</th><th>4 lgs.</th><th>3 lgs.</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Glide strengthening</th><td>3</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><th>Lengthening</th><td>4</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><th>Aspiration</th><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><th>Affrication</th><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><th>Other</th><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>6</td></tr></tbody></table>

As in the previous analysis, it is difficult to draw strong conclusions from such a small data set. Here I note some apparent patterns. First, the Simple category is associated with generally higher rates of the most common processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables (glide strengthening, aspiration, lengthening, and affrication). Some of the languages in the Simple category have more than one such process: for example, Pinotepa Mixtec is reported to have both aspiration and glide strengthening in stressed syllables. Second, the minor ("Other") trends in the current analysis are found in languages with more complex syllable structure: these are as varied as palatalization (Nivkh, Complex), voicing and implosion (Mamaindê, Complex), "more fortis" articulation (Kunjen, Highly Complex), labialization (Thompson, Highly Complex), and devoicing (Tohono O'odham, Highly Complex). These results are in contrast to the results for unstressed processes affecting consonants, in which a greater variety of processes was observed in languages in the Simple and Moderately Complex categories.

#### 5.4.3.4 Implicational relationships between phonetic processes conditioned by stress

Because the number of languages with unstressed vowel reduction is higher in the sample than the number of languages with processes affecting consonants in unstressed syllables, which in turn is higher than the number of languages with processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables, we might expect to find implicational relationships among some of these processes. That is, it might be the case that the presence of one kind of stress-conditioned phonetic process in a
language implies the presence of another kind of process. Any such implications
might shed light on the diachronic development of segmental effects of word
stress.

In Table 5.8 I present the distribution of languages with word stress in the sample according to the presence or absence of unstressed vowel reduction and stress-conditioned processes affecting consonants. Here, processes affecting consonants in stressed syllables and those affecting consonants in unstressed syllables have been collapsed.

<table><caption>Table 5.8: Languages with word stress, distributed according to presence or absence of unstressed vowel reduction and stress-conditioned processes affecting consonants.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Unstressed V reduction</th><th colspan="2">Stress-conditioned C processes</th></tr><tr><th>Present</th><th>Absent</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Present</th><td>19</td><td>30</td></tr><tr><th>Absent</th><td>9</td><td>21</td></tr></tbody></table>

The trend in Table 5.8 is not significant in a chi-square test. Therefore, while most of the languages with stress-conditioned consonant allophony have unstressed vowel reduction, the pattern is not a strong one. This finding is inconsistent with that of Bybee et al. (1998), who established an implicational universal by which the presence of consonant changes conditioned by stress in a language implies the presence of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. It is important to keep in mind that the aforementioned study examined a specific subset of specific consonant changes, and had a very different language sample composition from that of the present survey, in which languages with Simple and Highly Complex syllable patterns are overrepresented. However, even excluding the patterns from languages in those categories, the implication between stress-conditioned consonant allophony and unstressed vowel reduction is not significant in Fisher's exact test.

In Table 5.9, the languages with word stress in the sample are distributed according to the presence or absence of processes affecting consonants in unstressed and stressed environments, respectively.

The distribution in Table 5.9 indicates that the presence of processes affecting consonants in stressed environments tends to imply the presence of processes affecting consonants in unstressed environments: this is true of 9/15 languages with consonant processes in stressed environments. Though this trend is not
<table><caption>Table 5.9: Languages with word stress, distributed according to presence or absence of processes affecting consonants in unstressed and stressed environments.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Stressed C processes</th><th colspan="2">Unstressed C processes</th></tr><tr><th>Present</th><th>Absent</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Present</td><td>9</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Absent</td><td>13</td><td>51</td></tr></tbody></table>

universal, it is significant ($p$ = 0.004 in Fisher's exact test). Given the kinds of processes observed in the data sets in §5.4.3.2 and §5.4.3.3, this trend could very well be reflective of the pattern by which processes of weakening are crosslinguistically more frequent than processes of strengthening (Bybee & Easterday 2019; Bybee 2015b; Lavoie 2015).

### 5.4.4 Phonological properties of stressed and unstressed syllables

Another way to approach the hypothesis regarding the segmental effects of word stress is to examine asymmetries in the phonological properties of stressed and unstressed syllables. These patterns may reflect the phonologization of stress-conditioned phonetic processes, such as those described in the previous sections, and may indicate that word stress has a long history of segmental effects in a language.

The phonological differences in stressed and unstressed syllables considered here are differences in vowel quality contrasts, vowel length contrasts, tonal contrasts, and consonant contrasts. The contrasts examined here are not necessarily categorical: authors may report exceptions in a few lexical items or describe the pattern as an overwhelming tendency. For example, the phoneme /ə/ in East Kewa is described as occurring “most often in an unstressed position only” (Franklin & Franklin 1978: 19). Included in the definition of vowel quality contrasts here are regular phonologized processes of vowel reduction which have the effect of neutralizing vowel quality contrasts: for example, when some or all vowels are realized as /ə/ in unstressed syllables. Regular unstressed vowel reduction processes with such dramatic neutralizing effects on quality were quite rare in the sample, being reported for only two languages: Thompson and Tohono O'odham. Therefore, there is very little overlap between the reduced vowel quality contrasts examined here and the phonetic unstressed vowel reduction processes reported in §5.4.3.1.
Relatively few languages within the sample were reported to have phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables, as I have defined them here: in total, only twelve languages had such patterns. I show their distribution with respect to syllable structure complexity in Table 5.10.

<table><caption>Table 5.10: Languages with word stress exhibiting phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2" scope="col">Languages with phonological<br>differences between stressed and<br>unstressed syllables</th><th colspan="4" scope="colgroup">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th scope="col">S<br>N = 18</th><th scope="col">MC<br>N = 18</th><th scope="col">C<br>N = 21</th><th scope="col">HC<br>N = 21</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th scope="row">Present</th><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Absent or not reported</th><td>15</td><td>15</td><td>18</td><td>18</td></tr></tbody></table>

The pattern in Table 5.10 does not support the hypothesis that languages with more complex syllable structure are more likely to show segmental effects of word stress. If anything, the Simple and Moderately Complex categories have a slightly higher rate than the other categories for this pattern.

As mentioned in §5.2.1, languages may show varying degrees of phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables. In Table 5.11 I list the languages reported to have phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables according to the number of phonological properties (vowel quality contrasts, consonant contrasts, etc.) for which that difference occurs.

While all three of the languages in the Simple category in Table 5.11 have just one property each, there otherwise does not appear to be a trend, within this very small data set, by which the number of phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables increases incrementally with syllable structure complexity. The languages with the most phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables are from the Moderately Complex and Complex categories. All three of these – Lao, Pacoh, and Koho – are spoken in the Southeast Asia & Oceania macro-area and are described as having sesquisyllabic word patterns.<fnref n="3" />

<footnote n="3">³Sumi Naga (Simple category), which is not reported to have word stress and is therefore excluded from these analyses, has some sesquisyllabic root and word patterns in which the minor syllable is limited in its vowel quality, consonant, and tone distinctions (Teo 2009: 61–64; 2012: 371–372).</footnote>
<table><caption>Table 5.11: Number of phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables in the sample, by syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Number of<br>phonological<br>differences</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>3 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>3 lgs.</th><th>C<br>3 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>3 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1 property</td><td>Cavineña<br>East Kewa<br>Murui<br>Huitoto</td><td>Eastern<br>Khanty</td><td>Bardi<br>Burushaski</td><td>Thompson</td></tr><tr><td>2 properties</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>Semai<br>Tohono<br>O'odham</td></tr><tr><td>3 or more<br>properties</td><td>–</td><td>Lao<br>Pacoh</td><td>Koho</td><td>–</td></tr></tbody></table>

The specific phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables observed in these languages can be found in Table 5.12. Note that because languages may have more than one such difference, the numbers going down the columns may add up to more than the totals in the column headings.

<table><caption>Table 5.12: Phonological differences between stressed and unstressed syllables in the sample, by syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Phonological differences between stressed<br>and unstressed syllables</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>3 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>3 lgs.</th><th>C<br>3 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>3 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Vowel quality contrasts</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Vowel length contrasts</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Tonal contrasts</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Consonant contrasts</td><td>–</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>–</td></tr></tbody></table>

Again, it is difficult to draw conclusions about patterns from such a small data set. The data suggests that differences in vowel length contrasts between stressed
and unstressed syllables are less common in languages with Simple syllable structure, but recall from the analysis in §4.3.2 that vowel length contrasts are rarer in this group of languages in general.

### 5.4.5 Phonetic correlates of stress

In this section, I analyze the phonetic correlates of stress reported for languages of the sample with word stress. Specifically, I test the hypotheses formulated in (6) and (7) which relate phonetic correlates of word stress to syllable structure complexity.

The phonetic correlates of stress examined here are vowel duration, pitch, and intensity. Altogether, phonetic correlates could be determined for 60 languages, roughly three-fourths of the languages reported to have word stress. In Table 5.13 I show the number of languages from each syllable structure complexity category which are reported to have each correlate of word stress. Note that languages may have more than one phonetic correlate of stress, so the numbers going down the columns are not expected to add up to the totals in the column headers.

<table><caption>Table 5.13: Reported correlates (impressionistic or instrumentally confirmed) of word stress in languages of the sample, by syllable structure complexity. 18 languages with word stress have been excluded here because phonetic correlates of stress are not described. One additional language (Ngarinyin) has also been omitted, but is reported to have *decreased* duration as a correlate of stress for one vowel, /a/.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Phonetic correlates of word stress</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>16 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>12 lgs.</th><th>C<br>16 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>16 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Vowel duration</td><td>9</td><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Pitch</td><td>13</td><td>9</td><td>8</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>Intensity</td><td>8</td><td>9</td><td>12</td><td>11</td></tr></tbody></table>

In order to better illustrate the trends in Table 5.13, in Figure 5.4 I plot the percentage of languages in each syllable structure category reported to have each correlate of word stress.

We find some weak support for the hypothesis that vowel duration as a phonetic correlate of stress is more common in languages with more complex syllable structure. In the Highly Complex category, three-fourths of the languages with word stress have this property. However, rather than being gradual, this trend
<figure><img src="image_41.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5.4: Percentage of languages which are reported to use given phonetic correlate of word stress, by syllable structure complexity.</figcaption></figure>

sets the Highly Complex category apart from the other three, in which roughly half of the languages use vowel duration as a correlate of stress. The percentage of languages in which pitch is reported to signal word stress decreases with syllable structure complexity. Intensity as a phonetic correlate of word stress is reported much less often for languages in the Simple category than the others. Only the trend in pitch is statistically significant, and that is when the patterns in the Simple and Moderately Complex categories are combined and cross-tabulated against those for the other two categories combined ($\chi^2(1, N = 60) = 4.434, p = 0.04$).

These results are somewhat surprising in light of previous findings in this and the previous chapter. In §5.3 it was found that tonal contrasts are more frequently found in languages of the Simple category than in the others. Since tonal contrasts are signaled by pitch and tone is most frequently found in the Simple category, we might expect pitch to be used as a phonetic correlate of stress less frequently in this category than the others. Similarly, in §4.3.2, it was found that vowel length contrasts are more common in languages outside the Simple category. Since vowel length contrasts are common in languages of the Highly Complex category, we might expect vowel duration to be used less frequently as a phonetic correlate of stress. The trends observed in Figure 5.4 go against both of these predictions. An analysis of the phonetic correlates of stress within languages with tone and vowel length contrasts shows that such assumptions about contrasts and phonetic correlates of stress are not entirely justified. Of the 19 languages with tonal contrasts for which the phonetic correlates of stress are described, 11 use pitch to signal stress. Of the 24 languages with contrastive vowel length for which phonetic correlates of stress are described, 15 use vowel duration to signal stress.
5 *Suprasegmental patterns*

The distributions in Table 5.13 and Figure 5.4 show how each individual cor-
relate of word stress patterns with respect to syllable structure complexity. We
now turn to a test of the hypothesis in (7) which predicts that increasing syllable
structure complexity will be accompanied by an increased number of phonetic
correlates of word stress. In other words, we expect that the proportion of lan-
guages with two or three of the correlates examined here will increase across the
four syllable structure complexity categories. The observed distribution can be
found in Figure 5.5.

<figure><img src="image_42.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5.5: Percentage of languages exhibiting given number of phonetic correlate of word stress in each syllable structure complexity category.</figcaption></figure>

While the rate of co-occurrence of all three phonetic correlates of stress is
slightly higher in the Highly Complex portion of the sample than in the other
categories, there are no obvious trends in Figure 5.5. Therefore we do not find
strong support for the hypothesis.

The patterns described above are for all reported phonetic correlates of stress,
regardless of whether they are based on impressions or instrumental evidence.
Instrumental evidence for phonetic correlates of stress was reported for only
17 languages in the sample, which are unevenly distributed among the syllable
complexity categories. Within this very small data set, the trends in the pitch and
intensity correlates are similar to those presented in Figure 5.4. However, vowel
duration as an instrumentally-confirmed correlate shows a level trend across the
syllable complexity categories, further limiting the extent to which there is con-
crete evidence for the hypothesis in (6).

5.4.6 Summary of word stress patterns

Four hypotheses were formulated in §5.1.3 with respect to word stress and syl-
lable structure complexity. The first was that the proportion of languages with
unpredictable word stress placement would increase with syllable structure com-
plexity. The results of the analysis in §5.4.2 did not confirm this on a broad
scale: morphologically or lexically conditioned word stress did not show a trend
with respect to syllable structure complexity. However, a finer-grained analy-
sis of patterns within morphologically or lexically conditioned stress systems
indicated that the most unpredictable patterns within that group are more com-
monly found in languages of the Complex and Highly Complex categories. A
second hypothesis predicted that word stress would have stronger segmental
effects in languages as syllable structure complexity increased. The analyses in
§§5.4.3–5.4.4 provided mixed support for this hypothesis. Processes of unstressed
vowel reduction, and outcomes of these processes resulting in reduction in qual-
ity and deletion, were much more common in languages with Moderately Com-
plex, Complex, and Highly Complex syllable structure than those with Simple
syllable structure. However, trends in stress-conditioned processes affecting con-
sonants showed either decreasing or level rates with respect to syllable struc-
ture complexity. Likewise, an examination of phonological differences between
stressed and unstressed syllables did not yield support for the hypothesis. Finally,
a study of the phonetic correlates of word stress in §5.4.5 tested the hypotheses
that increasing syllable structure complexity would be accompanied by increas-
ing use of vowel duration as a correlate of stress, as well as an increased number
of phonetic correlates of stress. One of these hypotheses was weakly supported
in the sample: the proportion of languages in which vowel duration signals stress
is much higher in the Highly Complex category than in the others. However, no
relationship was found between the number of phonetic correlates of stress and
syllable structure complexity.

The specific properties of word stress and tone found to have positive or neg-
ative trends with respect to syllable structure complexity are listed in Table 5.14.
Italicized font indicates that the trend is based on a small data set (fewer than ten
languages), and an asterisk indicates that the result was found to be statistically
significant.

As discussed above, some of the patterns shown in Table 5.14 do not have
an incremental trend with respect to syllable structure complexity. For instance,
the trends in tone, unstressed vowel reduction, and reduced quality or deletion
outcomes of vowel reduction are not gradual, but set the Simple category apart
from the other three categories, which all have similar patterns with respect to
these properties. Similarly, a more frequent use of vowel duration as a correlate
of stress sets the Highly Complex category apart from the others.

For the most part, the results of the analyses in this chapter lend only weak
support to the hypotheses. However, some of the unexpected patterns in the
## 5 Suprasegmental patterns

<table><caption>Table 5.14: Properties of word stress associated positively or negatively with syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th>Type of property</th><th>Positive trends<br>(increases with syllable<br>structure complexity)</th><th>Negative trends<br>(decreases with syllable<br>structure complexity)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Presence of stress and<br>tone</td><td>Word stress and no<br>tone</td><td>Tone</td></tr><tr><td>Stress placement</td><td><em>Unpredictable<br>morphological or<br>lexical conditioning</em></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Segmental effects of<br>word stress</td><td>*Unstressed vowel<br>reduction<br>Reduction in vowel<br>quality<br>Vowel deletion<br><em>Asymmetry in vowel<br>length contrasts in<br>stressed and unstressed<br>syllables</em></td><td>C processes in<br>unstressed syllables<br><em>Diversity in unstressed<br>C processes</em></td></tr><tr><td>Phonetic correlates of<br>stress</td><td>Vowel duration<br>Intensity</td><td>*Pitch</td></tr></tbody></table>

data, such as the opposing patterns of unstressed vowel reduction and stress-conditioned consonant allophony with respect to syllable structure complexity, indicate that stress may nevertheless play an important and complex role in the diachronic development of syllable structure. In light of the results here, it is necessary to rethink the hypotheses and the relationships between word stress, its effects, and syllable structure complexity. These issues will be explored in the following section.

## 5.5 Discussion

### 5.5.1 Suprasegmental patterns and Highly Complex syllable structure

Having conducted analyses to test hypotheses relating suprasegmental properties to syllable structure complexity, we return to the main research questions
of the book. While there was mixed support for the hypotheses tested here, the
analyses revealed that there are suprasegmental patterns more strongly associ-
ated with the Highly Complex category than the other categories. In (27) I list
the suprasegmental patterns which are most characteristic of languages of the
Highly Complex category. I exclude minor patterns which were determined on
the basis of data from ten or fewer languages.

(27) Suprasegmental patterns associated with Highly Complex category

*Presence of stress and absence of tone*

*Absence of stress-conditioned processes affecting consonants*

*Presence of vowel duration as a phonetic correlate of stress*

As mentioned in the discussion of segmental patterns in §4.5.1, the terms “ab-
sence” and “presence” are not used here in a categorical sense. Instead these are
meant to correspond to the relative absence or presence of a property in the
Highly Complex group as compared to the other syllable structure complexity
groups.

In §4.5.1 I showed how the segmental patterns associated with the Highly Com-
plex group were distributed among the languages in that group. The resulting
distribution showed that languages in which Highly Complex syllable patterns
are more prominent also had more of those associated segmental patterns. In
Table 5.15 I illustrate how the suprasegmental patterns in (27) are distributed
among the languages. Although it was found to be associated strongly with all
of the non-Simple categories, I also include the presence of unstressed vowel re-
duction in the table to illustrate its distribution. The languages are again divided
into three groups according to the prominence of their Highly Complex syllable
patterns, as established in §§3.4.1–3.4.2. The suprasegmental properties associ-
ated with Highly Complex syllable structure and listed in (27) above are given in
the columns. A check mark indicates that a language has the expected property;
a shaded cell indicates that it does not.

The pattern in Table 5.15 indicates that the predictions are largely upheld. Lan-
guages which have Highly Complex syllable structure as a prevalent or especially
as an intermediate pattern tend to have more of the suprasegmental properties
associated with Highly Complex syllable structure than languages which have
Highly Complex syllable structure as a minor pattern.

Despite the pattern in Table 5.15, the results in the current study suggest that
highly complex syllable structure is not as reliably associated with suprasegment-
tal features as it is with segmental features. With that in mind, we revisit the
second research question of the book regarding the evolution of highly complex
5 Suprasegmental patterns

<table><caption>Table 5.15: Highly Complex languages, divided into three groups according to the prominence of their Highly Complex patterns. Expected suprasegmental properties are given in columns. A check mark indicates that the given language has the expected property; a shaded cell indicates it does not. Note that for Qawasqar it is unclear whether the language has word stress. (nr) indicates that phonetic correlates of stress were not reported for the language.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Word<br>stress<br>present</th><th>Tone<br>absent</th><th>Stress-<br>conditioned<br>C<br>allophony<br>absent</th><th>Unstressed<br>V<br>reduction<br>present</th><th>V<br>duration<br>as<br>correlate<br>of stress<br>present</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td colspan="6"><strong>Languages with prevalent Highly Complex patterns</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Cocopa</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Georgian</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>(nr)</td></tr><tr><td>Itelmen</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Polish</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Tashlhiyt</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Thompson</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Tohono O'odham</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Yakima Sahaptin</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="6"><strong>Languages with intermediate Highly Complex patterns</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Albanian</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Camsá</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Kabardian</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Lezgian</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Mohawk</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Nuu-chah-nulth</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>P.-Maliseet</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Yine</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Qawasqar</td><td>(unclear)</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Semai</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>(nr)</td></tr><tr><td>Tehuelche</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>(nr)</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6"><strong>Languages with minor Highly Complex patterns</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Alamblak</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>(nr)</td></tr><tr><td>Bench</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Doyayo</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Kunjen</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Menya</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>(nr)</td></tr><tr><td>Wutung</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td></tr></tbody></table>
syllable structure. Some of the strongest patterns in the word stress data exam-
ined here serve to set apart the Simple category from the other three categories
of syllable structure complexity: most notably, these include patterns in the pres-
ence of unstressed vowel reduction (and associated outcomes of vowel quality
reduction and deletion). Therefore it is difficult to relate these results to the de-
velopment of Highly Complex patterns specifically. This is further complicated
by the fact that the hypotheses tested here were weakly supported, or not sup-
ported at all. This prompts us to reexamine some of the assumptions underlying
these hypotheses.

The hypotheses were rooted in findings from previous studies which related
properties of stress to specific effects of stress independently of syllable struc-
ture complexity (Bybee et al. 1998; Schiering 2007), though the relevance of these
findings to syllable structure complexity seems clear enough. However, as noted
above, the size and construction of the language samples used in the previous
studies and the current one are quite different. It would be fruitful, then, to ex-
amine some of those associations established in the previous studies to see if they
hold in the current sample, without reference to syllable structure complexity.

Analyses of the relationships between predictability of stress placement, vowel duration as a correlate of stress, and the various segmental effects of stress – associations noted by Bybee et al. (1998) – in the current sample yield two statistically significant patterns. Languages with morphologically or lexically conditioned stress placement are more likely to have stress-conditioned allophonic variation in consonants ($\chi^2(1, N = 79) = 5.282, p = 0.02$). Languages with morphologically or lexically conditioned stress placement are also likely to have vowel duration as a phonetic correlate of stress ($\chi^2(1, N = 60) = 4.239, p = 0.04$).

Other associations – i.e. between stress predictability and unstressed vowel
reduction, segmental effects of stress and vowel duration as a correlate of stress,
and so on – were not found to be statistically significant. This could be an effect
of the composition of the current sample, in which the representation of syllable
patterns which are relatively rare crosslinguistically is artificially high. For ex
ample, vowel reduction was found to be much rarer in languages of the Simple
category, which represent 24/100 languages here. Another factor affecting the
results could be differences in the information available from the sources con
sulted. Bybee and colleagues state that very few of the references consulted in
that study made mention of the phonetic correlates of stress (1998: 278). They
had to rely instead upon descriptions of reported vowel lengthening processes
in order to determine whether vowel duration was a correlate of stress. Many
of the references consulted in the current study have been written in the last
20 years, during which time the reporting of phonetic correlates of stress has
become standard procedure in language description.

Schiering (2007) found a strong positive association between the strength of stress in number of phonetic correlates and the extent to which stress has seg-mental effects in the languages of his sample. I conducted a similar analysis with the data here, calculating the correlation between the number of phonetic cor-relates reported to signal stress and the number of types of stress-conditioned segmental processes occurring, the three possibilities being unstressed vowel re-duction, consonant allophony in unstressed syllables, and consonant allophony in stressed syllables. This analysis revealed a moderate but significant positive correlation between the phonetic strength of stress and the extent of the segmen-tal effects of stress (r(60) = 0.334, p = 0.009).

We find that a few strong associations between properties of stress and its
segmental effects occur in the current study, replicating results from previous
studies. It is puzzling then, given other associations established or proposed in
the literature between these features and syllable structure complexity, that we
did not find strong patterns linking properties of stress and syllable structure
complexity in the current sample. This suggests that the role of stress in the
development of highly complex syllable structure is more subtle than originally
expected.

5.5.2 Word stress and the development of syllable structure patterns

Though the patterns established here relating word stress properties to syllable
structure complexity are unexpected and difficult to interpret, it is nevertheless
important to attempt to relate them to the development of syllable structure pat-
terns more generally.

The pattern by which languages in the Simple category are less likely to have
unstressed vowel reduction is expected from a diachronic point of view. If such
patterns become prevalent enough in a language to become phonologized, this
could eventually lead to a language developing more complex syllable patterns,
at which point it would no longer belong to the Simple category. A related point
is that languages with Simple syllable structure show highly disparate outcomes
with respect to both unstressed vowel reduction and stress-conditioned conso-
nant allophony. By comparison, languages with more complex syllable patterns
consistently show two particularly strong outcomes with respect to unstressed
vowel reduction: deletion and reduction in vowel quality. These trends could
be interpreted as indicative of relative phonologization of stress-conditioned al-
lophonic processes. That is, the more consistent outcomes of unstressed vowel
reduction in languages with non-Simple syllable structure could point to a longer
history of segmental effects of stress in those languages. We would expect this to be the case for languages in the Moderately Complex, Complex, and Highly Complex categories more so than languages in the Simple category.

The decrease in the number of languages having stress-conditioned consonant allophony with respect to syllable structure complexity was quite unexpected. This pattern is especially interesting in light of the findings in Chapter 4, in which certain consonant articulations were found to be associated with different ends of the syllable structure complexity cline. One diachronic interpretation of this pattern could be that consonant articulations associated with more complex syllable structure have their origin in stress-conditioned allophonic processes in languages with simpler syllable structure. While parallel processes of vowel reduction occur, making the syllable structure more complex, these consonantal processes may phonologize and eventually result in new contrastive phonemes. However, such a speculative scenario is difficult to examine in the current data set. None of the stress-conditioned processes examined here result in uvulars or ejectives. Processes resulting in the other articulations associated with high syllable complexity are relatively rare: out of more than 50 stress-conditioned consonant processes collected here, only five result in palato-alveolar and/or affricate articulations. These do all occur in languages from the Simple and Moderately Complex categories.

A few possibilities come to mind for why languages in the Highly Complex category do not show the highest rates of stress-conditioned segmental processes. One is that there are higher rates of vowel reduction in these languages, but the coarse-grained analyses in this chapter did not capture this fact. The analysis here considered only the presence or absence of unstressed vowel reduction patterns, but not the number of such patterns in each of the languages. This issue will be explored in further depth in Chapter 6, which presents a detailed analysis of all phonetic vowel reduction patterns in the language sample. Another possibility is that in languages of the Highly Complex category, segmental effects of stress have already operated in the languages for long periods of time and had dramatic effects on the phonology. In such a scenario, pre- and post-tonic vowels will have been largely reduced, leaving few vowels outside of stems to be affected by phonetic unstressed vowel reduction. Likewise, the absence or highly reduced nature of unstressed vowels would make consonant allophony in unstressed syllables unlikely. In other words, languages with Highly Complex syllable patterns may not show extreme segmental effects of stress because these processes have essentially progressed to completion within these languages. Such a scenario is, however, extremely speculative and not likely given the phonological facts of most of the languages in this group. While there are a few languages in which
most unstressed vowels are highly reduced (e.g. Thompson), there are many
more in which this is not the case.

A simpler, more plausible, and more satisfactory explanation for the patterns
observed in this chapter is that word stress simply does not have the universally
strong effect on syllable structure development that it was thought to have when
the hypotheses of this study were formulated. Concurrent with that is the obser-
vation that there are many ways in which stress systems and syllable patterns
may change independently of one another. Schiering notes the following issue
in positing motivations for speech rhythm types:

[P]roblems translating these observations to crosslinguistic data from a
world-wide sample arise because at each step of the diachronic scenario
for each phonological parameter of linguistic rhythm, multiple evolution-
ary scenarios may in principle be at work. (Schiering 2007: 353)

Schiering gives several examples of how unpredictable word stress placement
patterns may come about independently of vowel reduction. For example, in
Turkish, unpredictable stress patterns can be found in loanwords and in a gram-
maticalized construction in which the phrasal stress pattern has been reanalyzed
as an irregular word stress pattern. In the current sample, there are similar pat-
terns in which irregular stress patterns have been introduced by the recent gram-
maticalization of formerly independent words which retain their original stress
patterns (e.g. in Imbabura Highland Quichua, example 5.1). Bybee et al. (1998)
also present several historically attested alternative paths by which stress place-
ment patterns may change independently of vowel reduction. By the same token,
processes of vowel reduction which have the effect of altering syllable patterns
do not have to be conditioned by stress. For example, in Nkore-Kiga, a language
which does not have word stress, high vowels may be deleted in certain conso-
nantal contexts word-medially (Taylor 1985: 202–205). And consonant allophony,
of course, may be conditioned by many other phonological factors besides stress.

The findings here indicate that the properties and effects of word stress are just
a few components of the “phonetics-phonology constellation” (Schiering 2007:
354) characterizing highly complex syllable structure. In fact, in comparing the
results of this chapter to those of the previous chapter, an important finding
might be that general properties of gestural organization in speech could be just
as relevant as the effects of word stress in the development of highly complex syl-
lable structure. This point will be reconsidered in the following chapters, which
examine more generally the properties of vowel reduction and certain kinds of
consonant allophony in the sample as they relate to syllable structure complex-
ity.
# 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

## 6.1 Introduction and hypothesis

In this and the following chapter, I address the research questions of the book by expanding the phonological survey of syllable structure complexity beyond segmental and suprasegmental properties, considering instead the dynamic, on-going patterns of sound change that occur in languages with different kinds of syllable structure. Specifically, the study in the current chapter investigates the properties of vowel reduction in languages with different syllable structure complexity. The purpose of looking at vowel reduction, in particular, is that it is a known pathway by which complex syllable patterns develop.

Vowel reduction, and specifically the weakening of vowels in unstressed syllables, has long been proposed to co-occur with complex syllable structure in the rhythm typology literature (Auer 1993). Vowel reduction is also known from historical and comparative evidence to cause changes in canonical syllable structure. For example, in Ute, vowel devoicing has very recently created codas and patterns that may be analyzed as complex consonant clusters in what was previously a CV language (Givón 2011; see also discussion in §3.2.3). Below I illustrate the potential effects of the most extreme form of vowel reduction, vowel deletion, with an example also mentioned in §5.1.3. A recent process deleting pretonic high vowels in certain consonantal environments has dramatically changed the canonical syllable patterns of Lezgian. Where only simple onsets used to occur, now onsets of two or three consonants are common. The change is ongoing (1a), but its directionality is apparent when modern invariant forms are compared to conservative standard spelling (1b).

(1) Lezgian (Nakh-Daghestanian; Azerbaijan, Russia)

a. [tʃʰi'neba] ~ ['tʃʰneba]
'secretly'
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

<table><thead><tr><th>b. Standard spelling</th><th>Modern form</th><th>Gloss</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>xizan</td><td>/χzan/</td><td>'family'</td></tr><tr><td>šutq'unun</td><td>/ʃʷtʰq'unun/</td><td>'press out'</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="3">(Haspelmath 1993: 36–38)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

Instrumental evidence indicates that this deletion process continues to be highly productive in the language (Chitoran & Babaliyeva 2007). This acoustic study also shows that vowel deletion does not occur spontaneously, but is the result of an incremental reduction cline. Initial stages of this process include devoicing and reduced duration of the affected vowel before it has reduced to the point that one might consider it to be deleted. Furthermore, there is evidence that this process involves not only reduction of the vowel gesture, but also its overlap with that of the preceding consonant: the articulatory characteristics of the vowel may persist as a secondary articulation of the preceding consonant (note the labialization in the second example in 1b).

A major goal in the current work is to identify paths by which highly complex syllable structure, and the large consonant clusters associated with it, develop over time. The evidence from Lezgian, which itself now has syllable structure that puts it in the Highly Complex category in this study, as well as languages with similar patterns, indicates that vowel reduction is at least one source for the development of complex tautosyllabic consonant clusters in a language. The continued productivity of this particular process in Lezgian (1a) also suggests that vowel reduction patterns may continue to persist even after they have altered the syllable patterns of a language.

As noted in §5.1.3, there is now additionally a tendency in the language for post-tonic vowels to be deleted in certain consonantal environments (2).

(2) Lezgian (Nakh-Daghestanian; Azerbaijan, Russia)
di'dedilaj ~ di'dedlaj
'from mother' (Haspelmath 1993: 40)

Haspelmath reports that the process in (2) is mostly restricted to inflectional suffixes; though there are other contexts in which it occurs, the precise phonological conditioning is difficult to specify. The processes illustrated by (1) and (2) share similar properties: both are conditioned by stress and the consonantal environment and both affect predominantly high vowels. An interesting question to consider here is whether these processes share a common motivation. That is, though they are distinct patterns, the similarities in their conditioning and outcomes may reflect an increasing general phonetic tendency towards reduction
of high vowels, and/or their overlap with consonantal gestures, in unstressed syllables in the language.

The observations above suggest several points for further investigation. First of all, because vowel reduction processes may persist in a language after they have altered canonical syllable patterns, it is reasonable to hypothesize that languages with complex syllable structure will be more likely to have ongoing vowel reduction processes than those with simpler syllable structure. The impressionistic descriptions of the phonetic characteristics of languages with highly complex syllable structure in §1.3.3, in which unstressed syllables are described as being “squeezed together” and unstressed vowels as being obscure or dropped entirely, suggest that this hypothesis has merit. Second, following the observations regarding the two processes in Lezgian, we might expect vowel reduction to also be more prevalent *within* languages with complex syllable patterns. This could manifest in a higher number of distinct vowel reduction patterns within those languages. Finally, it is reasonable to suppose that the generally higher prevalence of vowel reduction in languages with more complex syllable structure may be accompanied by more extreme outcomes of these processes, given that the syllable patterns may have come about through similarly extreme outcomes of vowel reduction at some point in the history of those languages. The analysis in §5.4.3.1, in which it was shown that vowel deletion was frequently an outcome of unstressed vowel reduction in languages from the non-Simple categories, would support this idea. With these points in mind, I present the hypothesis for the current chapter in (3).

(3) As syllable structure complexity increases, languages will show stronger effects of vowel reduction, in terms of both prevalence of processes and final outcomes of processes.

In the study presented here, I test this hypothesis by analyzing the overall prevalence of vowel reduction in the sample. I also analyze the specific characteristics of the affected vowels, conditioning environments, and outcomes associated with vowel reduction in the sample. Trends in these parts of vowel reduction patterns may shed light on the diachronic development of highly complex syllable structure, as well as inform our understanding of synchronic phonetic tendencies in these languages.

Recall that in Chapter 5 there was an analysis of unstressed vowel reduction which established that these processes occur in a much smaller percentage of languages in the Simple category than in the other three. It is important to note that the following analyses are not limited to vowel reduction conditioned by
stress. Since vowel reduction with any kind of conditioning environment may be relevant to the development of syllable structure complexity, the scope of this chapter is much broader than that of the analysis in §5.4.3.

## 6.2 Methodology

### 6.2.1 Patterns considered

The term “vowel reduction” is most often used in the literature to refer to a process which affects vowel quality, typically in unstressed environments. A prototypical manifestation of this is the movement of unstressed vowels closer to the “neutral” central area of the vowel space, e.g. English *Rosa’s roses* [ˈrəʊzəz ˈrəʊzɪz]. Crosswhite (2000: 1), who defines vowel reduction more narrowly as “[t]he neutralization of two (or more) phonemic vowels when unstressed,” distinguishes two types of vowel reduction in terms of their perceptual outcomes: prominence reduction and contrast enhancement. In prominence-reducing vowel reduction, phonemic contrasts are neutralized to low-sonority vowels, specifically vowels in the mid central region and high vowels (see English example above). This has the effect of restricting the entire vowel space in unstressed syllables to a smaller (usually higher and/or more central) region. In contrast-enhancing vowel reduction, vowel contrasts in unstressed syllables are neutralized in such a way as to preserve the peripheral contrasts in the vowel space. For example, in Luiseño, mid vowels are raised to their high counterparts in unstressed syllables: *tʃoka* ‘limp, be lame’ > *tʃuˈkatʃkaʃ* ‘limping’ (Munro & Benson 1973: 19). This has the effect of reducing the five-vowel system /i e a o u/ to a three-vowel system /i a u/ in unstressed syllables. While there are many language-specific studies of vowel reduction (e.g. Lindblom 1963 for Swedish, Padgett & Tabain 2005 for Russian), large-scale typological studies of the phenomenon are rare and have largely been limited specifically to this issue of neutralization of phonemic contrasts (Crosswhite 2001; 2004; Barnes 2006). Interestingly, a crosslinguistic study of phonetic vowel reduction in 80 languages by Kapatsinski et al. (forthcoming) found that vowel quality overwhelmingly tends to be centralized, and occasionally raised, as a result of reduction, but did not find synchronic evidence for contrast-enhancement involving both the raising and lowering of vowels to peripheral qualities.

The current study does not limit itself to phonemic neutralization or reduction of vowel quality in its examination of vowel reduction processes. As indicated by the discussion of the Lezgian vowel reduction pattern above, vowel deletion is an incremental process which may involve many different forms of reduction.
While the cline to vowel deletion in English typically involves vowel quality reduction (e.g. *potato* [pʰoʊtʰeɪroʊ] > [pʰətʰeɪroʊ] > [ˈpʰtʰeɪroʊ]), the Lezgian example shows that other weakening effects such as devoicing and shortening may be involved in this process (Chitoran & Babaliyeva 2007). Thus a principled way to approach the current study is to consider any case of vowel weakening to be potentially informative in piecing together the development of highly complex syllable structure.

The vowel reduction processes examined in the current study encompass any kind of lenition, that is, weakening, of a vowel, in an approach very similar to that taken by Kapatsinski et al. (forthcoming). In determining what constitutes a weakening of a vowel, I appeal to phonological models in which sound change is understood in terms of articulatory gestures (Browman & Goldstein 1992b; Mowrey & Pagliuca 1995). From this point of view, vowel reduction involves a decrease in the magnitude or duration of vocalic gestures, and/or overlap of vocalic gestures by gestures associated with neighboring sounds, which may have similar outcomes. Thus vowel reduction may involve reduced tongue body displacement, which would produce a change in quality, but it could also involve reduction or loss of the glottalic gesture (devoicing), temporal reduction of the vocalic gestures (shortening), and other effects. We therefore define vowel reduction as any process resulting in (a) the reduction in duration, quality, voicing, or any other property of a vowel, or (b) the vowel no longer having any acoustic manifestation. While the latter phenomenon is typically described as vowel "deletion," it is important to note that gestural overlap with adjacent sounds may result in a vowel no longer being audible, but still having an articulatory trace (cf. Browman & Goldstein 1990 for consonant deletion).

Another complication with traditional uses of the term “vowel reduction” is that it may apply to many different kinds of processes, including those limited to specific morphological paradigms and cases of idiosyncratic reduction which occur only in highly frequent words or phrases. In fact both such patterns were frequently found in the language sample (4–5).

(4) Burushaski (*isolate*; Pakistan)

When the causative prefix is attached to a verb stem, long vowels in the stem frequently shorten, and /ɛ/ tenses and raises to /i/.

-dɛlʌs > ʌdilʌs 'make jump' (Anderson 1997: 1030)

(5) Grass Koiari (Koiarian; Papua New Guinea)

The phrase *ego tonitoniva* ‘very long’ is often produced as *ego tontoniva* in rapid speech. (Dutton 1996: 7)
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

Such examples are certainly important in enriching our understanding of vowel reduction, attesting to the strong effect that usage-based factors such as analogy, frequency, and automation can have on the sound system of a language, and illustrating the complex intertwining of phonological and morphosyntactic patterns that occur in natural language use and a speaker's representation of the language (Bybee 2001). However, the analysis of such patterns presents complications. The interpretation of patterns limited to morphological paradigms may be complicated by such factors as inversion or telescoping (Vennemann 1972; Hyman 1975), in which the chain of developments is obscured or reversed. An example of a synchronic misinterpretation of this sort has been noted for Lezgian. Yu (2004) shows that an apparent synchronic process of word-final obstruent voicing in the language is not plausible based on morphophonological and comparative evidence, and that it is more likely that a sequence of processes has devoiced the corresponding word-internal alternants. Similarly, reduction in highly frequent forms, also known as special reduction, has been found in the research to not be entirely comparable to other productive processes of vowel reduction, being more extreme in its effects (Bybee et al. 2016). For these reasons, vowel reduction patterns limited to specific morphological paradigms and highly frequent forms will be omitted from the current study. Instead, only cases of phonetically or phonologically conditioned vowel reduction are considered, on the basis that these are at least somewhat transparent in their conditioning environments and effects, and productive in the languages for which they have been reported. In (6–9), I illustrate some of the processes considered in the analysis.

(6) Pech (Chibchan; Honduras)

In rapid speech, vowels in unstressed syllables are sometimes devoiced between voiceless consonants.

/sikîko/

[sîkîko]

‘church’ (Holt 1999: 18)

(7) Kim Mun (Hmong-Mien; Vietnam)

Long vowels are shortened and produced with level tone in non-word-final syllables.

a. /gja:ŋ³⁵/

[gja:ŋ³⁵]

‘tree’

b. /gja:ŋ³⁵θm⁵²/

[gjaŋ³³θm⁵²]

‘tree trunk’ (Clark 2008: 117)
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

been included here as vowel reduction. What has been included are vowel shortening processes in which the reduced length of an unstressed vowel is shorter than what would normally be expected for unstressed vowels, for instance, extra shortening of unstressed vowels in pretonic position as compared to other unstressed positions.

Finally, processes of vowel harmony which might involve vowel laxing or raising were excluded from the present analysis. Also excluded were cases of vowel deletion conditioned by the presence of an adjacent vowel (i.e. hiatus avoidance), and vowel coalescence or merger.

### 6.2.2 Determining what constitutes a process

In any analysis of dynamic processes within or across languages, potential methodological problems arise from issues of how and where to draw the lines which divide the holistic sound pattern of the language into discrete processes. In the current study, it was important to strike a balance between capturing similarities in patterns of vowel reduction and recognizing potentially important differences in those patterns. This sometimes required a reinterpretation of the patterns as they have been reported in the descriptive materials.

Where more than one vowel was found to reduce in the same way in the same environment, these patterns were grouped together as a single process. Patterns were coded as separate processes when differences in the conditioning environments or outcomes were reported for different affected vowels or groups of vowels. For example, the pattern in (11) below was split into two processes due to the slightly different conditioning environments reported for the two affected high vowels. Other aspects of the processes have been ignored here to simplify the exposition.

#### (11) Cocama-Cocamilla (Tupian; Peru)

a. The high back vowel /u/ may be produced as [o] word-finally.
   /itimu/
   [itimo]
   ‘liana sp.’

b. The high front vowel /i/ may be produced as [e] word-finally
following an approximant consonant.
/tsuwi/
[tsuwe]
‘tail’
(Vallejos Yopán 2010: 109–110)
Issues of regularity and speech style were also considered to be important factors in differentiating processes from one another. In the example below (12), a pattern of vowel lengthening in Doyayo has been split into two processes based on differences in its regularity in two similar conditioning environments. Patterns like these were not very common in the data.

### (12) Doyayo (Atlantic-Congo; Cameroon)

a. A long vowel is optionally shortened preceding a coda of two or three consonants.

b. A long vowel is obligatorily shortened preceding a coda of four consonants.

(Wiering & Wiering 1994: 22)

Some patterns in the language sample involved the optional reduction or deletion of a vowel or group of vowels in some specific conditioning environment. In such cases, the pattern was coded as a single process with two optional outcomes: reduction (in whatever way specified by the source) or deletion, as in the Lelepa example below (13).

### (13) Lelepa (Austronesian; Vanuatu)

In word-final position following a consonant, high vowels /i u/ and mid back vowel /o/ may be deleted or devoiced.

/nati/

[nati] ~ [natij] ~ [nat]

‘banana’

(Lacrampe 2014: 15, 64–65)

### 6.2.3 Coding

As with most typological studies of moderate to large size, the data collection for this study relies on patterns reported in reference grammars and other descriptive materials. Written references, which are often heavily reliant on elicited data, are of course a poor substitute for multi-modal corpora of natural language use. The written word is also a particularly poor medium for the study of speech sound patterns. Typological studies of phonological processes are further complicated by issues of analysis. The direction of a process relies on the analysis of the author and their judgment of what a likely process is, based on the synchronic evidence at hand in the language. Characterizations of variation may be phonetically imprecise and based on impressions rather than instrumental measures, and the degree of detail and patterns attended to may reflect the interest
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

and/or native language biases of the author. In addition to these potential issues, there are many other complications of descriptive and typological work relating to the speech styles and varieties represented in language reference materials, as discussed in Chapter 2.

It is expected that the group of vowel reduction processes collected from the sources will reflect some or all of the above problems. However, in a sample of 100 diverse languages ranging from highly endangered languages with a handful of speakers to well-documented languages with institutional status, described by hundreds of researchers from various backgrounds, we expect strong crosslinguistic trends to rise above the “noise” of the aforementioned complications.

Each process of vowel reduction was coded for three structural factors: the vowels affected, the properties of the environment reported to cause the reduction, and the outcome of the reduction process. I describe details of the coding procedure here.

The *affected vowels* were coded according to their phonetic descriptions in the references consulted and the corresponding IPA symbols. Where the affected vowels formed a coherent natural class with respect to the vowel inventory of the language this was also noted (e.g. *long vowels, high vowels, all vowels*).

The *conditioning environment* was coded to reflect what phonetic or phonological factors contributed to the occurrence of the process: consonantal environment, word environment, word stress environment, and/or phrase (or utterance) environment. In coding the conditioning environment, sometimes a reinterpretation of the process as reported was required. Where word and phrase/utterance environments were confounded, the phrase/utterance domain was considered to be the conditioning factor, for instance, in cases where an author reported that word-final vowels are reduced at the end of an utterance. Where both word and phrase/utterance environments clearly contributed to the process, then both were coded as conditioning factors, for instance, when word-final vowels are deleted phrase-medially but not phrase-finally. Similarly, when word stress and word position were potentially confounded, then the stress environment was considered the sole conditioning factor. An example of this would be when an author reported that the antepenultimate vowel of a word is reduced preceding a stressed syllable, but the language was also reported to have fixed penultimate word stress.

The *outcome* was coded according to the nature of the reduction vis-à-vis the phonetic definitions of the affected vowels. Outcomes included reduction in vowel duration, reduction in vowel quality (usually laxing or centralization), devoicing, deletion, and other rarer effects such as tone leveling or glottalization of the vowel. Following the research discussed in §6.2.1, and especially the results
of Kapatsinski et al. (forthcoming), an outcome of vowel raising was considered to be a reduction in vowel quality if it occurred in an unstressed syllable or if it was explicitly described by the author as a process of vowel reduction.

Insofar as such information was reported, processes were also coded for factors of regularity (e.g. regular or optional application), speech style (e.g. normal, rapid, or casual speech), and sociolinguistic variation (e.g. age of speakers).

All vowel reduction processes considered in this chapter can be found in Appendix B.

## 6.3 Results

Here I present a quantitative analysis of vowel reduction processes occurring in the language sample. These analyses test the hypothesis formulated in §6.1: as syllable structure complexity increases, languages will show stronger effects of vowel reduction. In §§6.3.1–6.3.2, the relative prevalence of vowel reduction processes is examined with respect to syllable structure complexity. In §§6.3.3–6.3.5, analyses are presented showing how trends in the affected vowels (§6.3.3), conditioning environments (§6.3.4), and outcomes of vowel reduction processes (§6.3.5) differ among languages with different syllable structure complexity. In §6.3.6 I present a holistic analysis of the reduction processes in the sample. In §6.3.7 I summarize the patterns observed and discuss how they support the hypothesis.

### 6.3.1 Languages with vowel reduction

Out of the 100 languages in the sample, 72 were found to have vowel reduction processes as defined in §6.2.1. Table 6.1 shows the distribution of languages in the sample with respect to syllable structure complexity and the presence or absence of vowel reduction processes.

<table><caption>Table 6.1: Languages of the sample distributed according to syllable structure complexity and presence or absence of vowel reduction processes, as reported in sources.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">N languages with:</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>N = 24</th><th>MC<br>N = 26</th><th>C<br>N = 25</th><th>HC<br>N = 25</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Vowel reduction</td><td>15</td><td>18</td><td>19</td><td>21</td></tr><tr><td>No vowel reduction</td><td>9</td><td>8</td><td>6</td><td>4</td></tr></tbody></table>
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

In all four categories of syllable structure complexity, languages are more likely than not to be reported to have vowel reduction processes. Here the proportion of languages showing vowel reduction steadily increases with syllable structure complexity. Thus in this initial analysis, we find support for the hypothesis that languages with more complex syllable structure will show stronger effects of vowel reduction. Note that these results differ from the one reported for unstressed vowel reduction in §5.4.3, in which the salient pattern was the contrast between the low reduction rate for the Simple category and the roughly similar high reduction rates for the other three categories.

### 6.3.2 Number of distinct vowel reduction processes present

Here I analyze the number of distinct vowel reduction processes present in the languages of the sample. The median and range in number of processes for each syllable structure complexity category are presented in Table 6.2.

<table><caption>Table 6.2: Languages of sample distributed according to syllable structure complexity and median and range in number of distinct vowel reduction processes.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">N distinct vowel reduction processes:</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>24 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>26 lgs.</th><th>C<br>25 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>25 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Median</th><td>1</td><td>1.5</td><td>2</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><th>Range</th><td>0–5</td><td>0–5</td><td>0–7</td><td>0–7</td></tr></tbody></table>

The trends in Table 6.2 indicate that languages with differing syllable structure complexity also differ with respect to the number of distinct vowel reduction processes occurring. Though the trend in the median number of vowel reduction processes is not particularly informative, the languages in the Simple and Moderately Complex categories have a narrower range in number of processes than the languages in the Complex and Highly Complex categories. Figure 6.1 shows the percentage of languages in each category which have zero, one, two, and three or more distinct vowel reduction processes.

As syllable structure complexity increases, so does the number of languages having more than one vowel reduction process operating synchronically. In fact, languages at the far end of the syllable structure complexity scale, those in the
<figure><img src="image_43.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6.1: Percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity group with given number of distinct vowel reduction processes.</figcaption></figure>

Highly Complex category, are much more likely to have two or more vowel reduction processes (18 languages) than to have one or none (seven languages). Statistical tests show there is a significant positive correlation between the number of distinct vowel reduction processes reported per language and syllable structure complexity, measured both categorically ($r(100) = 0.251, p = 0.01$) and as a sum of maximal syllable margin sizes ($r(100) = 0.283, p = 0.004$).

The analysis in the previous section revealed that the proportion of languages having any vowel reduction processes increases as syllable structure complexity increases. The results presented here point to a greater prevalence of vowel reduction in languages with more complex syllable structure, in that larger numbers of distinct processes tend to be present in these languages. This lends further support to the hypothesis being tested in this study. The data can also be interpreted as pointing to greater variability in vowel reduction patterns in languages with more complex syllable structure. Recalling the criteria presented in §6.2.3 for determining what constitutes a distinct process, the trends here reflect a higher degree of variation in affected vowels, conditioning environments, outcomes, and regularity of vowel reduction patterns in languages with more complex syllable structure.

In Table 6.3, the 178 vowel reduction processes collected from the language sample are distributed according to the syllable structure complexity of the languages in which they occur. In the following sections, trends in the affected sounds, conditioning environments, and outcomes of these processes will be analyzed.
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

<table><caption>Table 6.3: Distinct vowel reduction processes in sample, distributed according to the syllable structure complexity of the languages in which they occur.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>24 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>26 lgs.</th><th>C<br>25 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>25 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th scope="row">N reported vowel reduction processes</th><td>24</td><td>49</td><td>48</td><td>57</td></tr></tbody></table>

### 6.3.3 Affected vowels

As described in §6.2.3, the vowels affected by each vowel reduction process in the data were coded according to their phonetic descriptions in the references consulted, and where appropriate, according to their natural class with respect to the composition of the language's vowel inventory. In Table 6.4, the vowel reduction processes in the data are distributed according to the vowels or groups of vowels affected.

<table><caption>Table 6.4: Vowel reduction processes in sample, distributed according to affected vowels and syllable structure complexity of languages in which they occur.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th><th rowspan="2">Total</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>24</th><th>MC<br>49</th><th>C<br>48</th><th>HC<br>57</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th scope="row">Affected vowels</th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">N processes</th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><th scope="row">all vowels</th><td>12</td><td>10</td><td>17</td><td>21</td><td>60</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">high vowels</th><td>7</td><td>15</td><td>10</td><td>7</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">low vowel /a/ or /ɑ/</th><td>-</td><td>5</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">mid central vowel /ə/</th><td>-</td><td>3</td><td>-</td><td>10</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">short vowels</th><td>-</td><td>6</td><td>5</td><td>3</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">long vowels</th><td>3</td><td>5</td><td>4</td><td>4</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">other</th><td>2</td><td>5</td><td>8</td><td>10</td><td>25</td></tr></tbody></table>

The categories of affected vowels listed in Table 6.4 capture the clearest patterns in the data set as a whole. For the sake of simplicity, the category of *high vowels* includes processes which affect all or some high vowels in a language along with processes targeting just one high vowel, such as /i/ or /u/. The *other*
category is fairly heterogeneous, and includes processes affecting groups such as non-high vowels, front and high vowels, high and mid vowels, /e/, and so on.

For languages in all four categories of syllable structure complexity, vowel reduction processes affecting *all vowels* are frequent. In fact, this is the dominant trend for every category except for Moderately Complex. What is more interesting about the data presented in Table 6.4 are the secondary and outlier trends with respect to affected vowels and syllable structure complexity. *High vowels* are much less likely to be affected by vowel reduction processes in languages with Highly Complex syllable structure as compared to languages in the other syllable structure complexity categories.<fnref n="1" /> Vowel reduction processes in languages with Simple syllable structure do not target *short vowels* in those languages which have vowel length distinctions, but they do target *long vowels*. This is an unusual trend compared to the patterns in the languages with more complex syllable structure, though it could also be a random effect due to the small number of vowel reduction processes in the Simple category. Finally, perhaps the most interesting feature of the data presented above is that reduction processes in which *schwa* is the sole affected vowel occur almost entirely in languages of the Highly Complex category. Even more strikingly, this is the second most frequent affected vowel category in that group of languages.

It is important to always bear in mind that any reported phonemic inventory is a product of an author's analysis. The symbol [ə] is conventionally used as cover symbol for any neutral vowel in the mid central region of the vowel chart (Laver 1994: 280), and phonetic descriptions of such neutral vowels are often impressionistic and unaccompanied by instrumental data in reference materials. To complicate matters, a common outcome of vowel reduction is a vowel produced somewhere in the mid central region. Thus, proving that /ə/ is indeed a contrastive sound, and not a reduced variant of another vowel, is not always a straightforward process in the phonemic analysis of a language. With these caveats in mind, we consider the distribution of languages in the sample which are demonstrated through the analysis of minimal pairs, stress patterns, or other methods to have contrastive /ə/ in their vowel phoneme inventories, with respect to the presence or absence of vowel reduction processes affecting /ə/ specifically (Table 6.5).

Contrastive /ə/ is reported in the vowel phoneme inventories of 25 languages in the sample from all four categories of syllable structure complexity, though it is somewhat less frequent in languages with Simple syllable structure. The 13

<footnote n="1">¹The Lezgian processes used to illustrate vowel reduction processes in §6.1 are in fact some of the very few processes targeting high vowels in the Highly Complex category.</footnote>
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

<table><caption>Table 6.5: Languages in sample reported to have phonemic /ə/, distributed according to syllable structure complexity and presence or absence of vowel reduction processes affecting /ə/ specifically. The trend in Highly Complex languages is highly significant when compared against the combined trend in the Simple, Moderately Complex, and Complex languages ($p < 0.001$ in Fisher's exact test).</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">V reduction processes affecting /ə/</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br/>N = 3</th><th>MC<br/>N = 9</th><th>C<br/>N = 5</th><th>HC<br/>N = 8</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Present</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Absent</td><td>3</td><td>8</td><td>5</td><td>2</td></tr></tbody></table>

vowel reduction processes affecting /ə/, as shown in Table 6.5 above, are distributed as follows: three occur in Paiwan (Austronesian), a language of the Moderately Complex category. The remaining ten processes occur in six diverse languages of the Highly Complex category: Alamblak (Sepik), Albanian (Indo-European), Itelmen (Chukotko-Kamchatkan), Kabardian (Abkhaz-Adyge), Passamaquoddy-Maliseet (Algic), and Thompson (Salishan). When the trend in the Highly Complex category is cross-tabulated against the trends of the other three categories in Table 6.5, it is found to be statistically significant ($p = 0.001$ in Fisher's exact test).

The implications of the results reported for affected vowels will be further discussed in §6.4. In the next section, the environments conditioning vowel reduction processes in the sample are analyzed.

### 6.3.4 Conditioning environments

As described in §6.2.3, the conditioning environment of each vowel reduction process in the language sample was coded to reflect whether the consonantal environment, position in the word, position with respect to word stress, and/or position in the phrase/utterance contributed to the occurrence of the process. The results of this analysis can be found in Table 6.6.

76 of the vowel reduction processes in the language sample are reported to be conditioned by a single aspect of the environment as defined above. For ten processes, not enough information about the process was given to categorize the conditioning environment. The remaining 90 processes are conditioned by a combination of environments, typically *stress* in addition to something else.
<table><caption>Table 6.6: Conditioning environments of vowel reduction processes in sample.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th><th rowspan="2">Total</th></tr><tr><th>S</th><th>MC</th><th>C</th><th>HC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Conditioning environments</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td><em>N</em> processes</td><td>24</td><td>49</td><td>48</td><td>57</td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Single environment</td></tr><tr><td>Consonantal</td><td>2</td><td>8</td><td>6</td><td>11</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>Stress</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>11</td><td>13</td><td>31</td></tr><tr><td>Word position</td><td>3</td><td>6</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Phrase/utterance</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Unclear</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>4</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Combination of environments</td></tr><tr><td>Stress and consonantal</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>8</td><td>10</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>Stress and word position</td><td>3</td><td>12</td><td>6</td><td>8</td><td>29</td></tr><tr><td>Stress and phrase/utterance position</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>Consonantal and word position and word stress</td><td>2</td><td>5</td><td>7</td><td>3</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td>Other combinations</td><td>6</td><td>5</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>14</td></tr></tbody></table>

The most common conditioning environments are *stress* alone (31 processes), the *stress* environment in combination with *word position* (29 processes), and the *consonantal* environment alone (27 processes).

The main patterns in Table 6.6 are summarized in Figure 6.2, which depicts the overall effect of each of the four environments in conditioning vowel reduction processes in languages with different syllable structure complexity. Here the environments are counted regardless of whether they occur alone or in combination with others in conditioning a process.

The trends in Figure 6.2 show the *stress* environment conditioning higher percentages of vowel reduction processes as syllable structure complexity increases. The *word position* environment shows the opposite trend. The other two environments, *consonantal* and *phrase/utterance position*, have very subtle trends. Chi-square tests show that the *stress* trend is significant ($\chi^2(3, N = 178) = 8.721, p = 0.03$) and the *word position* trend is highly significant ($\chi^2(3, N = 178) = 15.986, p = 0.001$).
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

<figure><img src="image_44.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6.2: Relative frequency of environments conditioning vowel reduction processes (expressed as percentage of total processes in each category of syllable structure complexity).</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_45.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6.3: Relative frequency of stress-conditioned vowel reduction processes, expressed as the percentage of all vowel reduction processes from languages which have stress in each category.</figcaption></figure>

Recall from the analyses in §5.4.1 that roughly one-fifth of the languages in the sample are not reported to have word stress. In Figure 6.3 I only include vowel reduction processes from the 79 languages reported to have word stress. The trend shows the percentage of those processes which are conditioned by the stress environment in each category of syllable structure complexity.

The trend in stress-conditioned vowel reduction in Figure 6.3 is similar to the one in Figure 6.2 in that it shows the percentage of such processes rising with syllable structure complexity, in particular setting apart the Simple and Moderately Complex categories from the Complex and Highly Complex categories. In §5.4.3 it was found that vowel reduction as a segmental effect of stress occurred in a much smaller percentage of languages from the Simple category than from the other three categories: only 7/18 (39%) of the languages with word stress in the Simple category had unstressed vowel reduction. Here we find a similar pattern:
within languages that have word stress, stress conditions a smaller percentage of vowel reduction processes in the Simple and Moderately Complex categories than in the others. This suggests that not only does stress condition vowel reduction in more languages with complex syllable structure, but it also conditions more processes overall in those languages. This is confirmed when examining the ratio of the number of stress-conditioned vowel reduction processes to the number of languages with stress-conditioned vowel reduction in each category (Table 6.7).

<table><caption>Table 6.7: Ratio of number of stress-conditioned vowel reduction processes to the number of languages with unstressed vowel reduction in each category of syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S</th><th>MC</th><th>C</th><th>HC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>N V reduction processes conditioned by stress</td><td>10</td><td>28</td><td>35</td><td>40</td></tr><tr><td>N lgs. with V reduction conditioned by stress</td><td>7</td><td>12</td><td>15</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>ratio</td><td>1.4</td><td>2.3</td><td>2.3</td><td>2.7</td></tr></tbody></table>

The pattern in Table 6.7 indicates that in languages with word stress-conditioned vowel reduction, the average number of processes conditioned by word stress, either solely or in addition to other phonological factors, increases with syllable structure complexity.

The implications of the results reported for conditioning environments will be further discussed in §6.4. In the next section, the outcomes of vowel reduction processes in the sample are analyzed.

### 6.3.5 Outcomes

Here we examine the reported outcomes of vowel reduction processes in the data. These were reduction in vowel duration, reduction in vowel quality, devoicing, deletion, and a few other effects. The other effects included cases where the vowel forms a syllabic consonant with an adjacent consonant, and two much rarer outcomes, tone leveling and glottalization of the vowel. As with the conditioning environments, sometimes a process involved a combination of outcomes. As described in §6.2.3, processes reported to involve the optional reduction or deletion of a vowel or group of vowels in some specific environment were coded
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

as having several outcomes (deletion and whatever other reduction was specified by the author). See Table 6.8 for the distribution of processes according to outcome and syllable structure complexity in the data.

The most common outcomes for vowel reduction in the data are *reduction in quality* (60 processes) and *deletion* (43 processes). Processes involving a combination of outcomes are rare, and most of these are of the kind in which a vowel is optionally either reduced or deleted. The major patterns in Table 6.8 are shown in Figure 6.4. Here the outcomes are counted regardless of whether they occur alone or in combination with others.

<table><caption>Table 6.8: Outcomes of vowel reduction processes in sample.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th><th rowspan="2">Total</th></tr><tr><th>S</th><th>MC</th><th>C</th><th>HC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Outcome of vowel reduction processes</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td><em>N</em> processes</td><td>24</td><td>49</td><td>48</td><td>57</td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Single outcome from process</td></tr><tr><td>Reduction in duration</td><td>2</td><td>5</td><td>8</td><td>9</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td>Reduction in quality</td><td>4</td><td>16</td><td>20</td><td>20</td><td>60</td></tr><tr><td>Devoicing</td><td>7</td><td>6</td><td>5</td><td>6</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td>Syllabic consonant</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>Tone leveling or loss</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Glottalization of vowel</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Deletion</td><td>7</td><td>15</td><td>8</td><td>13</td><td>43</td></tr><tr><td>Unspecified reduction</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">Several outcomes from process</td></tr><tr><td>Reduction or deletion</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>5</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>Other combinations</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>2</td></tr></tbody></table>

For outcomes of vowel reduction processes, it is the languages with Simple syllable structure which differ markedly in their behavior from the other languages in the sample. Languages in this category are significantly less likely to have processes resulting in *reduction in quality* (*p* = 0.04 in Fisher's exact test) and significantly more likely to have processes resulting in *devoicing* than languages with more complex syllable structure (also *p* = 0.04 in Fisher's exact test).

Another interesting pattern in the data is the predominance of vowel deletion, the frequency of which rises, although not monotonically, with syllable structure
<figure><img src="image_46.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6.4: Relative frequency of different outcomes of vowel reduction processes (expressed as percentage of total processes in each category of syllable structure complexity). Here outcomes are counted regardless of whether they occur alone or in combination with other outcomes.</figcaption></figure>

complexity. This parallels the trend in vowel deletion established in §5.4.3.1 for the more limited cases of unstressed vowel reduction. Here deletion is the second most common outcome of vowel reduction in the non-Simple categories.

As discussed in §6.1, vowel deletion is one of the known diachronic sources of the tautosyllabic consonant clusters which are a defining feature of syllable complexity. The hypothesis tested here predicts a greater prevalence of not only vowel reduction in languages with more complex syllable structure, but also extreme outcomes of vowel reduction, including vowel deletion. The results presented in Table 6.8 and Figure 6.4 support this hypothesis, but they do not consider the specific effects of vowel deletion, which can vary dramatically in the structures they produce (14–15):

(14) Fur (Fur; Sudan)

In 3-syllable words with the structure $(C_1)V_1C_2V_2C_3V_3$, where $C_2$ is /l/ or /r/, $C_3$ is /l/, /r/, or a nasal /m n ŋ ŋ/, and $V_1$ and $V_2$ are identical, $V_2$ may optionally be deleted.

a. /tirima/

[tirima] ~ [tirma]

‘sprouted grain’

b. /kurso/

‘heap of millet ears’

c. /jawil/

‘sky’

(Jakobi 1990: 27, 29, 60–61; tone left unmarked)
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

(15) Albanian (Indo-European; Albania, Serbia, Montenegro)
In rapid speech, mid central vowel /ə/ is optionally deleted when
occurring between two consonants, of which C₁ is not /s z z/.

a. /dəlirə/
[dlirə]
'pure'

b. /məsuesja/
[msuesja]
'the teacher'
(Klippenstein 2010: 21–22, 27)

In Fur (14a), the optional vowel deletion results in simple codas of the form /l/
or /r/, both of which are invariant structures attested in the canonical syllable pat-
terns of the language (14b–c). That is, no tautosyllabic clusters or non-canonical
patterns are formed as a result of this process. By contrast, in the Albanian pro-
cess, the optional deletion of /ə/ may result in tautosyllabic clusters which are
canonical, e.g. /br/ or /ps/ onsets, or non-canonical, e.g. onsets like /dl/ or /ms/
(15a–b).

In Table 6.9, the 43 languages in the sample reported to have processes of vowel
reduction resulting in changes to syllable patterns are distributed according to
the specific structural outcome(s) of these processes. Most of these are processes
of vowel deletion, but I also include processes which result in syllabic consonants.

In most of the languages (26/43) in Table 6.9, vowel deletion processes result
in a structure which is attested in the canonical syllable pattern of the language,
whether it be a simple onset, simple coda, or tautosyllabic cluster. In 15 languages,
vowel deletion results in non-canonical syllable patterns, including otherwise
unattested simple codas and tautosyllabic clusters. In nine languages, vowel re-
duction results in a syllabic consonant. Less commonly, vowel reduction is part
of a wider-reaching process which deletes an entire syllable (three languages),
or the structural effect of vowel deletion is unclear from the description (one
language).

Arguably, the most extreme effect of vowel deletion is the creation of non-
canonical tautosyllabic clusters. Since there were so few instances of this in the
data, it is difficult to draw strong conclusions from the distribution of these pat-
terns with respect to syllable structure complexity. The number of languages
with vowel deletion producing non-canonical syllable patterns in general (either
codas or tautosyllabic clusters) does not increase with syllable structure complex-
ity; if anything, such processes are more strongly associated with languages in
<table><caption>Table 6.9: Languages in sample with vowel deletion, distributed according to syllable structure complexity and structural outcome of vowel deletion processes. For some languages, vowel deletion results in several different structural outcomes.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Structure resulting from vowel deletion</th><th rowspan="2">Syllable structure complexity</th><th colspan="2">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>MC</th><th>C</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Canonical simple onset</td><td>Alyawarra, Carib, Cocama-Cocamilla, Kamasau</td><td>14 lgs.</td><td>10 lgs.</td></tr><tr><td>Canonical simple coda</td><td>Alyawarra, Atong, Fur, Kambaata, Paiwan, Telugu</td><td>Bardi, Chipaya, Ket, Lelepa, Pech, Mamaindê</td><td>Albanian, Kabardian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Tehuelche, Thompson</td></tr><tr><td>Canonical tautosyllabic cluster</td><td>Darai, Kamasau</td><td>Ket, Lelepa, Pech</td><td>Albanian, Itelmen, Lezgian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet, Qawasqar, Tehuelche, Thompson, Tohono</td></tr><tr><td>Non-canonical simple coda</td><td>Saaroa, Sumi Naga, Tukang Besi</td><td>Atong, Cocama-Cocamilla</td><td>O'dham</td></tr><tr><td>Non-canonical tautosyllabic cluster</td><td>Southern Grebo, Sumi Naga</td><td>Choctaw, Karok, Eastern Khanty</td><td>Camsá</td></tr><tr><td>Syllabic consonant</td><td>Sichuan Yi</td><td>Alyawarra, Kamasau, Paiwan</td><td>Albanian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Qawasqar</td></tr><tr><td>Syllable deleted</td><td>Cubeo</td><td>Selepet</td><td>Doyayo, Kabardian, Polish</td></tr><tr><td>Unclear</td><td></td><td></td><td>Tehuelche</td></tr></tbody></table>
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

the Simple and Moderately Complex categories. However, a notable pattern in Table 6.9 is the relatively higher number of languages in the Highly Complex category for which vowel deletion results in tautosyllabic clusters, either canonical or non-canonical. In the Highly Complex category, 9/13 languages have this outcome from vowel deletion, as compared to 11/30 of the languages from the other three categories combined. It is striking that tautosyllabic clusters are an outcome of vowel deletion more often in languages which already have large tautosyllabic clusters. In this respect, there is additional support here for the hypothesis that final outcomes of vowel reduction are more extreme in languages with more complex syllable structure.

Additionally, as previously discussed in §3.3.5, there is a trend by which vowel reduction processes resulting in syllabic consonants are more characteristic of languages with non-Simple syllable structure. This trend is weak at best, being based on the patterns of just nine languages. However, taken at face value it also lends some support to the hypothesis tested here: vowel reduction resulting in syllabic consonants may alter the syllable patterns of languages in more extreme ways than, say, vowel deletion resulting in canonical simple onsets or codas.

### 6.3.6 Holistic analysis of vowel reduction processes

The quantitative analyses presented in §§6.3.3–6.3.5 do not necessarily inform a holistic understanding of the vowel reduction processes in the sample, since they treat the affected vowels, conditioning environments, and outcomes separately. To complement these previous analyses, in (16–19) I summarize the most characteristic kinds of vowel reduction processes which occur in each syllable structure complexity group. This breakdown allows us to examine how the different affected vowels, conditioning environments, and outcomes tend to cluster together into coherent patterns in the sample. The number of processes which fit the general description is given in parentheses. For each syllable structure category I give two prototypical examples of vowel reduction.

(16) Summary of vowel reduction processes in Simple category ($N = 24$ lgs.)

• Vowels devoiced at word or phrase/utterance margins (6 lgs.)

• High vowels deleted in word- or phrase/utterance-final position (4 lgs.)

• Long vowels shortened/glottalized in various environments (3 lgs.)

• Vowels devoiced in specific consonantal environments (2 lgs.)

• Free variation resulting in quality reduction (2 lgs.)

• Other (7 lgs.)
a. Apurinã (Arawakan; Brazil)

Vowels become devoiced in unstressed word-final position, especially
in fast speech.

/tɔ̃:gatʃi/

[tɔ̃:gatʃi]

‘cough’ (Facundes 2000: 60–61)

b. Sumi Naga (Sino-Tibetan; India)

Word-final high vowels are prone to deletion following a nasal.

/pamú/

[pam-t]

‘his older brother’ (Teo 2012: 369)

(17) Summary of vowel reduction processes in Moderately Complex category
(N = 49 lgs.)

• Vowels, often high or short, deleted in unstressed syllables (13 lgs.)

* Vowels deleted or devoiced in specific consonantal environments (7 lgs.)

* High vowels reduced in quality when unstressed and/or at word or phrase/utterance margins (6 lgs.)

• Long vowels shortened/glottalized in various environments (5 lgs.)

* Low and mid vowels are reduced in quality when unstressed and/or at word margins (5 lgs.)

• Other (13 lgs.)

a. Karok (isolate; USA)

An unaccented word-initial short vowel preceding two consonants
may be lost following a pause.

/akva:t/

[kva:t]

‘raccoon’ (Bright 1957: 53)

b. Tu (Mongolic; China)

High vowels /i u/ are realized as lax in unstressed syllables.

/tʃawtun'tu/

[tʃawtun'tu]

‘dream (DAT)’ (Slater 2003: 35)
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

(18) Summary of vowel reduction processes in Complex category
(N = 48 lgs.)

* Vowels reduced in quality in unstressed syllables (19 lgs.)

* Unstressed vowels deleted, often in specific consonantal environments (8 lgs.)

* Vowels devoiced in environment of voiceless consonants and/or unstressed domain-final environments (5 lgs.)

* Long vowels shortened in various environments (4 lgs.)

* All vowels shortened in specific unstressed contexts (3 lgs.)

* Other (9 lgs.)

a. Ngarinyin (Worrorran; Australia)
Low central vowel /a/ is realized as [ə] when unstressed.
/ˈbara,bara/
[ˈbarə,barə]
'story' (Rumsey 1978: 17–18)

b. Pech (Chibchan; Honduras)
Unstressed vowels are usually deleted between any consonant and a following /r/.
/ˈkúhparã/
[ˈkúhprã]
‘you and I having bought it’ (Holt 1999: 23)

(19) Summary of vowel reduction processes in Highly Complex category
(N = 57 lgs.)

* Vowels reduced in quality in unstressed syllables (16 lgs.)

* Unstressed /ə/ deleted, often in specific consonantal environments (8 lgs.)

* Other unstressed vowels deleted, often in specific consonantal environments (7 lgs.)

* Unstressed vowels devoiced in specific consonantal and word or phrase/utterance environments (7 lgs.)

* Long vowels shortened in various environments (5 lgs.)

* All vowels shortened in specific consonantal environments (3 lgs.)

* Other (11 lgs.)
a. Thompson (Salishan; Canada)

High vowels /i u/ are nearly always realized as [ə] when preceding
the main stress, except for when /u/ occurs between two velar
consonants.

/sq̂'ʷû'tełxʷ/
[sq̂'ʷə̂'tełxʷ]

'(other) side of the house'

(Thompson & Thompson 1992: 32)

b. Kabardian (Abkhaz-Adyge; Russia, Turkey))

Unstressed /ə/ preceding a stressed syllable is often deleted, so long
as it does not produce an initial consonant cluster.

/bəsə'məf'/
[bəs'məf']

'good host'

(Gordon & Applebaum 2010: 42)

The characteristic patterns of vowel reduction vary widely in the different syllable structure complexity categories. There are two general patterns which occur in all groups of languages: shortening of long vowels in various environments, and vowel devoicing in specific consonantal or domain environments.

Some processes are almost entirely unique to languages in a particular category of syllable structure complexity: as noted previously, except for Paiwan (Moderately Complex), unstressed /ə/ deletion occurs only in languages with Highly Complex syllable structure. Other general processes may occur with different specifications in languages with different syllable structure complexity. For example, unstressed vowel deletion primarily affects high and short vowels in languages with Moderately Complex syllable structure. In languages with Complex or Highly Complex syllable structure, unstressed vowel deletion tends to affect all unstressed vowels, but is also typically conditioned by the consonantal environment.

This treatment of vowel reduction processes in the data upholds several of the trends uncovered by the various quantitative analyses. For instance, the domain (word or phrase/utterance) position is a defining property of several of the frequent process types identified for the Simple and Moderately Complex categories. Similarly, the stress environment is prominent in conditioning many of the vowel reduction types in languages with Moderately Complex, Complex, and Highly Complex syllable structure, and a very common outcome of such processes is reduction in vowel quality.
6.3.7 Summary of vowel reduction patterns

In §6.1 I formulated a hypothesis based on observations of recent and ongoing
processes of vowel reduction causing changes to syllable structure patterns in
some languages. The hypothesis predicted that languages with more complex
syllable structure would show stronger effects of vowel reduction: specifically,
vowel reduction processes were expected to both be more prevalent and have
more extreme outcomes as syllable structure complexity increases. These pre-
dictions were largely upheld by the analyses in this chapter. The analyses in
§§6.3.1–6.3.2 showed that both the percentage of languages with vowel reduction
processes and the number of vowel reduction processes per language increases
with syllable structure complexity. The analysis of outcomes of vowel reduction
processes in §6.3.5 showed an overall, if not monotonic, increase in vowel dele-
tion rates with syllable structure complexity. Vowel deletion processes resulting
in tautosyllabic clusters were found to occur in a higher percentage of languages
from the Highly Complex category than from the other categories, and this was
by far the most common outcome of vowel deletion in this group of languages.

The specific properties of vowel reduction found to have positive or negative
trends with respect to syllable structure complexity are listed in Table 6.10. Those
marked with an asterisk (*) were found to be statistically significant.

As with findings in previous chapters, and as mentioned above already, some
of the patterns shown in Table 6.10 do not show a gradual trend with respect to
syllable structure complexity, instead serving to set apart the Simple and Highly
Complex categories from the others.

In the next section I discuss the implications of these results for our under-
standing of highly complex syllable structure as a language type and for the
development of syllable structure complexity more generally.

**6.4 Discussion**

6.4.1 Vowel reduction patterns and Highly Complex syllable structure

The study of vowel reduction presented here adds several new findings relevant
to the first research question of this book, which seeks to establish whether lan-
guages with highly complex syllable structure share other phonetic and phono-
logical characteristics in common. The properties of phonetically and phonolog-
ically conditioned vowel reduction which are more strongly associated with the
Highly Complex category than the others are listed in (20).
<table><caption>Table 6.10: Properties of vowel reduction associated positively or negatively with syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th>Type of property</th><th>Positive trends<br>(increases with syllable<br>structure complexity)</th><th>Negative trends<br>(decreases with syllable<br>structure complexity)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Vowel reduction</td><td>Presence of processes<br>*Number of distinct<br>processes</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Affected vowels</td><td>Short vowels<br>*/ə/</td><td>High vowels</td></tr><tr><td>Conditioning<br>environments</td><td>*Stress<br>Number of distinct<br>processes conditioned<br>by stress</td><td>*Word position</td></tr><tr><td>Outcomes</td><td>*Reduction in quality<br>Deletion<br>Deletion resulting in<br>tautosyllabic clusters</td><td>*Devoicing</td></tr></tbody></table>

(20) Properties of vowel reduction associated with Highly Complex category

* Presence of vowel reduction processes

* Presence of two or more vowel reduction processes

* Presence of higher numbers of stress-conditioned vowel reduction processes

* Absence of vowel reduction processes affecting high vowels

* Presence of vowel reduction processes affecting /ə/

* Absence of processes conditioned by word position

* Presence of vowel deletion

* Presence of vowel deletion resulting in tautosyllabic clusters

As mentioned in previous chapters, the terms “absence” and “presence” are used here not in a categorical sense. Instead these are meant to correspond to the relative absence or presence of a property in the Highly Complex group as compared to the other syllable structure complexity groups.

In previous chapters I showed how the segmental and suprasegmental patterns associated with the Highly Complex group were distributed among the lan-
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

guages in that group. The resulting distribution showed that languages in which Highly Complex syllable patterns are more prominent also had more of those associated patterns. In Table 6.11 I show a similar breakdown for how the vowel reduction patterns most strongly associated with the Highly Complex portion of the sample are distributed among those languages. The languages are again divided into three groups according to the prominence of their Highly Complex syllable patterns, as established in §§3.4.1–3.4.2. The vowel reduction properties associated with Highly Complex syllable structure and listed in (20) above are given in the columns. A check mark indicates that a language has the expected property; a shaded cell indicates that it does not.

As in the similar analyses in §4.5 and §5.5, we find that languages which have Highly Complex syllable structure as a prevalent or “intermediate” pattern tend to have more of the vowel reduction properties associated with this category than languages which have it as a minor pattern. Like the similar patterns reported for segmental and suprasegmental features, these results lend support to the idea that highly complex syllable structure is a linguistic type which can be defined by a coherent set of prototypical features, in this case, certain types of dynamic vowel reduction patterns.

As with the previous studies in this book, the results here also point to char- acteristics which set apart the languages of the Simple category, distinguishing them from languages in the other three categories. These include a strong pres- ence of processes conditioned by word position and processes with an outcome of vowel devoicing, and a relative absence of processes affecting short vowels, processes conditioned by word stress, and processes with an outcome of quality reduction.

There are several results from the current study of vowel reduction which may prove relevant in addressing the diachronic development of highly complex syl- lable structure. The hypotheses were motivated by the observation that vowel reduction, specifically in the form of vowel deletion, is a documented source of tautosyllabic consonant clusters. It should therefore be an important contribut- ing factor to the development of the long consonant clusters characteristic of languages with highly complex syllable structure. If increasing syllable structure complexity represents a diachroniccline, then an increase in syllable structure complexity would at some point entail the gradual emergence of previously unat- tested (non-canonical) tautosyllabic clusters. In the data examined here, evidence of such a scenario is extremely rare as a result of synchronic vowel reduction pro- cesses which are salient enough to be reported as productive patterns by authors of language references. Vowel deletion produces new (non-canonical) tautosyl- labic clusters in only eight languages of the sample: one with Simple syllable
<table><caption>Table 6.11: Highly Complex languages, divided into three groups according to the prominence of their Highly Complex patterns. Expected properties are given in columns. A check mark indicates that the given language has the expected property; a shaded cell indicates it does not.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="6">V reduction</th><th colspan="4">Vowel deletion</th></tr><tr><th>present</th><th>≥2 processes present</th><th>Stress-conditioned present</th><th>affecting only high vowels absent</th><th>affecting /ə/ present</th><th>Processes conditioned by word position absent</th><th>present</th><th>resulting in tautosyllabic clusters present</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td colspan="10" style="text-align: left; font-weight: bold;">Languages with prevalent Highly Complex patterns</td></tr><tr><td>Cocopa</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Georgian</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Itelmen</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Polish</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Tashlhiyt</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Thompson</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>T. O'odham</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Y. Sahaptin</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="10" style="text-align: left; font-weight: bold;">Languages with intermediate Highly Complex patterns</td></tr><tr><td>Albanian</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Camsá</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Kabardian</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Lezgian</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Mohawk</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Nuuchahnulth</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>P.-Maliseet</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Yine</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Qawasqar</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td>Semai</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Tehuelche</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td></tr><tr><td colspan="10" style="text-align: left; font-weight: bold;">Languages with minor Highly Complex patterns</td></tr><tr><td>Alamblak</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Bench</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Doyayo</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Kunjen</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Menya</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Wutung</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td>✓</td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

structure (Southern Grebo), four with Moderately Complex syllable structure (Atong, Choctaw, Karok, and Eastern Khanty) and three with Highly Complex syllable structure (Albanian, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Qawasqar). Of these, detailed distributional and phonetic data on the resulting clusters is available only for Albanian. In that language, at least, vowel deletion resulting in tautosyllabic clusters is shown to be quite prevalent, producing dozens of distinct canonical and non-canonical onset sequences (Klippenstein 2010; orthographic evidence indicates that non-canonical onset sequences are recent). Nevertheless, the current data set is too small from which to draw strong conclusions regarding general observable patterns of syllable structure emergence (but see further discussion of this point in Chapter 8). This is an area in which more comprehensive phonetic, distributional, and frequency data would prove extremely informative.

What is found in the vowel reduction data is evidence of persistent articulatory routines. While vowel deletion is an important process in all syllable structure complexity groups, we find that it is more likely to produce tautosyllabic clusters, either canonical or non-canonical, in the Highly Complex group. That is, vowel deletion is more likely to create clusters in languages which already have a prevalence of consonant clusters. This is in line with the reported findings for Lezgian, in which the process of pretonic high vowel deletion continues to persist in the language even after it has altered the syllable structure patterns of the language (Chitoran & Babaliyeva 2007). This observation is not surprising from a usage-based perspective, in which phonological structure is sensitive to cognitive factors such as frequency effects and analogy (Bybee 2001); that is, a high frequency of complex syllable patterns in a language could facilitate the maintenance and phonologization of novel complex syllable patterns which come about through vowel deletion. It also suggests long-term stability in highly complex syllable structure, a view which is not necessarily afforded by abstract theoretical treatments seeking to account for its problematic nature.

Several other findings in the data tentatively suggest paths of development for highly complex syllable structure. Vowel deletion targeting /ə/ is present almost exclusively in languages of the Highly Complex portion of the sample. This pattern may point to another persistent articulatory routine. Mid central vowel [ə], or something very much like it, is a common outcome of vowel reduction processes: while the precise outcome of quality reduction isn't always specified, [ə] was reported to be the specific outcome in 19 of the 64 processes involving quality reduction analyzed here. Similarly, contrastive /ə/ is known to derive historically from reduced vowels in some cases. This seems to be transparently the case for several languages in the sample (e.g. Pacoh, Alves 2000). The presence of /ə/ deletion almost exclusively in languages of the Highly Complex category