Tlingit (anti-)prominence

• Main Authors: Crippen, James, Déchaine, Rose-Marie, Elfner, Emily
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 2023
• Subjects: tlingit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198840589.003.0006; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/50558365/oso-9780198840589-chapter-6.pdf

Abstract This chapter explores the expression of prominence and ‘anti-’prominence in the complex words of Tlingit, a Na-Dene language. Tlingit tracks prominence-by-tone and prominence-by-weight, yielding an intricate and finely tuned system of (anti)-prominence. A combination of tone and weight identifies the stem as prominent, indicating that, in Tlingit, the calculus of prominence is additive. Moreover, Tlingit (anti)-prominence is calculated relative to prosodic structures that are isomorphic with syntactic structure. This prosody-syntax alignment—reflected in pervasive verb-noun parallelism—accounts for the finely graded distribution of Tlingit proclitics, prefixes, suffixes, and enclitics relative to tone and weight. These findings have consequences for theories of prominence, as well as for theories of the syntax-phonology interface and the syntax-morphology interface.