The prosodic system of the Dakelh (Carrier) language ...

• Main Author: Gessner, Suzanne C.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Dakelh
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0091378; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0091378

This dissertation is a study of the prosodic system of Dakelh (Carrier), an Athapaskan language of central interior British Columbia, focusing primarily on the endangered Lheidli dialect spoken in the area of Prince George, B.C. The study is primarily based on original fieldwork data, elicited from three native speakers of Lheidli Dakelh, and partly on comparison with the Nak'azdli dialect as reported in Story (1989). This work contributes much-needed empirical data to the long-standing debate over the proper characterization of Dakelh prosody with respect to notions such as tone vs. pitch accent vs. stress. Under the general rubric of prosody, three topics are investigated in detail. The first is an analysis of syllable and foot structure, developed within the framework of Optimality Theory, which addresses such issues as word minimality, epenthesis patterns, syllabification, and the relationship between syllable structure and stress. For example, epenthesis and deletion are found to be highly sensitive to ...