Word prosody in Slovene from a typological perspective

Abstract

Slovene is, along with Serbo-Croatian, an example of a pitch-accent language, one of the only two remaining among the Slavic family. In most of the literature on Slovene, the data on the word-prosody features of this language are taken from the standardized system, a somewhat constructed entity based on the pitch-accent systems of selected dialects. The present survey attempts to give a coherent structural description of the word-prosodic phenomena as they are manifested in the extraordinarily variegated Slovene dialects; these in turn are compared to the standardized system as well as, where relevant, to typologically similar systems found in Croatian dialects. In addition, the key innovations that shaped the prosodic systems of Slovene dialects are discussed. Slovene emerges as a special set of types that share a tendency to concentrate prosodic distinctions -pitch and quantity -in the one stressed syllable of each accented word. Furthermore, these pitch and quantity distinctions in many dialects have become rephonologized as vowel-quality distinctions. A few aberrant local dialects have gained new pitch distinctions or unstressed quantity distinctions. Prozodija slovenske besede tipoloikoSlovenSEina je kot srbohrvaSEina tonemski jezik, eded izmed samo dveh, ki sta Se taka v slovanski jezikovni drusini. PreteZni del strokovne literature o slovenSEini jemlje podatke o besedni prozodiji tega jezika iz knjifnega sistema, ki je v dololieni meri narejen na podlagi tonemskih sistemov izbranih naref ij. V tem pregledu skuSam podati sovisen strukturni opis prozoditnih pojavov na besedni ravnini, kot obstajajo v izjemno pestrih slovenskih naretjih; slednja se prime jajo tudi s knjiZnim sistemom in, kjer so razlogi, s tipoloSko podobnimi sistemi v hrvaSkih naretjih. Dalje se obravnavajo kljutne novosti, ki so oblikovale prozoditne sisteme sloveniXtine. Pri tem se slovenSEina pokaZe kot poseben razred tipov, katerim je skupna teZnja po umeiXCanju prozodifnih razlofkov -tona in kvantitete -na edini naglakni zlog vsake naglasnice. Taki tonski in kvantitetni razlofki so se v Stevilnih narerjih prefonologizirali kot razlofki v kvaliteti samoglasnikov. Nekaj netipitnih manjSih naretij je dobilo nove tonske ali kvantitetne razlotke v nenaglagenih zlogih.

A Circum-Pannonian Word-Prosodic Parallel: Paroxytonic Accent in the South-West Bohemian Dialect

“…Slovene dialect patterns have preserved pitch-accent systems in such a way that at least one of the reconstructed rising stresses (most likely the "old acute" rising contour) is preserved (merging with the other source of rising pitch) and contrasts with the inherited falling tone (Greenberg 2000(Greenberg , 2003(Greenberg , 2007(Greenberg , 2008. In BCS, save for the innovative neo-štokavian type, pitch-accent has been preserved through a contrast of the "neo-acute" rising tone and the inherited falling tone.…”