Stress in South Conchucos Quechua: A Phonetic and Phonological Study

Abstract

Both acoustic measurements and speaker perceptions demonstrate South Conchucos Quechua (SCQ) to have one of the rare “binary plus clash” stress patterns first discussed in Gordon (2002). Stress falls on alternating syllables starting with the penultimate and counting to the left, as well as on the initial syllable. Hence, stress “clash,” the stressing of two adjacent syllables, results at the beginning of words with an odd number of syllables. Consideration of both natural discourse data and elicited data proves to be essential in obtaining an accurate picture of the stress system. In the discourse data, primary stress was generally perceived to fall on the initial syllable. However, in last words of emphatic phrases, as well as in words elicited in isolation or a frame, the penultimate syllable was generally considered to be most prominent. Acoustic measurements reveal this prominence to be prosodic (nonlexical) pitch accent, phonetically distinguishable from simple primary stress.