Abstract
In his study of Japanese phonology, McCawley introduces an interesting typological classification of languages according to the kinds of rules needed for describing the distribution of prosodic features like stress and pitch (1968: 58–61). Whereas Trubetzkoy had made a simple distinction between ‘syllablecounting’ languages and ‘mora-counting’ languages, McCawley suggests that we should make two independent distinctions:(a) accordig to the ‘unit of phonological distance’ (the unit in terms of which the location of any accent is calculated) between ‘syllable-counting’ and ‘mora-counting’ languages;(b) according to the ‘prosodic unit’ (the unit the actually bears the accent) between ‘syllable languages’ and ‘mora languages’.
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