Word Stress Placement in Wakhi

Abstract

The description presented in the article shows that the domain of word stress placement is morphologically defined in Wakhi. The stress is located in the right-most edge of a lexical word. Where a derivative suffix is added to the stem, the stress shifts from the stem-final position to the right-most edge of the lexical word. Suffixes of non-finite verbs behave in a similar way as derivative suffixes do, causing the stress to shift to the right-most edge of the word. In contrast to derivative and non-finite verbal suffixes, inflectional suffixes do not trigger such a rightward shift. Based on these observations it is tentatively proposed that, functionally, word stress is morphological stress in Wakhi. The analysis given shows that surface regular and irregular locations of word stress are consequences derived by a set of ordered phonological rules, the operations of which are triggered by syllabification. The analysis also shows that word stress is assigned by the Word Stress Assignment (WSA) rule at an abstract level, and that the vowel, rather than the syllable, is the stress-bearing unit, for WSA applies prior to syllabification.