ABSTRACT
This dissertation is about accent systems in which word structure has an important role in the characterization of accentual processes. These processes affect phonological categories like stress and tone, but importantly, they cannot be described with reference to sound structure alone. Morphological factors like the accentual properties of roots and certain diacritically marked affixes must also be recognized. As many accent systems studied here have a strict limitation of one accent per word, one major accentual process examined in this thesis is Accent Resolution, the deletion of accent in words with more than one inherently accented morpheme. This pattern of deletion often shows a preference for retention of accent in the root, which underscores one important function of morphological structure. Other morpho-accentual phenomena examined here include morphologically triggered de-accentuation (or ‘dominance effects’), accent insertion (often known as pre- and post-accentuation), and certain accentual shifts. The occurrence of these processes is, in many cases, directly tied to affixation, and so they too are inherently morphological. The focus here is almost exclusively on word accent, as the accentual processes under examination are mostly word-level phenomena, but some parallels with other levels of structure are made throughout this thesis.
