ABSTRACT
The thesis of Root-Controlled Accent clarifies the distinction between two classes of morpho-accentual phenomena: root-controlled accent (RCA) and affix-controlled accent (ACA). As in root-controlled vowel harmony, RCA entails that the accentual properties of the larger word are predictable from the properties of the word-internal root. Therefore, root-control in both phonological systems is systematic and applies across the board. Affix-control in accent systems, by contrast, is more sporadic and is predictable from the properties of individual morphemes. As illustrated in the next section, morphologically conditioned deaccentuation, the result of attaching a so-called ‘dominant’ affix, is affix-controlled because it requires a lexical specification for this de-accentuation on an affix-by-affix basis. The properties of affix-controlled processes will be studied in more detail in chapter 5, but, from this first look at the problem, it will be clear that ACA forms a class of phenomena that excludes RCA.
