Word Stress in Finnish

Monday, 1 February 2010, Colloquium

Arto Anttila, Stanford University.

Abstract

This is a progress report on an ongoing study of Finnish word stress. Finnish exhibits a basic pattern of left-to-right trochees which breaks down in certain types of polysyllabic words where we find dactyls, sometimes in free variation with trochees. I examine the distribution of secondary stress in a large internet corpus using segmental alternations as stress diagnostics. The results show that Finnish word stress is almost entirely rhythmical, down to quantitative preferences in variable patterns, with a small residue of morphological and lexical effects. I present an optimality-theoretic model that closely approximates the observed invariant and variable patterns, including quantitative preferences.