Lexical Accent Systems: I have a general interest in morphology-oriented accentuation, which is a
central topic of my dissertation and several of my publications and conference talks that preceded or
followed
its publication. My dissertation is a comparative study of the stress systems of Greek, Russian, and a group
of Salish dialects, broadly known as lexical accent systems (LAS)
because their stress is considered to be
largely determined in the lexicon. I argue that the complicated stress facts of LAS can be
straightforwardly
accounted for if one takes into consideration the structural position of lexically accented morphemes in
a
given morphological construction. Some of the core ideas of my dissertation have been re-worked on the
basis
of Goldrick’s (1998, 2000) Turbidity Theory and van Oostendorp’s (2004) Colored
Containment
model.
Revithiadou, A. 1999. Headmost Accent Wins: Head Dominance and Ideal Prosodic Form in
Lexical Accent Systems. LOT Dissertation Series 15 (HIL/Leiden Universiteit). Holland Academic
Graphics,
The Hague.
Revithiadou, A. 2008. Colored Turbid accents and Containment: A case study from lexical
stress. In Freedom of Analysis?, Studies in Generative Grammar [SGG] 95, S. Blaho, P. Bye & M.
Krämer
(eds.), 149-174. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York.
Evolution of lexical accents: In joint work with Bariş Kabak (University of Konstanz), we present a
hypothesis regarding the development of lexical accents in edgemost stress systems and propose a theory for
their representation.
The basic claim of this work is that lexical accents emerge only in systems with
conflicting directionality. More specifically, the directionality of different levels of prominence at
the
word and above-word level as well as a process of morphologization work hand-in-hand for the development
of
various types of lexical accents, i.e., local and non-local(=pre-/post-accenting). We make a number of
predictions with respect to whether, for instance, a system will develop lexical accents or not and what
their
original shape will be. Our predictions are substantiated by empirical evidence from approximately fifty
edgemost stress systems.
Kabak, B. & A. Revithiadou. 2009a. From edgemost to lexical stress: Diachronic paths,
typology
and representation. The Linguistic Review 26, 1-36.