Zompist Bboard Again

Well, I'm starting this thread because I'm looking for a specific paper that I can't seem to find. It was on the lexical pitch-accent system of either a Central or South American language, whose name I believe started with a 'c'. Unfortunately I can't remember for the life of me what the language was called. However, what made this language special was that, for a small subset of nouns, the location of the accent was morphologically conditioned in a very specific way: inflectional suffixes fell into an arbitrary-seeming hierarchy, and the highest-ranked suffix in a word would take the accent. This system is extremely is similar to something I came up with for a conlang years ago, so I was hoping to read about it, but I've completely lost the paper.

Anyway, if anyone else has papers you've lost and think others here might remember, this is the place to post about them.

I can't help you with your question, but I am also looking for a reference. I seem to remember reading somewhere that in some of the older IE languages, neuter transitive subjects were avoided by passivizing the clause, but can't remember where.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:07 pm I seem to remember reading somewhere that in some of the older IE languages, neuter transitive subjects were avoided by passivizing the clause, but can't remember where.

Miguel cites http://studiumanistici.unipv.it/uploads ... bovich.pdf (Yakubovich, Ilya, 2011,
Ergativity in Hittite, Pavia) for the assertion, but from the paper the assertion seems to be a back projection from Anatolian.

Ergativity in Indo-European from 1998 by John Frauzel traces the claim back to Uhlenbeck in 1901.

dɮ the phoneme wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 1:09 pm Well, I'm starting this thread because I'm looking for a specific paper that I can't seem to find. It was on the lexical pitch-accent system of either a Central or South American language, whose name I believe started with a 'c'. Unfortunately I can't remember for the life of me what the language was called. However, what made this language special was that, for a small subset of nouns, the location of the accent was morphologically conditioned in a very specific way: inflectional suffixes fell into an arbitrary-seeming hierarchy, and the highest-ranked suffix in a word would take the accent. This system is extremely is similar to something I came up with for a conlang years ago, so I was hoping to read about it, but I've completely lost the paper.

Anyway, if anyone else has papers you've lost and think others here might remember, this is the place to post them.

I’m guessing the language might be Copala Triqui?

kodé wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 9:40 pm [
I’m guessing the language might be Copala Triqui?

I don't think so; I was 80% sure the language was Cubeo, but after searching the paper hasn't come up.

If you know the language name, you can use the flottolog to get a list of literature dealing with the language.

dɮ the phoneme wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 1:09 pm Well, I'm starting this thread because I'm looking for a specific paper that I can't seem to find. It was on the lexical pitch-accent system of either a Central or South American language, whose name I believe started with a 'c'. Unfortunately I can't remember for the life of me what the language was called. However, what made this language special was that, for a small subset of nouns, the location of the accent was morphologically conditioned in a very specific way: inflectional suffixes fell into an arbitrary-seeming hierarchy, and the highest-ranked suffix in a word would take the accent. This system is extremely is similar to something I came up with for a conlang years ago, so I was hoping to read about it, but I've completely lost the paper.

Root-Controlled Accent in Cupeño?

Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:03 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:07 pm I seem to remember reading somewhere that in some of the older IE languages, neuter transitive subjects were avoided by passivizing the clause, but can't remember where.

Miguel cites http://studiumanistici.unipv.it/uploads ... bovich.pdf (Yakubovich, Ilya, 2011,
Ergativity in Hittite, Pavia) for the assertion, but from the paper the assertion seems to be a back projection from Anatolian.

Ergativity in Indo-European from 1998 by John Frauzel traces the claim back to Uhlenbeck in 1901.

Thanks - while it seems to me rather as if I read it in some linguistics encyclopedia, these two papers are certainly interesting, and maybe I am just misremembering about the encyclopedia and it was indeed Frauzel's paper.

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 10:51 am Root-Controlled Accent in Cupeño?

Yes! Thank you! edit: actually, it appears I was thinking of Cupeño Stress Shift: Diachronic Perspectives, but anyway you got the language right.