Stress-Induced Lengthening Outside Stressed Syllable Nucleus in Finnic and Tlapanec: A Challenge for Theory and Typology

The study addresses rare stress-induced lengthening outside the stressed syllable nucleus, especially in segments not adjacent to a stressed vowel. After a brief typological survey, we analyse two cases: post-stressed short vowel lengthening and consonantal gemination retention in Soikkola Ingrian and other Finnic languages (Uralic), as well as lengthening of pre-stressed short vowels and of consonants at stressed syllable onsets in Tlapanec varieties (Otomanguean). First, we evaluate phonological evidence for the presence of foot stress and word stress in each language, arguing that the lengthening results from stress rather than from a long vowel and that it occurs outside the stressed syllable rhyme. Second, we report a comparative phonetic study on Ayutla Tlapanec and Soikkola Ingrian. The findings indicate that short vowels and consonants lengthened under stress are longer than other short vowels and consonants in the analysed structures, mainly disyllabic and trisyllabic words. We also find that the Ayutla Tlapanec consonant lengthening is more phonetically evident than vowel lengthening and that it does not display stress-induced polysyllabic shortening effects in trisyllables compared to disyllables, unlike the vowel lengthening. Our results suggest that the theory and typology of lexical stress should regard a maximally trisyllabic window as the default potential stress-bearing unit.