Kenstowicz Michael J. Lithuanian phonology

Studies in the Linguistic Sciences v.2.2 (Fall 1972), 1-85 p.The following description of Lithuanian phonology is a slightly revised version of my doctoral dissertation (Kenstowicz,1971). An initial draft of the latter was completed in the spring of 1969 and distributed in ditto form to a limited number of colleagues. The final version of the dissertation (and hence the work reported in this volume) differed from the initial 1969 draft in two chief ways. First, the initial draft was longer. I contained material on the phonology of the nominal desinences which is lacking in the work reported here. In addition, the initial draft contained some material on verbal accentuation, most of which can be foimd in Kenstowicz (1970a). Finally, a section on the representation of vowel length is not reported here, because this was published separately as Kenstowicz (1970b). Secondly, the initial draft of the thesis the Lithuanian accents were described in terms of moras. However, in the final version (and hence in the work reported here), following Helle's (197l) work on Slovene, the Lithuanian accents are described in terms of the interplay between stress with high and low pitch. Recent work by Paul Kiparsky (1972) demonstrates how certain difficulties with the mora notation (some of which I discuss in section 3) can be overcome if it is assumed that all moras to the left of the phonologically accented mora are redundantly accented. Lithuanian accentual phonology has recently been subjected to a number of generative studies: Heeschen I967, Darden 1970, Robinson 1970, Zeps and Halle 1972, and Kiparsky 1972, in addition to some of the papers assembled in the present volume. My description was written in ignorance of all of these except the first, which is discussed in some detail in section 3.3.