PI Miyashita will create extensive documentation of the way stress, pitch, and intonation are used in the pronunciation of Blackfoot, an Algonquian language spoken in Canada and the United States. This documentation will contribute to a general theoretical and typological understanding of these prosodic features in human language.
Thus far, Blackfoot stress has been difficult to characterize: there are rises and falls pitch associated with Blackfoot stressed syllables; and the placement of stress appears unpredictable in terms of the sound patterns of the language. In this study, Miyashita will provide thorough descriptions of Blackfoot stress patterns in polysynthetic verb phrases, pronunciation in connected speech; and stress as an inherent quality of individual words. Miyashita's research will also identify the acoustic correlates of stress in Blackfoot.
An important product of the project will be a verb paradigm database with stress orthographically indicated. Blackfoot community members will find this material of great use in creating pedagogical materials. The database, which will be accessible through a website, will also be of use to theoretical and typological linguists
