1.7. Stress, Rhythm and Intonation

1.7.1. Prosody?

1.7.2. Stress

1.7.3. Orthographic Stress (Accentuation)

Graphical accentuation is used in Neolatin on vowels with four functions:

1. To mark the stress of a word
2. To mark hiatus (meaning, non-diphthongization)
3. To mark open vowels
4. To differentiate between homophones

There are three main types of stress in Neolatin.

Type	Definition	Examples	IPA Transcription
Oxytonic stress	A type of stress that occurs on the final syllable.	- Bebé - Caffè	- [beˈbe] - [kafˈfɛ]
Paraoxytonic stress	A type of stress that occurs on the penultimate syllable (second to last syllable).	- Colore - Capace	- [koˈlo.ɾe] - [kaˈpa.ʧe]
Proparaoxytonic stress	A type of stress that occurs on the antepenultimate syllable (third from the last syllable.	- Prèndere - Fàcere - Fàntastico - Sàbato - Càmera	- [ˈpɾɛn̪.d̪e.ɾe] - [ˈfa.ʧe.ɾe] - [fan̪ˈt̪as.t̪i.ko] - [ˈsa.ba.t̪o] [ˈka.me.ɾa]

The majority of words in Neolatin are generally paraoxytonic (with the phonetic accent on the penultimate syllable) and either end in a vowel or some consonants that participate in the inflection.

Vowels: <a, e, o> (casa, parete, canto) aut, raramente, <i, u>, (taxi, tribu) <s> (casas, paretes, cantos, taxis, tribus; cantas, cantamos, cantates)¹ <n> (cantan) <t> (cantat, cantant, which are secondary variants of canta, cantan)

In paraoxytones, the accent is only written to indicate that an I or U is tonic and not a hiatus with the following vowel (cantaría –not cantaria–, filosofía –not filosofia–, tío, substitúa –not substitua–).

In Neolatin, there are also proparoxytones, that is, with the phonetic accent on the antepenultimate syllable (cantàssemos) and oxytones, with the accent on the last syllable (cantaràs). In these words, we use a graphical accent to mark the tonic syllable (the syllable that has the emphasis), which is not the usual penultimate.

The graphical accent marks not only the tonic syllable, but also the timbre of the vowel, which can be closed or open. In other words, accent marks if a vowel is closed or open. The vowels with closed timbre ([e, i, o, u]) are accentuated with an acute accent <é, í, ó, ú>², whereas the vowels with open timbre ([a, ɛ, ɔ]) are accentuated with the grave accent (<à, è, ò>). Consequently, the accent on the vowels <e, o> is acute if these vowels are pronounced as closed vowels (<é, ó>) and grave if they are pronounced as open vowels (<è, ò>). If the accent is on the vowel <a>³, the accent mark is always grave. This is because the grave accent mark aligns this vowel with other open vowels (< è, ò>)

Below are the rules for graphical accentuation:

• Accent marks are optional, but highly recommended and the standard.
• Every open E and open O ([ɛ, ɔ], respectively) have a grave accent mark: pòrta, matèria, accènto. In the case of compound word with double phonetic accent (primary and secondary stress), [ɛ, ɔ] with a secondary accent can close into [e, o]: pòrta + létteras → pòrtalétteras / portalétteras. The secondary accent in adverbs with –mènte falls under this component: mèra + mènte → mèramènte / mèramente.
• Paraoxytonic words with tonic I or U in a hiatus with another vowel: cantaría, filosof**ía, *tí**o*.
• Oxytonic words that end in a vowel or the consonants <s, n, t>: caffè, però, *cantarà/cantaràt, cantaràs, cantaràn/cantarànt, depòs, sinón. Note: not others like cantai, cantau, cantarai where the final I or U is not a vowel (because they form a diphthong) or cases like aduc, which end in a consonant different from <s, n, t>.
• All the proparoxytonic words, regardless of their ending: ànima, amàbile, mecànico, fòrfeces. Note: cases like necessaria, continua are not proparoxytones, since final -ia, -ua, etc. form a diphthong in Neolatin.
• Paraoxytonic words that do not end in a vowel or the consonants <s, n, t>: stàndard, fútbol. They are loanwords from other languages, and they have Romanized variants with the graphical accent on the same syllable: stàndarde, fútbole.
• The infinitives that lose the final -e are to be followed by clitic pronouns that conserve the graphical accent of their complete forms: vénder-los (like véndere-los), ir-se-ne (como ire-se-ne).
• Adverbs ending in -mente conserve the graphical accentuation of the adjectives from which they are derived (bòna → bònamente).
• In homophones, in order to distinguish them with a diacritic accent: nós, vós, màis ‘more’, càusa ‘motive’, dé, dà ‘forms of the verb dare’ (vs. nos, vos, mais but’, causa ‘entity’, de, da ‘prepositions’).
• It is possible to graphically accentuate interrogatives to differentiate between words in different grammatical classes (que vs. qué, quanto vs. quànto, como vs. cómo, quando vs. quàndo).

1.7.4. Rhythm

1.7.5. Intonation

Footnotes

1. There are also some words that end in -s that are singular, such as lunes and lapis ↩

2. Attention: the vowel <a> had an acute accent (<á>) in a previous version of Neolatin ↩

3. As a general rule, the accent on the vowels <í, ú> is always acute. However, there also exists the possibility in Neolatin of using <ì, ù> in forms like sìcco, sìte, bùcca, jùvene (variants of secco, sete, bocca, jóvene), to indicate that the majority pronunciation is open ([e, o]). ↩