Medial consonant lengthening in Eastern Middle Paman: Syllable position or lexical stress?

Abstract

Medial consonant lengthening, sometimes described as “post-tonic” in the literature, has been a consistent feature of typological surveys of Australian languages, but actual phonetic studies have so far been relatively limited. This paper presents a study of medial lengthening in Umpithamu, Umpila and Yintyingka, three Eastern Middle Paman (< Paman < Pama-Nyungan) languages of Cape York Peninsula (northeastern Australia). These languages also allow for a test of the putative link with lexical stress, as they have two different types of stress systems (largely root-initial in Umpila, versus largely penultimate in Umpithamu and Yintyingka). The analysis demonstrates the following points. First..