Oceanic Linguistics

Anderson, Victoria.
Otsuka, Yuko.
The Phonetics and Phonology of "Definitive Accent" in Tongan
Oceanic Linguistics - Volume 45, Number 1, June 2006, pp. 21-42

University of Hawai'i Press

The so-called definitive accent (DA) in Tongan has been analyzed in various ways in the literature: as stress shift from penultimate to final vowel, as simultaneous stress reduction on a penult and stress addition on an ultima, and as addition of a syllable by repetition of the final vowel. This study investigates each of these analyses empirically in order to establish the phonology of DA in Tongan. Our findings support Melenaite Taumoefolau's proposal that definite NPs are formed by repetition of the NP-final vowel, and thus a morphological analysis of DA as reduplicative suffixation. Moreover, our findings substantiate an account of Tongan in which stress is unexceptionally penultimate in a foot, and in which "long vowels" and "diphthongs" are to be considered sequences of two syllables, as suggested by Taumoefolau.