Tone, stress, quantity, and quality: prosodic patterns and tonal wug-tests in Žiri Slovenian

The interactions between segmental and suprasegmental features are cross-linguistically rare. In this paper, we report on a prosodic system of Žiri Slovenian, which displays an intricate set of interactions between tone, stress, quantity, and vowel quality. Some of the patterns are well-motivated (e.g. the preference of High tone syllables to be stressed) while others lack phonetic or phonological motivation (e.g. the preference of long vowels to fall on the second syllable of a trochaic foot). Žiri also displays a rare case of interaction of prosody with vowel quality. To confirm productivity of the observed patterns, we conducted a wug experiment that tested the dependence of stress on vowel quality, word length, and tone. This paper brings forth a new instance of phonetically unmotivated phonological processes at the suprasegmental level, which appear less discussed than at the segmental level. We also discuss methodological issues arising from artificial experiments on tonal processes.