BOAS] HANDBOOK OF INDIAN LANGUAGES TAKELMA 15 



Even here it may really have been the strongly sonantic quality 

 of the m in contrast to the voiceless s that produced the acoustic 

 effect of an obscure vowel. The exact pronunciation of the diph- 

 thongs will be better understood when we consider the subject of 

 pitch-accent. 



§ S. Stress and JPitch- Accent 



Inasmuch as pitch and stress accent are phonetic phenomena that 

 affect more particularly the vowels and diphthongs, it seems advisable 

 to consider the subject here and to let the treatment of the conso- 

 nants follow. As in many Indian languages, the stress-accent of any 

 particular word in Takelma is not so inseparably associated with any 

 particular syllable but that the same word, especially if consisting 

 of more than two syllables, may appear with the main stress-accent 

 now on one, now on the other syllable. In the uninterrupted flow of 

 the sentence it becomes often difficult to decide which syllable of a 

 word should be assigned the stress-accent. Often, if the word bears 

 no particular logical or rhythmic emphasis, one does best to regard 

 it as entirely without accent and as standing in a proclitic or enclitic 

 relation to a follo"s\dng or preceding word of greater emphasis. This 

 is naturally chiefly the case with adverbs (such as lie^ne then) and 

 conjunctive particles (such as gariehi^ and then; agas'i^ a'nt> so, but 

 then) ; though it not infrequently happens that the major part of 

 a clause will thus be strung along without decided stress-accent until 

 some emphatic noun or verb-form is reached. Thus the following 

 passage occurs in one of the myths: 



ganeJii^ dewenxa ld°le Jiono^ p'ele'xa^ literally translated. And 

 then to-morrow (next day) it became, again they went out to 

 war 



All that precedes the main verb-form p'ele'xa^ they went out to 

 WAR is relatively unimportant, and hence is hurried over without any- 

 where receiving marked stress. 



Nevertheless a fully accented word is normally stressed on some 

 particular syllable; it may even happen that two forms differ 

 merely in the place of accent : 



naga'-ida^ when he said, but 

 naga-ida'^ when you said 



The important point to observe, however, is that when a particular 

 syllable does receive the stress (and after all most words are normally 



§ 5 



