Historical convergence and divergence in Basque accentuation

Within the Basque-speaking territory, pitch-accent phenomena are found in two areas: Northern Bizkaia and Western Navarre. These two systems differ from each other in important respects. Whereas Northern Bizkaian has a system of the Tokyo Japanese type, the Western Navarrese pitch-accent contrast is reminiscent of those of languages like Swedish. The two systems are separated by a large area without pitch contrasts, where only the position of the accent is contrastive. In this paper, building in part on earlier work, I put forward a specific hypothesis that accounts for the historical connections among these different accentual systems. Particular attention is given to the accentuation of plural forms, where, at first glance, opposite patterns (accentual protraction vs. retraction) appear to be found in neighboring areas. The development of accentual contrasts in ancient Basque is also related to certain segmental alternations in compounds through a hypothesized process of glottalization. 2. keywords accentuation, pitch-accent, stress, diachronic prosody, cliticization, accentual change 3 Languages mentioned : Basque, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish