Stressing about where to place a stress...

[TCCollins]

Maybe I shouldn't have attempted three conlangs at the same time but hey, in the words of Geraint Pillock: it's a challenge. It's a challenge for me and a challenge for the coracle.

So my third conlang which I've named Shiralvish (was Shiralvuth) is based on Celtic. I'm using the Welsh stress rules as it's easy for me, but I have a few words in my lexicon with which I'm unsure exactly where to add the stress, for example:

Ọshavith (easterly) /oˈʃaviθ/ OR /oʃˈaviθ/ ? Also, not sure if the ipa symbols are correct either, so I'll write it this way: Do I stress the SHA - [oh-SHA-vith] or the AV - [osh-AV-ith] as I can't tell the difference! Are there rules I should follow? Help! lol

[Vijay]

/oˈʃaviθ/. It's unusual for syllables to begin with a vowel, especially in the middle of a word.

[TCCollins]

/oˈʃaviθ/. It's unusual for syllables to begin with a vowel, especially in the middle of a word.

Duly noted! Thanks

[Vijay]

Np!

[Ser]

Ọshavith (easterly) /oˈʃaviθ/ OR /oʃˈaviθ/ ? Also, not sure if the ipa symbols are correct either, so I'll write it this way: Do I stress the SHA - [oh-SHA-vith] or the AV - [osh-AV-ith] as I can't tell the difference! Are there rules I should follow? Help! lol

The convention is to put the stress mark ˈ right before the first segment (i.e. sound) of the stressed syllable. Not after the stressed syllable*, and not in the middle of a syllable. How to proceed onto dividing words into syllables can be a bit controversial... To help, there's this thing called the "maximal onset principle", which basically states that you can look at the consonants and consonants clusters that appear at the beginning of words, and then move the syllable onsets as much toward the left as possible according to those consonants and consonant clusters.

Do words in your conlang begin with /ʃ/? Then the division /o.ʃa.viθ/ likely makes the most sense, and therefore the stress mark would go before <ʃa> and not <a>: /oˈʃaviθ/.

It's just a principle though, a rule of thumb, not a rule.

In some languages, *coughs* like English *coughs*, it may be possible to argue that it's not so unreasonable to violate the maximal onset principle. In Southern Standard British English and Australian English, short vowels (/ɪ ɛ æ ɒ ʌ ʊ/) cannot appear at the end of words with the exception of interjections which often present phonotactic violations anyway, and with the exception of /ɪ/ they pretty much only appear before a consonant. Some linguists say that syllables with short vowels are, then, generally closed, violating the maximal onset principle: "pitcher" /ˈpɪtʃ.ə/ instead of /ˈpɪ.tʃə/, "lucky" /ˈlʌk.iː/ instead of /ˈlʌ.kiː/.

* Although you may notice some dictionaries that don't use the IPA do this, notably Merriam-Webster dictionaries, much to the confusion of novices to linguistics...