Morphophonology of the Kullui language and the rule of accentuation

In this article, based on field data, I investigate the rules of accentuation in Kullui through the lens of morphophonological features. Like Russian, Kullui is characterized by the reduction of unaccented vowels. However, unlike Russian, Kullui lacks a written standard, and its inflectionality, like that of other New Indo-Aryan languages, is far less developed. Furthermore, there are no accentual paradigms in word inflection. Vowel alternations in word formation provide the basis for formulating rules for the reduction of unaccented vowels. Kullui affixes are divided into three types: those that do not affect accent placement, those that cause an accent shift, and accentually independent affixes, which generate words with two accents — one on the root and one on the suffix. The first two groups exhibit characteristic syllabic structures, while the third consists mainly of borrowed or recently gram­maticalized units. An analysis of affix structures, verified against a larger lexical corpus, led to the formulation of a general rule of accentuation applicable to both derived and non-derived words. According to this rule, prefixes in Kullui are unaccented. The accented syllable, when counted from the end of the word to the beginning, is the first syllable containing the vowels e, a, o or ending in a combination of a nasal with a homorganic plosive or affricate. If no such syllable exists, the accent falls on the syllable furthest from the end (i.e., the first, excluding prefixes). In words ending in a consonant, the search starts from the last syllable, and in words ending in a vowel, from the penultimate syllable.