The predictive power of networks: Describing word accent in Russian

Abstract

Word accent in Russian has both underlying or morphological status and surface or phonological realization in addition to phonetic characteristics. A short outline of the morphological description is presented. A relational network description of word accent phonology is then shown to predict the position of the phonemically accented syllable without the adduction of additional mechanisms like phonological rules, constraints, or post-hoc filters.