Morphophonological Nature of Mari Accentuation as Viewed from the Uralic Perspective

This paper analyses the system of accentuation in Mari. Based on the data collected in the village of Staryj Torjal, the author argues that Mari stress cannot be described only on the phonetic/phonological level. The author proposes a rule that defines the position of stress on the level of morphophonology. The core of the rule is an opposition of two types of formatives (units of morphophonlogical representation): accentually weak and accentually strong. The final section of the article argues for the Uralic origin of Mari stress, which should not be considered as something alien for the Uralic family as both the opposition of weak and strong units and the close tie between prosodic and morphological levels is typical for Uralic languages. Keywords: Mari, accentuation, prosody, morphophonology, Uralic languages.