IJHS, e-ISSN 2597-4718, p-ISSN 2597-470X, Vol. 3, No. 2, March 2020, pp. 178-191 International Journal of Humanity Studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/IJHS Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia 178 TWO ADJACENT VOWELS IN PAGU AND THEIR ALTERNATING WORD STRESS PLACEMENT Dalan Mehuli Perangin Angin Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia dalanperanginangin@gmail.com DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030204 received 29 January 2020; accepted 14 February 2020 Abstract Some diphthongs in Pagu, rather than being pronounced as a single syllable in a normal/rapid speed of speech, can alternate to appear in two different adjacent syllables when pronounced in a slow speech. In Pagu, the speed of speech affects the words syllable number and word stress placement. The previous study suggests that word stress in Pagu is placed on the penultimate syllable. This paper will discuss word stress placement in Pagu in two different speed of speech (normal and slow) as well as two adjacent vowels as affected by the speed and their position in the word. This sheds a light on the behaviors of two adjacent vowels in the stress placement area i.e. whether they are different vowels they can alternate between a diphthong or two separate vowels in two different syllables and when they are identical they cannot be separated into two different syllables when occur in the final position. Keywords: stress placement; non-Austronesian (Papuan) language; diphthongs; long vowels; syllable structure Introduction On my first stage of studying the Pagu language for the Indonesian Institute of Sciences’ (LIPI) project (on the endangered languages in Eastern Indonesia documentation/revitalization in 2012-2014), I asked its speakers a lot of questions, e.g. how to say ‘bird’, ‘fish’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘the sun’, ‘the sea’, the moon’ any other nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in Pagu? I listened to them painstakingly and always asked them to repeat several times in order to spot the word stress placement. The first answered words are always pronounced quicker than those repeated ones. Interestingly, for certain words their syllable numbers are not the same, that is the first pronounced words count one less syllable than the repeated ones. The two words in table 1 below exemplify this. Table 1. Words with two different and identical adjacent vowels in the prefinal position Words Normal speech Slow speech /tiila/ ‘bad’ [ˈtiː.la] [ti.ˈ(ʔ)i.la] /tuaŋe/‘eight’ [ˈtua.ŋe] [tu.ˈ(w)a.ŋe]