Stress Shift Accompanying Verb Suffixation in Gujarati

Gujarati, an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the state of Gujarat in northwest India, is a synthetic agglutinative language. Examining its systematic and extensive suffixation system provides an opportunity to shed more light on Gujarati stress by allowing observation of how stress shifts during suffixation. This paper investigates stress shift and corresponding root alternations accompanying suffixation in Gujarati Type 1 causatives and passives. It is shown that in these causatives and passives, Gujarati maintains a well-defined stress pattern, i.e. the ultimate syllable in di-syllabic words and the penultimate syllable in tri-syllabic words, by shifting the stress to the suffix.