Survey of research on Livonian prosody

The aim of the article is to give an overview of previous studies concerning Livonian prosody. In separate subsections a characterization of earlier treatments of the Livonian quantity and tone system will be provided. The Livonian prosodic system became the object of international discussion for the first time in the 19th century. The special status of Livonian tones was first noticed by the Estonian linguist Ferdinand Johann Wiedemann and later by the Danish linguist Wilhelm Thomsen. The first experimental studies of Livonian pronunciation were initiated in the 1920's, mainly due to interest in the broken tone. Previous descriptions appear to reveal a certain degree of agreement among researchers who have studied Livonian. Yet the traditional two-way quantity opposition view is being challenged by a ternary quantity distinction at the level of metric feet.