Notice that Halle and Vergnaud could avoid building feet on two separate planes simply by delaying the assignment of heads to feet until after Penultimate Lengthening has applied. This
would be equivalent to what I proposed earlier, for the issue of whether or not feet can have heads is not relevant in this case.
117
Such an analysis would not be possible, however, in a theory such as that of Hayes 1991, where constituency and stress are truly inseparable.
Next, I consider Hammond’s 1990b analysis of Yidin
y
stress.
4.3.3. Hammond’s 1990b Analysis
The proposal in Hammond 1990b is similar in spirit to the one proposed in Hayes 1982b, but Hammond’s rules are formalized in such a way as to allow the stress shift
phenomenon to be explained in terms of universal principles rather than by stipulation. Hammond’s formalism is essentially the same as that of Hayes except as noted below.
Hammond begins the derivation by building syllabic trochees from left to right. He then applies Penultimate Lengthening followed by a rule which accents a stressless long vowel; these rules
are formalized in 217.
217 Hammond’s 1990b Analysis of Yidin
y
: a. Build trochaic feet from left to right.
118
b. Penultimate Lengthening: V → V: --õ]word
c. Accent a stressless long vowel:
119
o V: → V:
Hammond points out that rule 217b is quite bizarre typologically in that it has the effect of lengthening a stressless vowel. But, in fact, this vowel surfaces with stress, and the stressing of
long vowels is by no means uncommon cross-linguistically. What is strange in this case, however, is not that lengthening applies to some vowel, but rather that it applies prior to the
assignment of stress to that vowel.
In order to account for the fact that the lengthening rule 217b feeds the accenting rule 217c rather than vice versa, Hammond appeals to the extragrammatical Headship Prominence
Principle, which requires that the heads of metrical feet be at least as prominent as the other
117
Actually, Halle and Vergnaud are forced to build both sets of feet because their formalization begins with a rule which assigns values to each of the foot parameters, including headedness. Because Halle and Vergnauds arguments for doing this are entirely
theory-internal, I do not repeat them here. The point to be noted is that only one rule of foot-building is required for Yidin
y
if the assignment of heads in my terms, stress is delayed until after the application of Penultimate Lengthening.
118
Unlike Hayes 1991, Hammond allows degenerate feet to be built. Consequently, a word with an odd number of syllables will have a final degenerate foot, thus feeding Penultimate Lengthening.
119
Following Hammonds 1989b conclusion that accent needs to be distinguishable from stress, Hammond 1990b uses a circle above the vowel to represent accent. This distinction is not crucial to the present discussion because, although Hammond uses
different diacritics for accent and stress, he assumes that an accent will normally surface as stress. Also, for the sake of consistency I use asterisks in place of Hammonds xs.
syllables of the string. Because of this principle, the application of the Accent Rule 217c triggers global stress shift, not by rule but in order to satisfy two universal constraints, the
Uniform Headedness Constraint which is equivalent to the Uniform Linking Constraint; see
section 2.3.3.4 and the Monoheadedness Constraint, which requires that each foot have only one head.
120
The application of these rules and principles is as follows. First, if a word has an even number of syllables and no even-numbered long vowels, then the environment for Penultimate
Lengthening does not occur, and the feet surface as trochaic. This is illustrated in 218 and 219.
218 Input: Build Feet: Output:
guygal guygal
gúygal 219
wu¹aba:d
y
i¹ wu¹a ba:d
y
i¹ wú¹abá:d
y
i¹ Notice that the long vowel in 219 is stressed by the foot-building rule, so the Accent rule does
not apply. If, on the other hand, a word has an even-numbered long vowel, either underlying as in
220 or through the application of Penultimate Lengthening as in 221, then the derivation proceeds as follows. First, trochaic feet are built and Penultimate Lengthening applies if the
environment is met. Next, the Accent rule applies. Since this results in a foot with two stresses violating the Monoheadedness Constraint, one of the two stresses has to be eliminated. In
accordance with the Headship Prominence Principle, the accented long vowel keeps its stress and the unaccented short vowel loses its stress. This in turn automatically triggers stress shift
in all the other feet of that word in order to satisfy the Uniform Headedness Constraint.
220 Input: Build Feet: Penult
Length:
yad
y
i:ringal yad
y
i:ringal NA
Accent Rule: Output:
o yad
y
i:ringal yad
y
í:ringál
120
As Hammond points out, the Monoheadedness Constraint is a restatement of Halle and Vergnauds 1987b Faithfulness Condition.
221 Input: Build Feet: Penult
Length:
gudaga guda
ga guda:ga
Accent Rule Output:
o guda:ga
gudá:ga
121
The above proposal is very similar to that of Hayes 1982b, but it constitutes an improvement over Hayes’ analysis in that Hammond appeals to the independently motivated
Uniform Headedness Constraint, Monoheadedness Constraint, and Headship Prominence Principle to motivate global stress shift in words whose rightmost long vowel is in an even
syllable. Nevertheless, Hammond’s account is subject to the following criticism. Since the feet of some words undergo a change in headship during the course of the derivation, it should be
possible, in principle, for a rule to refer to the earlier headship. Since there is no evidence for the existence of such a rule, Hammond’s analysis must be regarded as suspect.
In summary, Hammond’s proposal is to be preferred over the proposals of Hayes and HV in that Hammond utilizes only independently motivated principles in his analysis, whereas the
others do not. Nevertheless, Hammond’s analysis predicts that it should be possible for a rule to refer to a metrical head in a position which actually surfaces as stressless. The absence of
evidence for such a rule argues against the existence of a derivational level at which metrical heads or stresses, in my framework are in positions other than the positions in which they
surface.
4.4. Summary
