The Empirical Basis for Iterative Headless Foot-Building

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4. Headless Feet in Yidin

y Chapter 2 demonstrated that Yidin y has a vowel lengthening rule which intervenes between the construction of stressless and headless feet and the assignment of stress. The requirement for this particular ordering of the rules was invoked as an argument for the claim that feet are inherently headless. However, chapter 2 did not discuss the question of how Yidin y stress is formally assigned to feet. This chapter proposes an autosegmental analysis of stress and vowel length in Yidin y and compares it to other analyses that have been proposed, concluding that the facts of Yidin y are best accounted for by a theory in which all feet, including stressed feet, are headless. 103 The chapter begins by reviewing the basic facts of Yidin y that were presented in chapter 2. Then, section 4.2 presents the autosegmental analysis. Section 4.3 reviews the analyses of Hayes 1982b, Halle and Vergnaud 1987b, and Hammond 1990b and argues that each has one or more theoretical problems associated with it. It is concluded that the autosegmental analysis of Yidin y stress is free of the problems that are raised by the other proposals precisely because the autosegmental analysis separates constituency from prominence. This, then, constitutes an argument in favor of the inherent headlessness of feet, which is a foundational principle of the autosegmental theory of stress.

4.1. The Empirical Basis for Iterative Headless Foot-Building

Dixon’s 1977 generalization regarding Yidin y stress is as follows in 193 repeated from section 2.1.2.2. 193 Stress Assignment Rule Dixon 1977: Stress is assigned to the first syllable involving a long vowel. If there is no long vowel, it is assigned to the first syllable of the word. Further stresses are then assigned recursively to the syllable next but one before, and the next but one after, a stressed syllable. A subset of Dixon’s Yidin y data is repeated below from chapter 2. Notice that long vowels are always stressed and that vowel length may occur anywhere in the word, although neither length nor stress surfaces on adjacent vowels. 104 Furthermore, stress occurs either on every even-numbered syllable, as in 194, or on every odd-numbered syllable, as in 195, depending upon the location of long vowels. 103 As was mentioned in section 2.1.2.2, Crowhurst 1991a and Crowhurst and Hewitt 1995 argue for analyses that are quite similar to the one presented here. However, although the above works initially construct headless feet, they later assign heads to them. In contrast, I argue that all feet are headless. 104 It is possible for length to occur on adjacent vowels prior to the end of the derivation, but one of these vowels always gets shortened via Dixons rule of Illicit Length Elimination, which shortens a long vowel in an odd-numbered syllable of a word containing an odd number of syllables. This lends support to the claims, for which I argue below, that all stress is derived on the basis of the surface location of long vowels, and that vowel length may be either underlying or derived. 194 Stress on Even-Numbered Syllables: bulmbá: at the camp galí:n y go-PAST gudá:ga dog yabú:lam loya cane yad y í:ri¹ál walk about-GOING-TRANSITIVIZER-PRESENT wawá:lin y ú see-GOING-PAST ¹uná¹gará: inon the whale mad y índa¹á:d y i¹ walk up-TRANSITIVIZER-ANTIPASSIVE-PRESENT d y u¹gá:ri¹á:lna run-GOING-TRANSITIVIZER-PURPOSIVE 195 Stress on Odd-Numbered Syllables: 105 gáli¹á:d y i¹ go-TRANSITIVIZER-ANTIPASSIVE-PRESENT wú¹abá:d y in y únda hunt-ANTIPASSIVE-SUBORDINATE-DATIVE If there are no long vowels, then stress occurs on odd-numbered syllables, as in 196. Furthermore, all such words contain an even number of syllables. 196 múd y am mother-ABSOLUTIVE wá‹il doorway-ABSOLUTIVE gálbin son-ABSOLUTIVE ¹úna¹gára whale gúdagágu dog-PURPOSIVE Section 2.1.2.2 demonstrated that Yidin y has a rule which lengthens the penultimate vowel of a word if it contains an odd number of syllables. It was argued that this rule, coupled with the dependence of stress assignment upon the surface distribution of long vowels, requires that foot-building be separated from stress assignment. This is because the assignment of stress has to follow the lengthening rule, which itself must be preceded by foot-building. Because of this requirement that foot-building be ordered before the assignment of stress, Yidin y provides an argument for the claim that feet are inherently headless. As further evidence for this claim, in what follows it is argued that the Weight-to-Stress Principle applies in Yidin y even though foot-building is insensitive to syllable weight, i.e., even though feet are built from syllables rather than from moras. In a theory such as that of Hayes 1991, the inherent headedness of feet makes it impossible to simultaneously account for both quantity insensitive 105 These are the only two examples of vowel length occurring on odd-numbered syllables that I could find in Dixon 1977. The rarity of such forms may be attributed to the rule of Penultimate Lengthening coupled with Illicit Length Elimination, which shortens stressless long vowels. foot-building and quantity sensitive stress assignment without resorting to stipulatory measures. These points are developed in section 4.3, where Hayes’ analysis along with two others is reviewed. First, however, I demonstrate how the autosegmental theory of stress may be used to account for the facts of Yidin y in a non-stipulatory manner.

4.2. An Autosegmental Analysis of Yidin