on the facts of vowel harmony in Nyangumarda, an Australian language, and Myers 1987 argues for the same view based on tonal processes in Shona.
24
Furthermore, McCarthy 1979, 1981, 1986, Halle and Vergnaud 1987a, 1987b, and Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1987 all claim that even the representation in 23a may occur
when the superficially adjacent F-bearing X’s are considered to be on separate morphemic tiers, as illustrated in 24.
24 F |
X X |
F This claim, known as the Morphemic Plane Hypothesis, is discussed briefly in section 2.2.3.
To summarize, the OCP prohibits adjacent identical elements within a given domain, but such adjacency is not prohibited if the identical elements are on different morphemic tiers. This
view of the OCP is assumed throughout this study.
1.3. Outline of the Remainder of the Study
As was mentioned earlier, the two central claims of this study are that i. all feet are inherently headless, and
ii. whenever stress is assigned to a foot, it is assigned via the principles of autosegmental
theory. In order to demonstrate the first point, chapter 2 begins by defining the notion of metrical head.
It is pointed out that, although the terms metrical head and stress do not have the same meaning, they have often been used interchangeably. The formal properties of each of these
entities are then reviewed. It is argued that, since stress is the only diagnostic for the presence of a metrical head, the latter is redundant and must be eliminated from phonological theory.
Stress cannot be eliminated in favor of metrical heads because stress can exist without any corresponding metrical structure, whereas metrical heads, by definition, presuppose the
existence of metrical structure. Thus, although the existence of metrical heads cannot be disproven, they do not actually do anything other than duplicate one of the functions of stress,
nor can they replace stress in those contexts which are devoid of metrical structure. It is concluded, therefore, that feet do not have heads. Further arguments for the inherent
headlessness of feet are cited from the theory of prosodic morphology McCarthy and Prince 1990; Crowhurst 1991b as well as from the facts of Yidin
y
stress Dixon 1977; Crowhurst 1991a; Crowhurst and Hewitt 1995.
Having thus argued that all feet are inherently headless, I then explore the hypothesis that stress is autosegmental by reviewing the properties of autosegments and comparing those
24
For more extensive discussion of the OCP, see McCarthy 1986, Yip 1988a, and Odden 1988 as well as a summary of each of these works in Goldsmith 1990:309–318.
properties to the previously-compiled list of the properties of stress. It is concluded that the formal behavior of stress is identical to the formal behavior of autosegments. That is, stress is
an autosegment.
Chapter 2 concludes with the central proposal of this study, which is that stress assignment universally consists of the insertion and linking of a stress autosegment in feet andor some
other prosodic domain. The predicted typology of stress is briefly discussed. It is assumed that there are only three primitive feet; these differ from Hayes’ three foot types only in that Hayes’
feet are inherently headed, whereas these are not. The combination of this inventory of primitive feet with the independent ability of grammars to assign stress to either edge of a foot
produces the following inventory of stressed feet:
•
Left-stressed syllabic
•
Right-stressed syllabic
•
Left-stressed moraic
•
Right-stressed moraic
•
Iambic The total absence of stress systems which stress the weak member of an iambic foot is
accounted for by the Weight-to-Stress Principle Prince 1990, which overrides the otherwise-free ability of a grammar to combine any foot type with either direction of linking of the stress
autosegment.
Three additional principles are formalized in order to complete the theoretical framework which is assumed and argued for in the ensuing chapters. These concern
i. the claim that stress autosegments may be inserted into any prosodic domain, including the foot
ii. the manner in which lexically-specified stress interacts with the process of foot- building, and
iii. the claim that all stressed feet within any given word must, at all points in the derivation, agree with respect to which edge stress is linked to.
The latter statement is concerned only with feet which have been assigned a stress; it makes no claim regarding stressless feet.
Chapter 3 instantiates the predicted typology of binary stress feet with data from Warao, Mayo, Cairene Arabic, Turkish, and Hixkaryana. The first four of these languages exemplify the
four logically possible surface combinations of a stress autosegment with a symmetric foot. The final language, Hixkaryana, is presented as an example of how the Weight-to-Stress Principle
forces a stress autosegment to link to the stronger member of an asymmetric foot. The Weight- to-Stress Principle is then invoked to derive the stress pattern of Khalkha Mongolian, Huasteco,
and a number of other languages with so-called “unbounded” feet. Following Prince 1990, it is argued that foot structure is not attested in these languages, and that the Autosegmental
Stress Hypothesis actually predicts all and only those “unbounded” stress patterns which are attested.
The remainder of the study provides further arguments for the two key claims of the theory, i.e., that
i. stress and foot structure are logically separate, and ii. stress is autosegmental.
Chapter 4 presents a detailed analysis of the facts of stress and vowel length in Yidin
y
, a language of Australia, as evidence for the separation of stress and foot structure. Chapter 5
takes a closer look at Mayo and argues for the presence of floating accent in a number of Mayo words. Similar evidence is presented for the existence of floating accent in Tagalog. Further
evidence for the autosegmental nature of stress is deduced from base transfer effects in Mayo reduplication and from the interaction of segmental length and stress assignment in Mayo.
Chapter 6 suggests how the proposed theory might be extended to account for the occurrence of multiple degrees of stress as well as instances of “long range” stress shift under
clash. A potential objection to the autosegmental theory of stress is also discussed. This concerns the observation that stress autosegments never seem to undergo the autosegmental
process of spreading. It is suggested, as a preliminary explanation, that stress cannot undergo spreading because to do so would conflict with its central function of setting off one element in
a representation as more prominent than all the others.
In summary, this study is an attempt to account for all stress-related phenomena in terms of principles and devices which are independently required outside the realm of stress. Two major
conclusions are reached: i. Feet are inherently headless.
ii. Stress is autosegmental. These conclusions are reinforced by the facts of stress in a wide variety of languages.
17
2. The Separation of Stress and Metrical Structure
As was stated in chapter 1, the two central claims of this study are that i. all feet are inherently headless, and
ii. whenever stress is assigned to a foot, it is assigned via the principles of autosegmental
theory. This chapter summarizes the various kinds of evidence, both theoretical and empirical, for
these claims and presents the principles which form the basis for the remainder of the study. With regard to the first claim, the concept of headless feet is not new to the theory
presented here. The possibility of headless metrical feet is built into the formalism of Halle and Vergnaud 1987a, 1987b henceforth, HV by virtue of the fact that their rules of constituent
construction make no direct reference to heads. Rather, the assignment of heads to feet is handled by a separate rule or set of rules ordered after the rules which generate feet. Since the
assignment of heads is explicitly ordered as a separate rule following the construction of feet, there exists a point at which feet are headless. HV apparently assume that these headless feet
are inaccessible to individual grammars; this point is developed in section 4.3.2. Nevertheless, assuming that grammars are free to select some rules and omit others, HV’s formalism
predicts that a language might have a rule generating feet but no rule assigning heads to those feet.
Halle and Idsardi 1992 are even more explicit in separating metrical heads from foot- building. For example, they use the term linking to relate metrical heads to feet. However, all
heads are derived from metrical structure in Halle and Idsardi’s theory, whereas in my theory heads are completely replaced by stress, which is formally independent of metrical structure.
Additional arguments for the inherent headlessness of feet are presented in Crowhurst 1991b. In particular, she demonstrates that the feet used in prosodic morphology are
necessarily headless. However, she argues for a stage in the derivation of stress during which heads are assigned to feet, whereas I argue in this chapter that metrical heads are never
required.
In order to demonstrate that all feet are inherently headless, section 2.1 begins by defining the notion of metrical head and then points out that the latter is always interpreted phonetically
as stress, i.e., stress is the only diagnostic for the presence of a metrical head. Next, it is argued that the concept of metrical head cannot be the sole formal representation of stress because
there are numerous languages in which stress can exist without any corresponding metrical structure. It is concluded, therefore, that some kind of formal representation of stress is needed
independently of the representation of metrical heads. This raises the following question which is central to this study: can stress, as a formal representation, take over the job of metrical
heads? The ensuing sections of this chapter demonstrate not only that the answer is yes, but also that several useful results follow from this move. One of these is that the number of
linguistic primitives is reduced in that, whereas most generative theories of stress up until now have assumed the existence of metrical heads, these can now be eliminated. Since stress is
