The Properties of Stress

i. Stress can exist apart from feet. ii. Feet can exist apart from stress. iii. The behavior of stress is consistent with the behavior of autosegments, and vice versa. The preceding section argued for i on the basis of the facts of exceptional stress in Macedonian. Arguments for ii were based on MP’s theory of prosodic morphology as well as the facts of stress and vowel length in Yidin y Dixon 1977; Crowhurst 1991a; Crowhurst and Hewitt 1995. The question to be addressed now is this: given the properties of stress and given the fact that stress and feet are able to operate independently of each other, what principles govern the behavior of stress? This section argues that stress is constrained by the principles of autosegmental theory. That is, stress is an autosegment. I begin by reviewing the properties that have been attributed to stress, weeding out those alleged properties which may be shown to be independent of stress itself. I then review autosegmental theory, which was first proposed in Goldsmith 1976. The properties of autosegments are laid out, and the resulting list is then compared to the previously-compiled list of the properties of stress. It is concluded that the formal behavior of stress is consistent with the claim that stress is an autosegment.

2.2.1. The Properties of Stress

The purpose of this section is to compile a list of all those properties which may genuinely be attributed to stress based on what others have already observed. It will later be shown that this list is nearly identical to the list of properties that are common to all autosegments. Perhaps the most obvious property of stress is that it is normally realized as some kind of phonetic prominence such as length in English Lehiste 1970 or tone in Creek Haas 1977. Intensity or volume is sometimes claimed to be a feature of stress as well. See Fry 1955, 1958 for a discussion of intensity as a feature of English stress. Notice, however, that there is no single phonetic feature which is common to all instances of stress, nor is there a single phonetic feature which is found only in stress. For example, in many languages such as the modern Chinese dialects tone plays a role which is generally viewed as different from that of stress. I attribute this view to the fact that the grammars of these languages exhibit no relationship between tone and metrical structure. Furthermore, in these languages tone can have more than one underlying value; this is not observed in languages in which stress is realized as tone. Thus, although stress in some languages is realized as tone, not all instances of tone can be classified as stress. Likewise, although stress is realized as length in some languages e.g., Hixkaryana; see section 1.2.2, lengthening processes can be triggered by other features besides stress. For example, Inkelas and Zec 1988 report that Serbo-Croatian has high tones, both underlying and derived, whose behavior exhibits no evidence of metrical structure. Nevertheless, there is a rule which lengthens the leftmost high-toned vowel in a word. Although this lengthening process has traditionally been referred to as stress, it is in fact triggered only by the presence of a high tone. Whereas stress is normally assigned only to the edge of a foot or the edge of a word, in this case the target of lengthening is a high tone-bearing unit rather than a domain edge. Thus, Serbo-Croatian’s lengthening rule is fundamentally different from instances in which foot-based stress is realized as length. A significant conclusion about stress may be deduced from the above discussion. Although length and tone seem to be the most common phonetic correlates of stress, it is not the case that lengthening rules and tone assignment rules are always associated with what is commonly known as stress. I conclude, therefore, that phonetic features cannot be used as a sole diagnostic for identifying stress. In addition to lengthening processes, stress has been claimed to play a role in shortening processes. The best-known example is English Trisyllabic Shortening diví:nedivínity; also known as Trisyllabic Laxing, but it has also been claimed that stress participates in a shortening rule in Fiji Hayes 1991. However, the environment for shortening in each instance depends on other factors in addition to stress. In English, the target of shortening has to be in a closed syllable as well as stressed. In Fiji, the target of shortening has to be the stressed member of a word-final foot. 38 In either case, given the preceding section’s conclusion that metrical structure and stress are formally independent of one another, it remains to be determined whether the trigger for shortening is stress or foot structure. Myers 1985 and Hammond 1990b both argue for the English case that the shortening process must be broken down into a sequence of two independent rules, resyllabification and shortening. They argue further that stress or perhaps foot structure, as was just mentioned triggers the resyllabification but not the shortening rule. I will not pursue these issues here, but it is apparent that the role of stress in shortening processes, if indeed it has a role at all, is yet to be determined. Because this involves issues which are beyond the scope of this study, I leave it as a topic for future research. In the meantime, I assume that all shortening processes may be reduced to rules involving only prosodic factors. Since the preceding section demonstrated that stress must be treated as formally separate from prosodic structure, I do not include the ability to participate in shortening processes in the list of the properties of stress. One apparently legitimate property of stress is that it can be attracted to heavy syllables. This phenomenon, which was introduced in section 2.1.1 to account for the stress pattern of Huasteco, is further discussed and illustrated in sections 2.3.3.2 and 3.2. Still another property of stress is that it is capable of moving independently of stress- bearing units. For example, Nespor and Vogel 1979 describe a process in standard Italian which moves the leftmost of two stresses leftward when they occur on adjacent syllables as the result of concatenation within a tightly-defined syntactic context. This is illustrated in 48. 48 metá + tórta → méta tórta half cake Notice that stress is normally final in metá, as attested in 49. In this case, no movement of stress is observed because the second word is stressed on the second syllable, so concatenation does not create a clash. 38 For a description of Trisyllabic Shortening in English, see Myers 1985, Halle and Vergnaud 1987b, and Hammond 1990b. For the facts of Fijian shortening, see Hayes 1991:126–132. 49 metá + canzone → metá canzóne half song Data such as 48 and 49 provide evidence for the claim that stress can move in order to avoid a clash. This is consistent with the claim that universal filters such as the OCP do not block morphological or syntactic concatenation Hewitt and Prince 1989; Myers 1991a. Rather, they trigger repair strategies such as the movement that is observed in the above Italian data. Examples of similar repair strategies in purely tonal systems are discussed in section 2.2.3. There are also languages in which stress clash is resolved not by moving the clashing stress over one syllable but rather by demoting it to a subsidiary stress and simultaneously promoting some other subsidiary stress to a higher level. Perhaps the best-known example of this is the English Rhythm Rule Chomsky and Halle 1968; Liberman and Prince 1977; Kiparsky 1979; Prince 1983; Hayes 1984; Halle and Vergnaud 1987b; Hammond 1988a. This process moves the leftmost of two primary stresses leftward when they occur on adjacent syllables in certain phrase-level contexts, as illustrated in 50–52. 50 a. Tènnessée b. Ténnessèe Wílliams 51 a. Mìssissíppi b. Míssissìppi Ríver 52 a. Àpalàchicóla b. Ápalàchicòla Árnie Data such as 50 through 52 provide further evidence for the claim that metrical heads can move. However, the movement in this case is not to a formerly stressless position, as is the case in Italian, but rather to a position which already bore non-primary stress. Furthermore, the position from which primary stress moves does not remain stressless. Rather, it acquires a non- primary stress. Thus, the Rhythm Rule has the effect of “swapping” the positions of a primary and a non-primary stress in order to resolve a clash between two primary stresses within a phrase. Since this study is concerned only with the derivation of primary stress and not with the derivation of distinctive degrees of stress, I defer the discussion of possible analyses of the English Rhythm Rule until chapter 6. A different kind of stress shift occurs in Bedouin Hijazi Arabic. In this case, stress is observed to move to another vowel when its host vowel is deleted. The following facts are cited from Al-Mozainy, Bley-Vroman, and McCarthy 1985 and based on Al-Mozainy 1981. First, the distribution of stress is described in 53. 53 Stress in Bedouin Hijazi Arabic Al-Mozainy 1981: a. Stress is on the last syllable if it is superheavy CVVC or CVCC. b. Otherwise, stress is on the penult if it is heavy CVV or CVC. c. Otherwise, stress is on the antepenult. Each of the three cases described in 53 is illustrated in 54. The final syllable is superheavy in 54a but not in 54b or 54c, which correspond to 53b and 53c, respectively. 54 a. maktúub written ôa‹ábt I hit b. maktúufah tied f.sg. gaabílna meet us m.sg. c. máalana our property yášrðbin they f. drink Now, Bedouin Hijazi Arabic has a rule deleting short a in an open syllable if the following syllable is also open and contains short a. Al-Mozainy, Bley-Vroman, and McCarthy 1985 formulate the rule as in 55. 55 Low Vowel Deletion: a → ø C ___ [Ca]õ This rule is responsible for the following alternations in 56. 56 a. sá‚ab he pulled s‚ábat she pulled sa‚ábna we pulled s‚ábaw they m. pulled s‚ában they f. pulled b. náxal palm trees nxálah a palm tree g y álaÞ castles g y láÞah a castle sálag hunting dogs slígah a hunting dog 39 c. ¥ánam sheep ¥ními my sheep What makes this particular grammar interesting, in terms of the claim that stress is autosegmental, is that Low Vowel Deletion is ordered after stress assignment. Although this order cannot be determined from the above data, it can be determined from the forms in 57. 57 Øínkisa‹ he got broken Øinksá‹at she got broken Øíntiôa‹ he waited Øintôá‹an they f. waited Øíftika‹ he remembered Øiftká‹aw they m. remembered Øíxtiba‹ he took an exam Øixtbá‹aw they m. took an exam In each of the left-hand forms in 57, the penultimate syllable has underlying a, which is raised in an open syllable depending on the adjacent consonantism by an independent rule. Thus, the underlying representations are Øinkasa‹ and so on, with Low Vowel Deletion applying in the forms on the right. Al-Mozainy, Bley-Vroman, and McCarthy point out that, although the left-hand forms are stressed in accordance with 53, those on the right are, at least on the surface, in violation of it. If Low Vowel Deletion were assumed to precede stress assignment, then forms such as Øínksa‹at, with regular antepenultimate stress, would be expected. Since this is not observed, it must be the case that stress assignment precedes Low Vowel Deletion. However, now there is no means of explaining the location of stress in each of the right-hand forms except by assuming that the stress on the deleted vowel shifted to the following vowel rather than deleting with its original host vowel. 39 The raising of a to i in this and the following example is the result of a separate process discussed in Al-Mozainy 1981. Other languages in which stress perseveres following the deletion of stressed vowels include • Tiberian Hebrew Prince 1975 • Negev Bedouin Arabic Kenstowicz 1983; Hayes 1991, and • Unami Goddard 1979; Hayes 1991. Hayes 1991 notes that this behavior of stress exactly parallels the tonal stability effects which gave rise, in part, to autosegmental theory. I return to this point in section 2.2.2. I turn now to what might at first glance appear to be a property of stress but which, in fact, is not a property of stress at all. In attempting to define the nature of stress, it has often been observed that in a number of languages stress tends to occur in an alternating pattern with non-stress. However, one must ask whether such alternating patterns are derived from some property of stress or whether they are derived from some property of metrical structure, or even whether they might be derived from something else. For example, notice that if feet are always binary, as is claimed in Hayes 1991 and McCarthy and Prince 1990, then the alternating pattern of stress and non-stress could be accounted for if there were some independent argument for limiting the number of stresses in a foot to one. The alternating pattern would then be attributed to that principle or set of principles governing the interaction of stress and metrical structure rather than to some property of stress. The above line of reasoning is admittedly speculative, but other explanations are conceivable as well. For example, by appealing to the OCP as defined in section 1.2.4, it is possible, in principle, to derive alternating patterns without appealing to metrical structure. In particular, if multiple identical autosegments were inserted and immediately linked into a single large domain such as a long word, they would have to link to every other potential docking point if they linked at all in order to avoid violating the OCP. Thus, the ability to occur in alternating patterns is not necessarily unique to stress, nor is there any clear evidence for attributing the existence of such patterns in metrical systems to some property of stress. I assume, therefore, that the alternating patterns observed in stress systems may be attributed to other factors rather than to the intrinsic nature of stress. To conclude the above discussion, only four genuine properties of stress have been identified thus far. These are listed in 58. 58 Properties of Stress: a. Phonetic features of length, tone, andor intensity. b. Can be attracted to heavy syllables Huasteco. c. Can undergo movement in a clash environment Italian. d. Stability under vowel deletion Bedouin Hijazi Arabic. Having thus determined some of the properties of stress, the next section examines the properties of autosegments in order to provide a basis for evaluating the claim that stress is an autosegment.

2.2.2. The Properties of Autosegments