Brett Hyde

A restrictive theory of metrical stress

Focusing on weight-insensitive binary stress systems, the article presents an approach to metrical stress that is more restrictive than standard approaches and more accurate in its predictions. The proposal’s restrictiveness derives from a set of constraints and structural assumptions that run counter to prevailing theories’ fundamental principles. For example, the proposed account assumes strict succession between prosodic categories, ensuring that syllables are exhaustively parsed into feet. It tolerates improper bracketing of prosodic categories, allowing feet to overlap and to share entries on the metrical grid. Finally, it makes the foot‐ stress relationship violable, allowing feet to remain stressless under appropriate rankings. The article examines each of these assumptions and demonstrates how they combine to more accurately predict attested typologies.

Non-finality and weight-sensitivity

This article presents a non-finality approach to weight-sensitivity, using constraints that prohibit stress on domain-final moras to account for phenomena where stress avoids light syllables. The issues addressed by the proposal include weight-sensitivity in unbounded stress systems, weight-sensitivity in generalised trochee systems, iambic lengthening, trochaic lengthening and minimal word restrictions. A non-finality approach improves the typological predictions for each of these phenomena and provides them with a general and uniform account, lending additional support for non-finalitys central position in the theory.

Metrical and Prosodic Structure in Optimality Theory

OF THE DISSERTATION ............................................................................... ii DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT ..................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: ODD SYLLABLES AND ASYMMETRIES .............................................. 4 1.1 The Standard Account .................................................................................................. 5 1.2 Two Observations ..................................................................................................... 14 1.3 The Proposal ............................................................................................................. 16 1.3.1 Minimal Alternation ......................................................................................... 17 1.3.1.1 Strict Succession .................................................................................... 18 1.3.1.2 Foot-Head Alignment ............................................................................. 19 1.3.1.3 Feet and Stress ....................................................................................... 22 1.3.1.4 Intersecting Feet ..................................................................................... 24 1.3.2 Maximal Alternation ......................................................................................... 28 1.3.2.1 Prosodic Word Alignment ...................................................................... 29 1.3.3 NonFinality ...................................................................................................... 34 1.3.3.1 The Double Offbeat Pattern .................................................................... 34 1.3.3.2 The Internal Ternary Pattern ................................................................... 38 1.3.4 Initial Gridmark ............................................................................................... 41 1.3.4.1 The Double Downbeat Pattern ................................................................ 41 1.3.4.2 The Edge Ternary Pattern ....................................................................... 45 1.4 Summary ................................................................................................................... 48

Issues in Banawá Prosody: Onset Sensitivity, Minimal Words, and Syllable Integrity

Three aspects of Banaw prosody (Buller, Buller, and Everett 1993, Everett 1996a,b) have been argued to present significant difficulties for metrical stress theory. First, Banaw stress is sensitive to the presence or absence of syllable onsets; second, Banaw tolerates monomoraic feet yet requires a bimoraic minimal word; and, third, it seems to employ mora-based footing that is free to ignore syllable boundaries. In this article, I argue that these issues are not nearly as problematic as they might first appear. The article demonstrates that Banaws onset sensitivity can be produced by a constraint aligning the head syllables of feet with onsets, that its minimal word restriction can be produced with Nonfinality constraints, and that it can maintain syllable integrity simply by giving clash and lapse avoidance priority over other footing considerations.