<OT> New Posting: ROA-895

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

ROA 895-0107

An Optimal Alternative to Iterative Footing

Faisal Al-Mohanna <mohannaf at ksu.edu.sa>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=895


Abstract:
The process of stress assignment justifies creating metrical
constituents. Reducing the ultimate effect of exhaustive
footing to a mere counting tool breaches economy of representatio
n. However, some derivational accounts require iterative
footing to locate primary stress, even though no secondary
stressing is attested. Using a rule as line conflation,
the non-stressed feet are subsequently deleted. This derivation,
nonetheless, is incompatible with OT that abstracts from
serial processing. Thus, assuming a mono-foot account, for
a number of bounded stress systems with no secondary stresses,
requires adopting a different underlying principle. The
notion of Parsability, that evaluates candidates for exhaustive
footing, is introduced to achieve the crucial counting effect.
The same rationale is extended to account for word-level
headedness and directionality. The proposed mono-foot account
is applied to a number of stress patterns like Cairene,
Seminole/Creek, and Hindi. Disfavouring any redundant footing,
constraint interaction nominates the proper sequence, in
each pattern, for footing.

Comments:
Keywords: word stress, primary and secondary stress, footing, parsability
Areas: Word Stress
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=895