| ROA: | 94 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Faithfulness to Prosodic Heads |
| Authors: | John Alderete |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 46 |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a theory of the interaction between stress and epenthesis that is based in correspondence-theoretic faithfulness (McCarthy & Prince 1995). In particular, a set of faithfulness constraints are proposed that only apply to the material inside prosodic heads (i.e., main stress feet and the syllabic heads of stress feet). One member of this set, Head-Dep, specifically bans the occurrence of nonlexical material in stressed syllables and stress feet, effectively accounting for a typology of stress-epenthesis interactions. When Head-Dep is high-ranked, i.e., ranked above the constraints responsible for stress assignment, epenthetic vowels are ignored in stress; that is, they are not stressed when they appear in the canonical positions for stress, and they are not counted in the assignment of stress, as observed in Dakota (Mississippi Valley Siouan), Selayarese (Austronesian), Spanish, and Mohawk (Northern Iroquoian). When Head-Dep is low-ranked, epenthetic vowels are active in the stress system and may be stressed and counted according to the regular pattern, as found in Swahili and Winnebago (Mississippi Valley Siouan). In addition to providing a nonderivational theory of stress-epenthesis interaction, the paper goes on to argue that the faithfulness-based analysis is superior to one couched in rule-based phonology in which metical activity of epenthesis depends on rule ordering. First, the rule-based alternative is shown to lead to loss of generalization, because it fails to give a unitary analysis of epenthesis in systems where epenthetic vowels are both active and inactive. Second, the faithfulness-based analysis makes a direct connection to the analysis of other segmental processes senstive to stress, notably vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. The rule-based analysis does not provide the formal basis for such a connection, which distinguishes it from the proposed theory. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | Phonology |
| Article: | Version 1 |