Markedness and Faithfulness Constraints on the Association of Moras:
 The Dependency between Vowel Length and Consonant Weight
 

Bruce Morén

University of Maryland, College Park







     Many languages require that certain syllables be heavy.  For 
 example, Icelandic requires that all stressed syllables be heavy, 
 Dutch requires that all syllables be heavy, and Italian requires that 
 stressed penultimate syllables be heavy.  However, regardless of why 
 and in what context, there are specific strategies for ensuring that 
 this weight requirement is met: either vowels surface as long, or coda 
 consonants count for weight.  Moreover, there is a dependency between
 whether a language has distinctive vowel length or distinctive con-
 sonant weight, and the type of strategy employed.  In some cases, 
 vowel length is determined by the weight of the following consonant, 
 and in others, the weight of a consonant is determined by vowel length.  
      In this paper, I propose an analysis of the distribution of moraic 
 segments in certain stressed syllables in three dialects of English.  
 The three English dialects are: Received Pronunciation (RP) spoken in 
 Southern England, Standard American (SAE) spoken from South West New 
 England to the Pacific Coast, and Metropolitan New York (NYE).  RP is 
 discussed because it has a system where all stressed vowels have dis-
 tinctive length - vowel length always determines the weight of the 
 following consonant.  SAE is discussed because it has some stressed 
 vowels which always have distinctive length, but others which always 
 surface as long (non-distinctive length).  This is important because 
 it shows that within the same language there can be some vowels which 
 determine consonant weight, and some vowels whose length is determined 
 by the inability of consonants to bear weight.  NYE is interesting 
 because it has a three-way classification of stressed vowels.  Some 
 vowels have distinctive length, others only surface as long (non-dis-
 tinctive length), and still others either have distinctive vowel 
 length or are long depending on the context.  In other words, NYE has 
 a hybrid system (ĉ-tensing) where vowel length determines consonant 
 moraicity, and consonant moraicity determines vowel length.  I will 
 argue that NYE ĉ-tensing is the result of a vowel length distinction 
 (at times neutralized) not found in other dialects of English.  In 
 addition to the analyses of English, a preliminary analysis of Ice-
 landic is provided in Chapter VI because in Icelandic stressed 
 syllables, vowel length is never distinctive but consonant weight is.  
 This is important because it shows a language in which consonant 
 weight always determines vowel length, and it fills in part of the
 larger typology predicted here.

     Using Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993) and Corres-
 pondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince, 1995), I propose that the sys-
 tems of syllable weight in the target languages can easily be accounted 
 for by interleaving faithfulness constraints on the moraic content of 
 segments with a universal markedness hierarchy (Zec, 1988) against 
 moraic segments.