Root-Controlled Accent in Cupeņo



John Alderete

Rutgers University



Recent work on the nature of faithfulness constraints in 
 Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) has proposed 
 distinct faithfulness constraints for roots and affixes.  The
 distinction between root and affix faithfulness has been employed
 in the analysis of the privileged status of roots in a variety of 
 phonological systems, such as root-controlled vowel harmony.  
 In this article, I argue that this distinction is equally important
 in explaining the observation in Cupeņo that inherent accent in roots 
 takes precedence over inherent accent in affixes.  In addition,
 morphologically dispersed faithfulness is shown to be instrumental
 in extending the analysis beyond previous accounts, providing the 
 right tools for the analysis of pre-accentuation and the special 
 phonology of the nominalizer suffix.