Shikunova – Stress in a lateral theory of phonology

This class is centered around stress and the way it can be treated in such a lateral autosegmental theory of phonology as Strict CV. Its highest tier is the syllabic tier, and its representation of stress is appropriately local — the syllabic unit (CV). Also, an account of the computation of stress placement in terms of projection and incorporation has been developed within Strict CV in order to capture dependencies between stress and syllable weight. Our goal is to discuss what stress systems can be modelled in this framework and how.

We will start by briefly examining the typology of stress and the different kinds of stress/accent systems found in the world’s languages, as well as the theoretical machinery of Government phonology and Strict CV. Next, several case studies will demonstrate how Strict CV can handle cases where stress correlates with syllable weight, length or the occurrence of morphosyntactic boundaries, since stress, weight and boundaries share a single representation in the said theory — syllabic space. We will also review Strict CV Metrics, which achieves an extensive empirical coverage by accounting for those languages where stress is conditioned by weight. Finally, spellout domains and their procedural influence on stress are going to be covered.

Reading list
From the crucial to the more optional

  • van der Hulst, Harry. 2009. Brackets and grid marks or theories of primary accent and rhythm. In: E. Raimy and C. Cairns (eds.). Contemporary views on architecture and representations in phonological theory. MIT press, 225-245. PDF
  • Ségéral, Philippe & Tobias Scheer. 2008. The Coda Mirror, stress and positional parameters. Lenition and Fortition, edited by J. Brandão de Carvalho, T. Scheer & Ph. Ségéral, 483-518. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. PDF
  • Tobias Scheer, & Péter Szigetvári. (2005). Unified Representations for Stress and the Syllable. Phonology, 22(1), 37–75. PDF
  • Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. Weight hierarchies, Syllabification and Quantitative Meter: Strict CV Metrics as an alternative to Standard Moraic Theory [Ms.] PDF
  • Larsen, Bergeton Uffe. 1998. Vowel length, Raddoppiamento Sintattico and the selection of the definite article in Italian. Langues et Grammaire II-III, Phonologie, edited by Patrick Sauzet, 87-102. Paris: Université Paris 8. PDF
  • Enguehard, Guillaume. 2015. Stress as a morphological edge. Proceedings of ConSOLE XXIII. 472–492. PDF
  • Faust, Noam & Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. 2018. Arabic stress in strict CV, with no moras, no syllables, no feet and no extrametricality . The Linguistic Review, 35(4), 561-600. PDF