Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, etc.

On Wednesday, February 4, 2004, at 09:54  AM, David Peterson wrote:

> This is going to be a very vague question, but has anyone's phonology
> done something specifically with feet and metrics?  This would involve
> secondary stress, foot heads, foot building, extra-metrical syllables,
> prosodic word headedness, boundedness...  I just want some ideas.
As it happens, the foot plays a significant role in Miapimoquitch
phonology and morphology. The canonical foot is the moraic trochee,
which can be realized as a single heavy syllable or a sequence of two
light syllables with prominence on the initial syllable. A heavy
syllable followed by a light syllable may also be parsed as a single
foot; I refer to this in my Miapimoquitch grammatical notes as a
"non-canonical" foot. A sequence of three light syllables constitutes
what I refer to as an "augmented" foot; it is perhaps best thought of
as a canonical foot with an adjoined light syllable. The following
formulae summarize the available options (parens enclose feet, and an
"X" is either a consonant or a vowel):

canonical foot:
(CVX)
(CV.CV)

non-canonical foot:
(CV.CVX)

augemented foot:
((CV.CV) CV)

Stems in Miapimoquitch must be exhaustively parsed into feet. Parsing
proceeds from left to right; if there is a final light syllable not
included in the parse, one of two things may happen: if the light
syllable is immediately preceded by a foot consisting of two light
syllables, it may be adjoined to this foot to form an augmented foot:

... (CV.CV) CV => ((CV.CV) CV)

Alternatively, the vowel of the stray light syllable may be lengthened
and thus form its own foot:

... (CV.CV) CV => (CV.CV)(CVV)

Final syllable lengthening is the only option if the preceding syllable
is heavy:

... (CVX) CV => (CVX)(CVV) ( *(CVX.CV) )

The double marking of phase with suffixed _-ka_ is also a response to
the unparsability of these final light syllables. That is, if you have
a stem, say /t1pa/ 'speak', the medial consonant will be geminated to
mark the unbound phase: /t1ppa/. Parsing into feet yields (t1p)pa, with
an unparsable final light syllable; _-ka_ is affixed to the stem,
creating a canonical foot: (t1p)(pa.ka).

Lenition is sensitive to feet. Voiceless stops and /l/ lenite when
flanked by vowels belonging to the same foot; voiceless stops become
voiced fricatives, and /l/ becomes a tap:

/tapa/ (ta.pa) ['taBa]  'dance'
/huli/ (hu.li) ['huri]  'bury'
/upita/ ((u.pi)ta) ['uBiDa]  'mesquite'

Note that for 'mesquite', both medial consonants lenite, since all of
the vowels belong to the same (augmented) foot. An alternative parse
would be (u.pi)(taa), pronounced ['uBi"ta:]. The final syllable is
lengthened forming its own foot. The /t/ is not lenited since it is not
flanked by vowels belonging to the same foot.


Stress placement, unsurprisingly, is also sensitive to feet. The first
mora of a foot is stressed, and main word stress falls on the leftmost
foot. Secondary stresses fall on the heads of subsequent feet, taking
care not to stress consecutive syllables.


There are two morphological operations which are sensitive to feet. The
first is phase. The primary marker for phase is the gemination of a
stem medial consonant, or the lengthening of the immediately preceding
vowel if the consonant is not eligible for gemination (i.e., /s, h, w,
y/). This creates an initial heavy syllable foot in the stem. Secondary
phase marking (-ka) occurs if there is a stray syllable.

/tumuku/ ['tumuGu] ~ ['tumu"ku:] 'the potato bug'
/tummuku/ (tum)(muku) ['tummuGu]  'a potato bug'

/t1ts1/ ['t1z1]  'the rattle; rattled'
/t1tts1-ka/ (t1t)(ts1ka) ['t1tts1Ga]  'a rattle; rattling'


Distributive number is marked by copying the stem-final foot:

/kaasu -pt1 -ka/ (kaa)(sup)(t1ka) ['ka:sup\"t1Ga]  'eye-removing'
/kaasu -pt1 -ka -t1ka/ (kaa)(sup)(t1ka)(t1ka) ['ka:sup\"t1Ga"t1Ga]
'eye-removing-DIST'

(Other examples can be found in the Eye Juggler text I posted on 21
January.)


So that's the story of feet in Miapimoquitch.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie