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Metrical Stress Theory
Julie Nelson, Cailey Moe, and Trang Nguyen
Metrical phonology is...
• ...a group of subtheories of generative
phonology which attempt to categorize
stress and stress rules.
• ...differs from generative phonology in that
it does not treat stress as a segmental
feature pertaining specifically to vowels.
• ...organizes stress into rhythmic hierarchies.
• These are the faces of metrical phonology!
a brief history...
•
...metrical stress theory was a response to Chomsky &
Halle's (1968) proposal of a linear analysis that stress is
segmental.
...Liberman (1975) created the theory in his
doctoral dissertation
...other major contributions: Liberman & Prince
(1977), Halle and Vergnaud (1978), Hayes (1981,1984,
1995)
•
•
a brief history...
•
•
...it can be considered a sort of sister
theory to auto-segmental theory
•
...its authors sought to provide alternatives
to generative theory such as rule variables
•
...another way to represent stress in
stress languages at the same time denoting
its hierarchical characteristics.
briefly,generative theories of stress
•-Generative stress rules are linear and may
be considered too simplistic by some
-Stress is treated as a segmental feature
[+stress], [-stress], [1stress], [2stress]
-Doesn't account for the hierarchical and
relational properties of stress
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•
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A sample stress rule (generative)
• Penultimate stress (vowel-counting
version)
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•
V → [+stress] / ___ C0 V C0 ]word
Assign stress to the second-to-last vowel in the word.
Building Syllables
• All syllables have:
• An onset:
• A coda:
•
nucleus:
"The consonant or sequence of consonants at the
beginning of a syllable"
"The consonant or sequence of consonants at the end of a
syllable"
And a
"The vowel or diphthong found at the syllable's
core and functioning as its sonority peak"
Syllable Structure
Syllable Construction
• When building syllables, first assign the
nucleus!
Syllable Construction
• Next, attach any consonants to the following
syllable:
Syllable Construction
• Finally, if necessary, attach any consonants
not yet syllabified with the preceding
syllable:
• In some languages, Onset Formation appears
to be word bounded, like in German:
Syllable Construction
• In other languages, like Spanish, Onset
Formation can cross word boundries:
Syllable Weight
• Heavy Syllables:
• End in a consonant (aka 'closed syllable')
• Have a long vowel or diphthong (aka
'open')
• Light Syllables:
• End in a short vowel (open)
• Syllables that end in a consonant are heavy,
ones that end in a vowel are light.
Generative Representation of
Heavy/Light Syllabification
More about syllables...
• Every syllable must have a nucleus.
Depending on the language, onset and coda
are not required.
•Arabic:Every syllable must have an onset
• Samoan: codas are illegal
Metrical Theories of Stress
• A summary of the typological properties of stress:
•Culminativity:
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Every content word has to have at least 1 stressed syllable
In every word or phrase there is one syllable which is stronger than the
rest
•
Stress is not usually assigned on grammatical words
•
Syllables bearing stress tend to occur in roughly equal distances
•Rhythmic distribution:
•Stress Hierarchies:
•
Some stresses are stronger than others within a word or phrase boundary
(primary, secondary, tertiary stresses, etc.)
•Non-assimilation
•
Stress doesn't assimilate like sound features like [round] or [front] do
Metrical representations of stress
• 1. Metrical tree
(Liberman 1975, Liberman & Prince 1977,
Hayes 1984)
•
Metrical trees usually have a similar format to syntactic trees
Metrical Representations of Stress
• 2.
•
•
•
• 3.
Metrical Grid (Liberman & Prince, 1977)
Primary stress

Secondary stress 
syllable

=>
•
Bracketed Grid (Halle & Vergnaud, 1987)
Grids, continued
• Grids are ways to represent certain stress
•
•
phenomena:
Grids, continued
• Grids roughly correspond to the categorical
levels of stress
• In this way, they convey similar information
to what can be found on trees
Parameters of Stress
Representation
• 1. Foot Boundedness
• 2. Foot Dominance
• 3. Quantity-sensitivity
• 4. Directionality vs Iterativity
1. Boundedness
•
Motivated by culminativity and exhaustivity.
• Culminativity: Every content word must have at
least one stress.
• Exhaustivity: Every syllable has to be organized
into feet.
• Bounded feet can have no more than 2 syllables
(feet are binary or degenerate at the syllabic level of
analysis).
•
Unbounded feet can have any number of
syllables.
Words with an odd number of syllables begin or end
with a degenerate foot.
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•
•
1. Boundedness
• Ex: What types of foot are these?
2. Foot Dominance
•Left dominance:
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•
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left nodes of feet are stressed
Feet are trochaic (a)
Ex: 'problem, ('holi)day,
('alter)('nation)
'what a ('failure)
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•
• Right dominance:
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Right nodes of feet are stressed
Feet are iambic (b)
Ex: re'port,
(com'puter)
(ex'treme)mity
(My 'head) (was 'hot)
3. Quantity Sensitivity (Q-sensitivity)
• Syllable weight influences how stress feet are assigned.
•Q-sensitive language: heavy syllables get stressed.
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English is Q-sensitive:
Light penult: stress goes to preceding syllable.
Ex: 'Canada, 'metrical, 'visible, 'ultimate
Heavy penult: gets the stress
Ex: A'genda, ho'rizon, de'cided, 'mango
•
•Q-determined (Obligatory Branching): means Q-sensitive,
but with the extra requirement that the dominant syllable node
be heavy.
•
3. Quantity Sensitivity (Qsensitivity)
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Q-insensitive language: heavy syllables may occur in
stressless position. Another way of understanding: syllables
are treated as having equal weight.
French is Q-insensitive. Examples anyone?
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•
4. Directionality vs Iterativity
Directionality: The assignment of feet starts from the left
and goes right or vice-versa
English likes right-to-left, trochaic foot formation.
Ex: restoration => resto('ration) => ('resto)('ration)
•
•Iterativity
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Iterativity (bidirectionality): assign a foot at one edge, then
go to the other edge and assign feet iteratively.
Ex: Piro language
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Non-iterativity: other cases (words have one single foot at
the edge. Ex: monosyllable or bi-syllable words)
Extrametricality
• [X] does not conform to metrical rules &
•
occurs at peripheral locations.
Ex:
•
•
why is it as'paragus
but not ('aspa)('ragus)
'gus' is extrametrical --> poor thing gets a
degenerate foot (exhaustivity)
Tree construction is right to left and trochaic:
•
•
•
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*
•
* * * *
* * *<*>
* (* *)< * >
asparagus => aspara<gus> => as('para)(gus)
More examples: ('visi)('bili)ty, re('peti)tive,
The future of metrical phonology
• Can regularities be accounted for by
transformational rules or by output
constraints?
• How does prominence in syllables affect
stress in syllables?
• Research in languages with ternary rhythm.
Sources
•
Hammond, M. (1995) Metrical Phonology. Annual Review of Anthropology
•
24 (pp. 313-342)
•Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical stress theory: Principals and case studies.
• Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• Hayes, B. (2009) Introductory Phonology. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing: West
• Sussex, UK.
• Hogg, R. & McCully, C.B. (1987) Metrical Phonology: A Coursebook.
• University of Cambridge Publishing: New York, NY.
• Kager, R. (1995) The metrical theory of word stress. In The handbook of
• phonology, Goldsmith, J (ed.) (pp. 367-402) Blackwell Publishing: Cambridge,
•MA
•McCarthy, J. & Hayes, B. (2003) Metrical phonology. Linguistics department
• faculty publication series. University of Massachusetts Publishing. Retrieved
• from:
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=linguist_faculty_pubs
•Metrical Phonology. (n.d) Wikipedia. Retrieved from
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrical_phonology