This paper investigates the distribution of surface accents in Lithuanian nominals based on data from Standard Lithuanian. Inflected nouns and adjectives in this language are subject to the following major accent rules: (a) the Basic Accentuation Principle (Halle & Vergnaud 1987a; b); (b) the Saussurean Accent Shift (Blevins 1993, Ambrazas 2006). I argue that one can account for both in a system where underlying lexical accents can vary in strength. This approach provides advantages compared to the analysis presented in Blevins (1993). For instance, in order to determine the placement of the accent within a weak stem, one does not have to resort to extraprosodicity or floating tones, thanks to a weak accent being present in the UR. The Saussurean Accent Shift, for which Blevins’s paper accounts only partially (see Section 5), is analyzed as an edge effect whereby a clash of two underlying accents at the right edge of a prosodic word results in the surface accent being right-aligned.

In this paper, I look at the distribution of case forms in Latvian prepositional constructions. Latvian prepositions assign either the genitive or the accusative case to their complements, primarily in an idiosyncratic manner. This pattern is disrupted in the plural, where all complements of prepositions show up invariably in the dative case. I investigate the nature of this unusual pattern and provide a post-syntactic account of the data, in which I claim that the observed asymmetry is the result of a cumulative effect in Latvian grammar: case may surface unfaithfully in configurations where marked combinations of case and number features occur in positions where certain case feature values are dispreferred to begin with. This effect arose diachronically as a repair mechanism after the language had lost one of its grammatical cases, the instrumental. This cumulative effect is captured using the framework of Harmonic Grammar. I also argue extensively against a purely syntactic account of the data.