Stress-by-Structure in Spanish

Abstract

In this article, we argue for a syntactic approach to the computation of stress in Spanish. Our basic claim is that stress placement in this language makes crucial reference to the internal syntactic structure of words. In particular, we propose that foot boundaries are projected from certain functional heads. The analysis is set within the framework of Distributed Morphology and uses the formalism of the bracketed grid for the representation of stress. Several hypotheses concerning the syntax of words are argued to be necessary in gaining a better understanding of stress placement in Spanish.Stress placement in Spanish is determined by syntax. Building on previous work on the topic, and on recent developments of the theory of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993), we argue for an analysis of stress in Spanish that relies crucially on the internal syntactic structure of words. Although previous accounts acknowledge the relevance of word structure in the placement of stress, we show that a deeper analysis of the syntax and morphology of Spanish words provides new insight into the computation of stress in this language.Specifically, we develop an analysis in which foot boundaries in Spanish are projected by certain functional heads contained in words. Since, as we argue, reference to these word-internal constituents is essential in building metrical structure, the present analysis argues strongly in favor of morphological frameworks, such as Distributed Morphology, in which words have syntactic structure. We also adopt the theory of metrical structure proposed in Idsardi 1992 and Halle and Idsardi 1995. This framework provides a natural way of formalizing the generalizations that are discussed here.This article is organized as follows. In section 1, we briefly outline the most important aspects of Distributed Morphology that are relevant for our analysis of stress. We begin our analysis of Spanish stress in section 2, where we present our account of stress in verbs. In sections 3-4, we extend the analysis to other categories. In section 5, we discuss the main advantages of our analysis with respect to previous work on the topic. The article ends with some concluding remarks in section 6.We are indebted to Morris Halle and Alec Marantz for their continued support and for invaluable contributions to the development of our analysis. The following people were also very helpful with their comments and discussion: Eulàlia Bonet, Dave Embick, James Harris, Bill Idsardi, Michael Kenstowicz, and Joan Mascaró. We thank two anonymous reviewers for very valuable comments and criticisms that have resulted in a more comprehensive account of the facts.

Irregular Morphology and Athematic Verbs in Italo-Romance

“…As proposed by Oltra-Massuet (1999), Oltra-Massuet and Arregi (2005), Embick and Halle (2005), every functional/lexical projection in Latin and Romance has a 4 A morphosyntactic change occurred in the development of the Romance languages as can be seen in (i), where I compare the Latin pluperfect subjunctive in (ia) with the form that historically derived from it in Italian, i.e., the Imperfect subjunctive (ib): (i) a. laud -a: + u-i + s + s-e: + mus 'praise-PRF-PST-SBJ-1PL' b. lod -a+ss-i-+ mo 'praise-IMP.SBJ-1PL' In Italian, functional categories such as aspect, tense and mood are no longer represented as independent morphological pieces as they were in Latin. Instead, a single morpheme appears in their place.…”

Transitivity Alternations in North Sámi

“…Pylkkänen (2002: 94) draws the same conclusion for Finnish on the basis of the observation that the final vowel in Finnish verbs and nouns varies with the category. A related but nevertheless different analysis of theme vowels is found in Oltra-Massuet (2000) and Oltra-Massuet & Arregi (2005). On this analysis, which is based on Catalan and Spanish, theme vowels are not exponents of v heads, but instead phonological realisations of nodes that are added, in the morphology, to v as well as to other functional heads.…”

Varieties of verbal doubling in Romance

“…First, the incompatibility with complex tenses cannot be taken as evidence for Fusion. There is no reason why complex tenses cannot be subject to Fusion and, in fact, an analysis in terms of Fusion has been proposed for the future in Spanish for well-motivated reasons (Oltra-Massuet & Arregi 2005 [Gullì 2003: 3] b. Mangia la pizza, mangia. eats the pizza eats 'He really is eating the pizza.'…”