The binary-to-ternary rhythmic continuum in stress typology: layered feet and non-intervention constraints

Abstract

This article presents a novel OT analysis of ternary rhythm, using the restrictive format of McCarthy (2003)'s categorical alignment constraints, which we will refer to as ‘non-intervention constraints’, using the terminology of Ellison (1994), and argues for the rehabilitation of internally layered feet in metrical representations (i.e. feet with one layer of recursion). By means of a computer-generated factorial typology, we demonstrate that the constraint set proposed here generates the full typology of binary and ternary rhythm. The resulting typology suggests that there is no absolute boundary between binary and ternary systems; rather, a continuum emerges, such that binary and ternary feet may coexist in rhythmic stress systems.

The internally layered foot in Dutch

“…In our analysis of Dutch stress and foot-conditioned phonotactics in Section 5, we adopt the metrical model of Martínez-Paricio (2013) and Martínez-Paricio and Kager (2015). On the representational side, this model allows foot structure to be recursive, but only minimally so: a single foot layer can be stacked on top of a binary foot by adjunction, as indicated in (2).…”

“…Note that the emergence of a minimally recursive foot is not completely unexpected from the point of view of current approaches to Prosodic Hierarchy Theory, in which some degree of recursion is permitted. Furthermore, these distinctions between foot projections have been shown to be crucial to modeling the typology of binary and ternary rhythmic stress (see Martínez-Paricio and Kager 2015), as well as to explaining the particular behavior of different metrically governed phenomena (Martínez-Paricio 2013). In these works the reader can find stress and non-stress evidence for all types of IL feet (trochees with a left or right adjunct, iambs with a left or right adjunct).…”

“…In particular, it has been proposed that, under certain circumstances, a weak syllable may be adjoined to a binary foot, giving rise to a minimally recursive foot; in these structures, a foot dominates another foot (Davis 1999(Davis , 2005Jensen 2000;Davis and Cho 2003;Yu 2004;Bennett 2012Bennett , 2013Kager 2012;Martínez-Paricio 2012Martínez-Paricio and Kager 2015;Buckley 2014;Breteler 2015). For instance, in Martínez-Paricio (2013) and Martínez-Paricio and Kager (2015) metrical model, feet are maximally trisyllabic, consisting of a disyllabic foot and an adjoined weak syllable (2a). In this model, a layered foot can also consist of a monosyllabic bimoraic foot plus an adjoined syllable (2b).…”

“…On the typological side, it was argued that reference to IL feet facilitates an account of the binary-to-ternary rhythmic continuum in metrical stress systems (Martínez-Paricio and Kager 2015). Moreover, postulating IL feet enables a restrictive account of the maximal size of stress and accentual windows (see Kager 2012, based on Caballero 2008cf.…”

“…We start by illustrating the dual patterning of unstressed syllables in Dutch vowel reduction (Section 2) and introduce the metrical model of Martínez-Paricio and Kager (2015), serving as the theoretical framework for our analysis of Dutch foot-conditioned processes (Section 3). In Section 4, we discuss Davis and Cho (2003) and Davis' (2005) analysis of the distribution of aspirated stops and /h/ in English, which makes use of IL feet and inspired our analysis of Dutch.…”