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ROA:65
Title:Directional Footing, Degeneracy, and Alignment
Authors:Megan Crowhurst, Mark Hewitt
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Abstract: Directional Footing, Degeneracy, and Alignment



ROA-65

dirfoot.rtf, dirfoot-rtf.zip



Megan Crowhurst

The Univ. of North Carolina

mjcrowhu@email.unc.edu



Mark S. Hewitt

The Univ. of British Columbia

hewittms@unixg.ubc.ca



This paper argues from an Optimality Theory perspective that no

one-to-one correspondence exists between directional footing effects and

individual constraints. Recent work in OT claims that directional

footing effects are best captured by the constraints All-Feet-Left

(Ft-Left) and All-Feet-Right (Ft-Right) in (1) (e.g. McCarthy & Prince

1993b, 1994; Kirchner 1993; Cohn & McCarthy 1994; Crowhurst & Hewitt, in

press; Hewitt 1994a; Kager 1994).



(1) a. All-Feet-Left: Align(Foot, L, PrWd, L)

b. All-Feet-Right: Align(Foot, R, PrWd, R)



This paper argues that the relationship between the alignment constraints

in (1) and directional footing is more complicated than has been

envisioned. In fact, the OT account presented here reveals directional

effects to be epiphenomenal: either of the constraints in (1) may yield

rightward or leftward footing, depending on its interaction with

constraints requiring syllable-to-foot parsing and binary foot structure

(see below). We also show that directionality and stray syllable

parsing at edges are dependent: right-to-left and left-to-right effects

under Ft-Left dominance co-occur with either the presence or the absence

of a degenerate foot, but not with both. This relationship is inverted

when Ft-Right dominates Ft-Left. One outcome of this study is that

interactions among a small number of constraints leads to a modified

typological view of metrical patterns familiar from earlier work.



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Type:Paper/tech report
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Article:Version 1