Saturation of parameter settings in Spanish stress

Abstract

This paper advances a novel analysis of Spanish non-verb stress couched in the metrical model of Halle & Idsardi (1995), minimally augmented with an Edge Marking domain parameter. All relevant data are surveyed, and the patterns are classified on empirical grounds into unmarked, marked and supermarked. The unmarked pattern, assigned by default, has the stem-final syllable stressed, while the marked pattern involves a binary trochee, also on the right edge of the stem, and supermarked stress a non-final binary trochee or a word Edge Marking domain. All and only these patterns are generated, in both singulars and plurals, through permutations in the settings of three of the four Edge Marking components (domain included), checked by an avoidance constraint barring stress from the desinence. The ‘three-syllable window’ directly falls out from this machinery, both in the established Spanish vocabulary and in incoming borrowings, blind mimicry of the source form thus being obviated, indeed contradicted.

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