Stress and glides in Spanish syllable structure.
Item
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Title
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Stress and glides in Spanish syllable structure.
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Identifier
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AAI9830737
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identifier
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9830737
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Creator
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Mendez, Jose Antonio.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Charles Cairns
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Date
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1998
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics | Language, Modern
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Abstract
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This dissertation addresses stress and syllable structure in Spanish with special emphasis on phonetic glides. The interdependence of constraints responsible for stress assignment and those pertaining to syllable structure shows that the former determine syllabification in Spanish, specially in the context of vowel sequences. A bottom-up approach to prosodic and metrical analysis achieves a holistic treatment of the facts through the interaction of universal constraints, with minimal use of language-particular stipulations.;Chapter 1 presents a brief overview of Optimality Theory and compares the workings of constraint interaction to Grid Theory as a possible alternative to account for stress and syllabification.;Chapter 2 discusses nominal and verbal stress in Spanish. Nominal stress is a partially-predictable system with two groups, depending on the location of stress. The relative ranking of the constraints ALIGN RIGHT and NON-FINAL explains the facts in a principled way. Verbal stress differs from nominal stress in that the latter is an invariable system and that consonants do not undergo Weight by Position. Differences between tenses is accounted for by the domain at which constraints operate.;Chapter 3 addresses syllabification of vowel sequences. A constraint forcing the alignment of the main foot with the stressed mora explains heterosyllabic parsing when the second element of the sequence receives main stress. Sonority considerations, together with syllable structure constraints are shown responsible for the different parsings involving low and non-low vowels.;Chapter 4 focuses on glides, which are analyzed as the phonetic realization of input high vowels. Similar mechanisms to those applying to (-high) vowel sequences are responsible for the behavior of high vocoids. This chapter also analyzes the effects of pre-vocalic glides in the assignment of stress. A parallelism with palatal consonants calls for the formulation of a constraint requiring the alignment of the left edge of the prosodic foot with an onset associated with the feature (+high). Cophonologies in syllable structure account for the different parsings in cambio/espio, caricia/policia.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
