Cross-linguistically, the notion 'minimal word' has proved fruitful grounds for explanatory accounts of requirements imposed on morphological and phonological constituents. Word minimality requires that a lexical word includes the main-stressed foot of the language. As a result, subminimal words are augmented to a bimoraic foot through diverse strategies like vowel lengthening, syllable addition, etc. Even languages with numerous monomoraic lexical words may impose a minimality requirement on derived words that would otherwise be smaller than a well-formed foot. In addition, the minimal word has been argued to play a central role in characterizing a prosodic base within some morpho-prosodic constituent for the application of processes such as reduplication and infixation. / The goal of this thesis is to offer an explanation as to why and in which contexts grammars may prefer a prosodic constituent which may not be reducible to a bimoraic foot. I provide explanatory accounts for a number of cases where the prosodic structure of morphological or phonological constituents cannot be defined as coextensive with the main stressed foot of the language. To this end, I propose to add to the theory of Prosodic Structure (Chen 1987; Selkirk 1984, 1986, 1989, 1995; Selkirk and Shen 1990) within an optimality-theoretic framework by providing evidence for a new level within the Prosodic Hierarchy, that of the Prosodic Stem (PrStem). / An important aspect of the model of prosodic structure proposed here is a notion of headship which follows directly from the Prosodic Hierarchy itself and from the metrical grouping of prosodic constituents. A theory of prosodic heads is developed which assumes that structural constraints can impose well-formedness requirements on the prosodic shape and the distribution of heads within morphological and phonological constituents.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35933 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Rodier, Dominique. |
| Contributors | Piggott, Glyne L. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Linguistics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001656551, proquestno: NQ50247, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds