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Abstract
This article presents a reanalysis of the foot-based phonology of Chugach Alutiiq (henceforth CA), a language that displays a complex mixed ternary–binary rhythm, as well as metrically conditioned distributions of pitch, fortition and vowel lengthening. Elaborating on earlier analyses of CA that had posited some kind of ternary constituent (Hewitt, 1991, 1992; Leer, 1985a, 1985b, 1985c; Rice, 1992), we propose CA should be analyzed by means of the Internally Layered Ternary (ILT) foot, a minimal recursive foot (Prince, 1980; Selkirk, 1980), which was recently revived in a typological study of binary–ternary stress (Martínez-Paricio & Kager, 2015). It will be argued that ILT feet capture CA’s puzzling dual behavior of unstressed and stressed syllables straightforwardly by referring to the status of syllables as heads or dependents of minimal or non-minimal feet. After showing the value of ILT feet in the analysis of CA rhythmic and segmental patterns, we turn to our analytical focus, the distributions of high and low pitch. This distribution is arguably metrically conditioned, yet an analysis based on stress or standard binary feet cannot capture it, whereas the ILT approach can. To highlight the advantages of our approach, we end by offering brief comparisons with previous analyses of CA.
Highlights
The dual role of metrical feetThe recognition of an intermediate rhythmic category lying between the syllable (σ) and the prosodic word (ω), the foot (Ft), has led to enormous insights in metrical analyses of stress assignment (Hayes, 1980/1985, 1995; Hyman, 1985; Kager, 1989; Liberman, 1975; Liberman & Prince, 1977; Selkirk, 1978, 1980; among others)
The standard assumptions regarding foot structure in metrical theory have been that (i) feet consist of maximally two syllables and (ii) they are universally immediately dominated by the prosodic word (e.g., Hayes, 1995; McCarthy and Prince, 1986/1996; Nespor and Vogel, 1986)
In this article we have presented arguments for the rehabilitation of the Internally Layered Ternary (ILT) foot in metrical representations, based on converging evidence from Chugach Alutiiq from several sources: its mixed ternary-binary rhythmic pattern as well as three foot governed segmental and prosodic phenomena—consonant fortition, extra long vowel lengthening and the complex distribution of tones
Summary
The recognition of an intermediate rhythmic category lying between the syllable (σ) and the prosodic word (ω), the foot (Ft), has led to enormous insights in metrical analyses of stress assignment (Hayes, 1980/1985, 1995; Hyman, 1985; Kager, 1989; Liberman, 1975; Liberman & Prince, 1977; Selkirk, 1978, 1980; among others). Many otherwise puzzling phonological and morphophonological processes (e.g., fortition, lenition, vowel deletion, vowel reduction, reduplication, truncation, hypocoristic formation, etc.) and a wide variety of crosslinguistic segmental and tonal distributions receive a simple explanation once the phonological component directly refers to foot constituency (foot heads vs foot dependents), foot edges (foot initial, foot final) and/or foot types (trochee vs iamb, moraic vs syllabic; e.g., Hayes, 1995, and references therein) Under this view, metrical stress and metrically dependent processes are crucially connected and better comprehended when a unique foot structure is posited for a particular language
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