An Optimality Theoretic Account of the Influence of Catalexis in English Stress

Abstract

This paper deals with English stress patterns for verbs and unsuffixed adjectives within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky (1993)) by drawing on the notion of catalexis which is also adopted by Hammond (1999). Introduction of a null vowel to verbs and unsuffixed adjectives as a catalectic suffix makes a single mechanism explain English stress patterns for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The only difference in those morphological categories is that unsuffixed adjectives and verbs have catalectic suffix but nouns does not have catalexis. This paper claims that English stress patterns in unsuffixed verbs and adjectives can be dealt with by such constraints as FT-BIN , NONFINALITY, WSP, Align(PrWd, R; Ft(Head), R), FINAL-STR and DEP, and that the constraint ranking, FtBin >> Nonfinality >> WSP >> Align(PrWd, R; Ft(Head), R) 》 FINAL-STR 》DEP, is responsible for English stress patterns for nouns, verbs, and adjectives.