Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 January 2014
This article argues that, contrary to some recent proposals, a given phonological form may be organised into at most one array of metrical structure at a time. The bulk of the paper is dedicated to a case study of Huariapano, a language that has been claimed to motivate multiple, coexisting but autonomous, layers of metrical parsing. I show that this conclusion is premature: both stress and segmental patterning in Huariapano can be modelled within a single system of constituency, once context-dependent variation in foot form is taken into account. The reanalysis developed here also draws on the idea that foot-initial syllables may be targeted by augmentation or fortition processes even when unstressed. Independent evidence for foot-initial strengthening is furnished by segmental phonotactics in a range of other languages.
Steve Parker provided comments on several drafts of this work, and kindly shared some of his Huariapano materials with me. I thank him profusely for his generosity. He does not necessarily agree with the conclusions I arrive at here. I am also indebted to Junko Ito, Grant McGuire, Armin Mester and Jaye Padgett for insightful feedback during the development of this research. I thank audiences at UC Santa Cruz, the University of Delaware Workshop on Stress and Accent, Harvard, UMass Amherst and NYU, and participants in the Fall 2012 Phonology Seminar at Yale for their challenging questions. Finally, this article has been greatly improved by comments from the associate editor and three anonymous reviewers.