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Points of Convergence in Romance Linguistics: Papers selected from the 48th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 48), Toronto, 25-28 April 2018
Edited by Gabriela Alboiu and Ruth King
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 360] 2022
► pp. 257–272

Chapter 15
Exceptionality and ungrammaticality in Spanish stress

A Stratal OT approach

| University of Massachusetts Amherst

Regular Spanish stress is stem-final, but many exceptions exist. Though exceptions must be accounted for, they must not yield ungrammaticality. The current proposal distinguishes exceptionality from ungrammaticality by arguing for some degree of quantity sensitivity in Spanish stress assignment. Past approaches that do not take syllable weight into account predict that a nonce input, like rapind-o, if marked as exceptional, will bear ungrammatical, antepenultimate stress (*rápindo). This proposal resolves this by analyzing Spanish stress using Stratal OT, where Regular stress is stem-final. Lexically-indexed constraints allow for each of the exceptional stress patterns, without yielding ungrammatical forms. An exceptional nonce input like rapind-o appropriately receives penultimate stress (rapíndo) regardless of if it is marked as exceptional, thus not conflating exceptionality with ungrammaticality.

Keywords: phonology, stress, Spanish, Stratal OT, exceptionality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Current proposal
    • 3.1Stratal OT
    • 3.2Accounting for the Regular pattern
    • 3.3Exceptional stress
      • 3.3.1Class 3 exceptions as Class 1 exceptions
      • 3.3.2Exceptional words longer than three syllables
  • 4.Exceptionality distinguished from ungramaticality
    • 4.1Truncations
  • 5.Remaining words
  • 6.General discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.360.15tet
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