Pacific Yup'ik: Implications for Metrical Theory

Recent developments in metrical theory have led to the situation in which there are now at least four different approaches to stress assignment. One approach uses only a grid to represent the relative prominence of syllables in a word (cf. Prince 1983); aside from representational conventions, the grid -only approach differs from the other three in that it does not posit any metrical constituency. Second, the constituentized grid approach also represents stress with a grid, but by enhancing the representations with parentheses, metrical constituency is also indicated (cf. Halle and Vergnaud 1987). Hayes (1987) has recently developed an approach employing representations like those in the constituentized grid approach; I will refer to this as the templatic approach. This approach is different insofar as the constituents which are available in the theory are not derived from parameters, but rather it is the constituent templates themselves which are the primitives of the theory. The fourth approach is one in which relative prominence is indicated with arboreal structures, rather than with grids (cf. Hayes 1981, Hammond 1984). In this paper I will present an analysis of the stress pattern of Pacific Yup'ik which follows Rice (1988), and I will claim that this analysis has important implications for each of the approaches mentioned above. Pacific Yup'ik is a particularly interesting testing ground for metrical theories; for our purposes here, the interesting aspect is that an adequate analysis of the stress pattern has broad implications for various approaches to stress assignment