Directional Footing, Degeneracy, and Alignment

This paper argues from an Optimality Theory perspective that no one-to-one correspondence exists between directional footing effects and individual constraints. Recent work in OT claims that directional footing effects are best captured by the constraints All-Feet-Left (Ft-Left) and All-Feet-Right (Ft-Right) in (1) (e.g. McCarthy & Prince 1993b, 1994; Kirchner 1993; Cohn & McCarthy 1994; Crowhurst & Hewitt, in press; Hewitt 1994a; Kager 1994). (1) a. All-Feet-Left: Align(Foot, L, PrWd, L) b. All-Feet-Right: Align(Foot, R, PrWd, R) This paper argues that the relationship between the alignment constraints in (1) and directional footing is more complicated than has been envisioned. In fact, the OT account presented here reveals directional effects to be epiphenomenal: either of the constraints in (1) may yield rightward or leftward footing, depending on its interaction with constraints requiring syllable-to-foot parsing and binary foot structure (see below). We also show that directionality and stray syllable parsing at edges are dependent: right-to-left and left-to-right effects under Ft-Left dominance co-occur with either the presence or the absence of a degenerate foot, but not with both. This relationship is inverted when Ft-Right dominates Ft-Left. One outcome of this study is that interactions among a small number of constraints leads to a modified typological view of metrical patterns familiar from earlier work.The definitive version of this paper was published in NELS 25: Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society (1995) and is available at http://glsa.hypermart.net/Crowhurst, M., & Hewitt, M. S. (1995). Directional footing, degeneracy, and alignment. In J. N. Beckman (Ed.), NELS 25: Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society (pp. 47-61). Amherst, MA: GLSA (Graduate Linguistic Student Association), Dept. of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts