The internally layered foot in Dutch

Abstract

Recent metrical studies have proposed that, under certain circumstances, a weak syllable may be adjoined to a binary foot, giving rise to a minimally recursive foot. Adding to a growing body of research from metrical stress and foot-conditioned phenomena in various languages, the goals of this paper are twofold. First, we aim at providing empirical evidence for internally layered feet based on the distribution of three foot-conditioned processes of Dutch: vowel reduction, glottal stop /ʔ/ insertion and /h/ licensing/deletion. Second, we explore a less studied theoretical and descriptive advantage of internally layered feet: their potential to predict phonological strength distinctions that go beyond the traditional weak vs. strong dichotomy. In support of this view, we will argue that all three above-mentioned foot-based processes of Dutch distinguish between two types of unstressed syllables. We will demonstrate that the metrical representation that best captures this dual patterning of unstressed syllables necessitates internally layered feet.

The binary-to-ternary rhythmic continuum in stress typology: layered feet and non-intervention constraints

“…Since the initial position of a foot is prominent (just like the initial position of other prosodic domains), this syllable, even if weak, may be the target of strengthening effects, and behave as phonologically stronger than the other weak syllable in an ILT foot (Bennett 2012, 2013). Such foot-initial strengthening in systems has been documented in English (Davis & Cho 2003, Davis 2005), Dutch (Kager & Martínez-Paricio 2014), Chugach (Leer 1985c, Rice 1992) and Huariapano (Bennett 2013), among other languages. In all these systems, only weak syllables that occur in a foot-initial position are targeted by a range of fortition phenomena, e.g.…”