Modularity, Cyclicity, and Constrained Nonuniformity in Spanish Stress Assignment

Abstract We develop a stratal analysis of Spanish stress in which morphosyntactic conditioning and metrical nonuniformity are tightly constrained. Morphosyntactic conditioning is limited to cyclicity, the distinction between stems and affixes, and the affiliation of affixes to the stem or word level. Nonuniformity arises from lexical prespecification and interstratal constraint reranking. This framework yields several successful empirical predictions: Richness of the Base requires that prespecification be unpredictably distributed across all morph types; Chung’s Generalization demands identical metrical patterns in mono- and polycyclic stem-level constructions; and the Monomorpheme Generalization entails that monomorphemic and overtly affixed stem-level items also exhibit the same patterns.