Factorial Typology and Accentual Faithfulness

In many languages, the stress pattern of a complex word resembles the stress of its morphological base or another related word. I refer to this phenomenon as accentual faithfulness (cf. Alderete 1999). A classic example comes from the English word orìginálity, which resembles the accentual profile of its immediate subconstituent oríginal (cf. monomorphemic words like Mèditerránean). This paper addresses the following question: what types of constraints evaluate accentual faithfulness? I explore this question through the analysis of stress-morphology interactions in a large group of Pama-Nyungan and other Australian Aboriginal languages. I discuss two types of possible analyses: base-driven approaches, which acknowledge the role of a morphological base to which the derivative is faithful (e.g. Kenstowicz 1998, Steriade 2013) and alignment-based approaches, in which these interactions are due to constraints governing the alignment of metrical constituents with respect to morpheme boundaries (e.g. Crowhurst 1994, McCarthy & Prince 1994, Kager 1997, Berry 1998, Pensalfini 1999; see also Poser 1989). Both analyses account for the typology of Australian stressmorphology interactions, but their predictions regarding the broader typology diverge significantly. In §2 I present a new base-driven analysis of several Australian languages, drawing on work by Kenstowicz (1998) and Steriade (2013). I discuss the results of a factorial typology based on the proposed constraint set, and show that it accurately characterizes the broader typology of accentual faithfulness. §3 presents an alignment-based analysis of the same languages (based on work by Crowhurst 1994, Kager 1997, Berry 1998, Pensalfini 1999, etc.), and discusses the results of Alderete's (2009) factorial typologies for alignment-based approaches to Australian stress. I show that the basedriven approach, but not the alignment-based approach, makes accurately restrictive predictions regarding the broader typology of accentual faithfulness.