Kashaya Extrametricality and Formal Symmetry

Kager (2012), Martínez-Paricio & Kager (2013), and Martínez-Paricio (2013) — collectively MPK — propose the layered feet ((σσ)σ) and (σ(σσ)) to account for a variety of phenomena, including stress windows, mixed binary and ternary alternations, and extrametricality. Although many metrical theories do not accommodate left-edge extrametricality, they use constraints that are almost entirely symmetrical and can therefore capture initial extrametricality in a language like Kashaya. Building on their work, however, I argue that the full facts of Kashaya require even more extensive use of the layered, or recursive, foot than in the other languages that they discuss, including recursion over a degenerate foot in (σ(σ ́)). To account for these facts formally, I claim that NON-FINALITY has the counterpart NON-INITIALITY and that the constraint system is therefore fully symmetrical; and in contrast to many previous formalizations, both are defined in terms of foot structure rather than as avoidance of stress at the edge. In section 1, I give the essential facts of Kashaya stress, including extrametricality and phrasal domains. In section 2, I discuss the lapse approach of Kager (2001, 2005), which cannot generate left-edge extrametricality and makes use of non-local constraint formulations. In section 3, I discuss Buckley’s (2009) symmetrical alignment-based theory, which addresses these problems, but has other formal difficulties. In section 4, I show that MPK’s layered feet largely resolve these shortcomings. But in section 5, I argue that a further refinement is necessary, which makes the theory fully symmetrical.