Weight-by-Position Adjunction and Syllable Structure

Most cross-linguistic variation in weight criteria is attributed to the parameterized application of Weight-by-Position adjunction to codas on a language-specific basis (Hayes 1989). This paper explores the hypothesis that coda weight is ultimately predictable from syllable structure. An extensive survey of quantity-sensitive stress systems shows that languages that allow a proportionately large set of high sonority codas are far more likely to treat CVC as heavy than languages possessing a proportionately smaller inventory of high sonority codas. This link between coda inventory and coda weight is shown to follow from a model of weight in which syllable structure influences the phonetic map against which potential weight criteria are evaluated on a language-specific basis.