Foot Alignment in Spanish Secondary Stress

Recent theories of metrical structure in Optimality Theory differ starkly in whether feet can be aligned gradiently (McCarthy and Prince 1993, Gordon 2002, Hyde 2002) or only categorically (Kager 2001, 2005, McCarthy 2003, Buckley 2009). Particularly challenging for categorical theories are certain apparent cases of the initial-dactyl effect, where all feet align rightward except for the leftmost, and in particular where the main stress in on the final foot. Hyde and McCord (2012) argue that Spanish, which has such a pattern, requires gradient directional alignment; I show that a more complete account of Spanish stress makes such gradience unnecessary. A crucial point is that Spanish secondary stress actually has two patterns (Harris 1983, Roca 1986, Hualde 2012): a more colloquial and common pronunciation that can include an initial dactyl, and a more “rhetorical” one with right alignment; so we must first account for variation. In addition, the initial dactyl is found across words in a phrase (Navarro Tomás 1977, Roca 1986); so we must also account for phrasal interactions. I argue that the right-aligned pattern is created lexically, but phrasally a new trochaic foot is potentially left-aligned with a prosodic phrase. In colloquial style, the left-aligned foot overrides faithfulness to lexical foot structure; but in rhetorical style, faithfulness wins. Any theory of phonology requires some account of the difference between lexical and phrasal patterns; under the analysis proposed here, which takes advantage of the two components, each stage of metrification remains more restricted, without resorting to the computational and formal complexity of gradient alignment.