• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Inari; saami
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.177.5738; http://www.cunyphonologyforum.net/FOOTABSTRACTS/cunyfoot-bye.pdf

with the facts of stress and duration. In this talk, I will show that Inari Saami must be analyzed as having two foot tiers that must coexist in the representation simultaneously — the incompatibility cannot be resolved by appeal to serial ordering. Consonant Gradation entails the insertion of a foot-medial consonantal mora and presupposes the construction of minimally disyllabic constituents from left to right across the domain. This is illustrated in (1). In western varieties of Saami, the distribution of Consonant Gradation perfectly mirrors that of stress feet. In Inari Saami, however, the metrical system underwent radical restructuring without altering the distribution of Consonant Gradation. The crucial stages in this development were as follows. First, in imparisyllabic words, final lapses were eliminated by forcing each word to end with a maximal syllabic trochee, as shown in (2). Syllabic trochees are then parsed exhaustively from left to right over the remainder, as shown by the behaviour of words with 5 and 7 syllables in (3). Second, Apocope applied in words of three or more syllables, but crucially left the foot structure intact (4). The outputs of Apocope in present-day Inari Saami are distinguished by a word-final monosyllabic foot that now contrasts with legacy consonant-final forms in which the structural description for Apocope was not met (5).