On the Stress Erasure Convention and Cyclic/Noncyclic Domain

                                Eiji Yamada

                                   1997

                           (Fukuoka University)

        
                                 Abstract

     After the revelation of problems addressed by Harris (1989) and partly 
by Yamada (1990a, b) regarding the Stress Erasure Convention (SEC), the SEC 
was revised in Halle (1990b), Halle and Kenstowicz (1989, 1991) and Halle, 
Harris, and Vergnaud (1991), where one of its functions has been merged 
into the system of rules.  For all that, however, the problem with the status 
of words and suffixes remains unsolved, which is accounted for by the new 
concept "Stratum Conversion" in this paper.  If this is the case, the 
"demotion" and "promotion" processes discussed independently in the 
literature can be given a universal account.  To see this, we examine five 
languages---Spanish, Japanese, English, Latin, Macedonian---and reveal that 
in order to account for the phenomena in question we need a device in 
Universal Grammar to convert words to suffixes, and vice versa, and that 
specific realization of the stratum conversion process in each language will 
be parametrically determined.

Keywords: cyclic, metrical, phonology, SEC, stratum conversion