Abstract:
This article conclusively demonstrates that the Spanish stress system is quantity insensitive. It proves that quantity sensitivity suffers from circularity because the savings in stress marks that it allegedly yields are counterbalanced by an exorbitant number of extrametricality marks and, even if one accepts the stipulation that finality within certain domains renders prosodic units invisible, proper accentuation of many words is still not possible. Another factor that makes quantity sensitivity unviable is that heavy syllables reduce mobility within the accentual window and, although this seems to have the positive effect of making the distribution of stress stricter, it is actually a disadvantage because it adds to the pile of data that cannot be derived. The proposed alternative maintains that, in two thirds of the lexicon, stress is assigned by universal principles requiring the projection of a word-final syllabic trochee, while in the remaining third this footing is minimally altered by two types of morphologically controlled irregularity.