Re-placing PStem in the prosodic hierarchy

Abstract

Abstract A persistent issue for the Prosodic Hierarchy is what repertory of prosodic constituents is needed to define the commonly recurring domains for phonological processes. Even though there is a long tradition of work arguing in favor of up to three subphrasal constituents (Composite Group (CG), PWord and PStem), a body of recent work has argued in favor of a more parsimonious view of the repertory, making the strong claim that, at the subphrasal level, the Prosodic Hierarchy contains only one constituent, Phonological Word (PWord). Any additional subphrasal domains required by the phonology must be defined as recursions of PWord. This paper argues that PStem must find a place even in a parsimonious Prosodic Hierarchy. It cannot easily be replaced by recursive PWord or by a CG-PWord distinction. The cross-linguistic validity of a PStem-PWord distinction is supported by showing that it accounts for a robust cross-linguistic generalization concerning subphrasal phonological domains. Alternatives to PStem not only miss this generalization but also prove to be formally inadequate.