Degenerate feet in phrasal phonology: evidence from Latin and Ancient Greek

Abstract

Degenerate feet, even when forbidden in isolated words, can arise within phrases due to resyllabification. In particular, when a stressed monosyllable of the shape C0VC (where V is short) undergoes resyllabification in Latin and Ancient Greek, it yields a degenerate foot. While degenerate feet were tolerated in prose, they were avoided in hexameter verse. Even though a degenerate foot is a kind of light syllable, a light metrical position could not contain a foot. Verse evidence is used as a window onto the general prosodic structure of each language, revealing that speakers productively recognised degenerate feet and distinguished them from other prosodic categories.