The Psychological Unreality of Quantity Sensitivity in Spanish: Experimental Evidence

ABSTRACT. This study presents experimental results testing the psychological reality of Spanish quantity sensitivity through a NONCE WORD TEST. The syllabic structures being tested include the following: 'CVC.CVC.CV and 'CVC.CV. rV. It has been claimed that these structures are restricted because of QUANTITY SENSITIVITY. The results show that both sets of experimental data are possible Spanish words, and, therefore, that the often-assumed restrictions on antepenultimate stress are not psychologically real for Spanish speakers. These results indicate that Spanish is not quantity sensitive; the lack of antepenultimate stress in the two situations considered is the result of historical developments and is not a productive restriction on Spanish stress. * INTRODUCTION. The existence of quantity sensitivity (or lack thereof) in Spanish stress assignment has been a topic of much debate over the last several years (Harris 1983, Roca 1990, Lipski 1997). The principal argument for quantity sensitivity is the fact that Spanish has an apparent restriction on antepenultimate stress when the penultimate syllable is heavy (e.g. * 'CVC.CVC.CV). An extension of this analysis is made by Harris (1983) and subsequently by Harris (2002) and Nunez Cedeno (1989, 1994), who argue that the trill [r] in Spanish is an underlying geminate tap /r/ since Spanish does not permit antepenultimate stress when the onset of the final syllable is the trill [r] (e.g. * 'CVC.CVrV). It is argued that since [r] is a geminate underlyingly, it serves as the coda of the penultimate syllable and the onset of the final syllable with the heavy penult inhibiting the possibility of antepenultimate stress. The current paper presents experimental results testing the psychological reality of Spanish quantity sensitivity in cases of a clearly heavy penultimate syllable and in cases where the final syllable begins with the trill [r]. The paper is organized as follows: the debate on quantity sensitivity in Spanish is reviewed in Section 1; then the experiment itself is described in Section 2. In Section 3 the potential outcomes of the study are outlined, and in Section 4 the actual results and their implications are discussed. Section 5 contains the conclusions based on the results of the experiment as well as avenues for future research into the stress system of Spanish. I. QUANTITY SENSITIVITY IN SPANISH. QUANTITY SENSITIVITY is a term used to describe the stress patterns in languages whose syllable structure, particularly the phonological WEIGHT of the syllable, directly affects how stress is assigned. Stress assignment in Spanish has traditionally been traced to the classical accentuation system in Latin, which has been one of the basic examples of languages that exhibit quantity sensitivity when allocating stress. Latin accentuation is entirely predictable. The rule for Latin stress in words with three or more syllables calls for stress on the penult unless it is light, in which case the antepenultimate syllable receives stress. The last syllable is never stressed in a multisyllabic word. Syllable weight depends on the phonetic makeup of its rime. Latin syllables are heavy if they contain extra phonetic material in the rime, that is, a coda consonant or a long vowel; the rime of light syllables contains only the nuclear vowel. This stress rule in Latin indicates that a heavy penultimate syllable will attract stress, making it so that no Latin word with antepenultimate stress has a heavy penult. Quantity sensitivity is just that: A heavy syllable will attract or block the movement of stress within the word. Spanish stress is also very predictable but not to the same extent as Latin's system. Stress is allowed only on one of the three final syllables of the word. The stress rule for Spanish that explains approximately 95% of nouns and adjectives (Aske 1990, Hualde 2000) calls for the accent to fall on the last syllable if the word ends in a consonant or on the penultimate syllable if the word ends in a vowel. …