Bimoricity in Northern Greenlandic Eskimo

Abstract

Multiple strong stresses on heavy syllables within words in Northern Greenlandic Eskimo indicate the absence of word trees in the metrical grid. That final light syllables also selectively receive stress in the absence of a word tree presents a challenge to available mechanisms which attempt to account for such alternations. These include destressing (Hammond 1989; Halle and Kenstowicz 1990) and extrametricality (Halle and Kenstowicz 1990). The problems presented by these mechanisms are avoided in an analysis based on bimoricity. The analysis proposed here presents a modification of the iambic template in Hayes' (1987) typology.