The Tonal Basis of Weight Criteria in Final Position

1 Introduction Many languages systematically avoid stressing final syllables. This dispreference for final stress can be seen both in languages with weight-insensitive stress and those with weight-sensitive stress. For example, many languages with weight-insensitive stress, e.g. Nahuatl (Wolgemuth 1981), Polish (Comrie 1976), regularly stress the penultimate syllable, the syllable closest to the right edge without being final. Final stress avoidance is also observed in weight-sensitive stress systems in which final syllables reject stress even if the only heavy syllable in a word is the final one, e.g. certain varieties of Mari (Kenstowicz 1994). Final stress repulsion is also evident in weight-sensitive stress systems in which weight criteria are more stringent in final syllables than in non-final syllables., stress falls on non-final syllables which are either closed (CVC(C)) or contain long vowels (CVV(C)), but only final syllables containing long vowels attract stress. Words (in boldface) illustrating the stress pattern in Chickasaw appear in (1).