Morphological Headedness and Lexical Accent in Vedic Sanskrit Ryan Sandell Ludwig-Maximimilans-Universität München 7 April 2020 1. Contrast: two types of morphological interface system. • Simple Lexical Accent System: internal morphological structure of words is not so relevant – lexi- cally specified prosodic features plus preferences on foot shape / edge alignment determine prosodic prominence. What matters is merely that morphemes can be assigned the same prosodic properties across the words in which they occur. (1) Cupeño (Yates 2017: Ch. 3; examples pp. 64–66): leftmost underlying lexical stress wins, else stress on the leftmost syllable. a. /pəm - təw - wəni/ → [pə́mtəwəni] ‘we see’ (1pl-see-ds.pl) b. /ʔə - yax - qalí/ → [ʔəyaqalíʔ] ‘you say’ (2sg-say-ds.sg) c. /nə - təwi - ́ŋa - ́ʔaw/ → [nətəwíŋaʔaw] ‘on my chest’ (1sg-chest-inl-loc) d. /nə - míx - áːn - βə/ → [nəmíxanβə] ‘(where) I did (something)’ (3sg-be-aan-sub.rl) e. /taβ - á:n - pə - qál/ → [/taβá:npəqál] he placed (it) in’ (put.in-aan-3sg-pst.ipfv.sg) ⇒ Under Yates’ analysis, it is sufficient to know the underlying prosodic properties of the mor- phemes and to build in a left-edge preference. • “Read-the-Tree” System: internal morphological structure of words is relevant – status of morphemes as roots, heads, or inflection influences assignment of prosodic prominence. 2. Revithiadou (1999) explores the role of morphological heads in determining prosodic structures. • In her primary case studies on Modern Greek, Russian, and Thompson Salish, she finds two types of systems: head-dependent with lexical accents and head-stress with lexical accents. • But she also finds evidence for head-stress without lexical accents in Norton Sound Yupik and Kobon (Revithiadou 1999: 23–4). • Contrast Alderete 2001, where argues for roots as having privileged status (case studies from Cupeño, Japanese, Russian). 3. What is a morphological head? Revithiadou (1999: 20) says: In languages with fusional morphology like Greek and Russian, the notion ‘head of the word’ must be read as the element that determines the categorial status of the word. Derivational suffixes are almost always heads because they define the lexical category, class or gender of the 1