(HL)-creating processes in a theory of foot structure

The Iambic/Trochaic Law predicts a universal preference for quantitative evenness in trochaic feet, e.g. (LL). On this view, the quantitatively uneven (HL) trochee is assumed to be marginal, cross-linguistically, and consequently, quantitative processes generating such foot types have been argued to be phonetic in nature. The present paper takes issue with this claim, examining data from four languages with (HL)-creating quantitative processes - Mohawk, Selayarese, Central Slovak, and Gidabal - for which a phonetic analysis is untenable, and develops an analysis for these processes in terms of foot-internal relative prominence. Moreover, the type of quantitative process a trochaic language may exhibit is shown to be predictable on the basis of whether its canonical feet are constructed on syllables or moras. The paper develops an account for the restriction of (HL)- and (LL)-creating processes to the respective system types, exploiting prosodic representations arid accounting for foot inventories in bounded and unbounded stress systems alike.