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Degenerate feet in phrasal phonology: evidence from Latin and Ancient Greek

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2023

Kevin M. Ryan
Kevin M. Ryan*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Email: kevinryan@fas.harvard.edu
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Abstract

Degenerate feet, even when forbidden in isolated words, can arise within phrases due to resyllabification. In particular, when a stressed monosyllable of the shape C0VC (where V is short) undergoes resyllabification in Latin and Ancient Greek, it yields a degenerate foot. While degenerate feet were tolerated in prose, they were avoided in hexameter verse. Even though a degenerate foot is a kind of light syllable, a light metrical position could not contain a foot. Verse evidence is used as a window onto the general prosodic structure of each language, revealing that speakers productively recognised degenerate feet and distinguished them from other prosodic categories.

Keywords

footsyntax–prosodyLatinAncient Greekmetrics
Type
Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 345 - 368
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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