The Nominal Stress System of Romanian (re)revisited

Cast in the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004), this paper re-examines the system of nominal stress in Romanian. I show that nominal stress is best analyzed as weight-insensitive footing (syllabic trochees), contra claims that the system is weight-sensitive (moraic trochees, Steriade 1984). Forms with superficial final vowels are shown to conform to the syllabic trochee pattern (modulo certain items with lexical specification). The necessity of final vowel extrametricality, claimed in previous analyses of Romance stress, is obviated. Stress on the final syllable in words ending in consonants is claimed to represent an instance of phonological opacity for which an account in Sympathy Theory (McCarthy 1999) is proposed.