Left-headed feet and phrasal stress in Chinese

Abstract

This is a rejoinder to F. Dell's review of the analysis of stress proposed in Duanmu (2000), see pp. 33-63 in this issue. In his book, Duanmu proposes that Standard Chinese has left-headed feet. In addition, in compounds and phrases, stress is assigned to the syntactic non-head. F. Dell raises a number of questions for Duanmu's analysis. In the present article, Duanmu explains how the questions can be addressed. He also offers some new evidence and argues that the analysis with left-headed feet remains the simplest theory.