Stress-by-Structure in Spanish

In this article, we argue for a syntactic approach to the computation of stress in Spanish. Our basic claim is that stress placement in this language makes crucial reference to the internal syntactic structure of words. In particular, we propose that foot boundaries are projected from certain functional heads. The analysis is set within the framework of Distributed Morphology and uses the formalism of the bracketed grid for the representation of stress. Several hypotheses concerning the syntax of words are argued to be necessary in gaining a better understanding of stress placement in Spanish.