Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
The present paper1 will be concerned with some descriptive and theoretical issues connected with Glide Formation (GF) and Stress Placement (StrP) as well as with the interplay of these rules in the ‘phonological component’ of Modern Greek (MG). These problems have recently been discussed by Irene Warburton whose article (1976) will serve as a point of reference.
Warburton's paper consists of two major parts of rather unequal strength. The first section (‘The relationship between stress and vowel length’, 260–268) makes a good case against attempts to condition the MG stress rule(s) phonologically by setting up never-surfacing distinctions of vowel length. It is also meritorious plea for the view that morphological conditioning ‘does not necessarily introduce irregularity in the language’ (Warburton, 259), as far as the rule makes reference to ‘a natural class of items… that can be subsumed wihin a single morphological feature (e.g. Past, Plural, etc.) that is independently available’ (l.c.).