Footed tones and tonal feet: rhythmic constituency in a pitch accent language

The focus of this paper is a hybrid prosodic system which includes both tone and metrical structure, found in the Neo-stokavian dialect of Serbian or Croatian (henceforth NS). NS exhibits complex interactions between
tone and foot structure, which can be nicely elucidated in terms of Optimality Theory, a constraint-based framework in which constraints may vary in strength, and therefore override each other.

The proposed analysis brings out, and accounts for, the observed tension between the tonal and
metrical components. This case is of immediate theoretical relevance for establishing the range of possible foot inventories. The resulting inventory is richer than in cases generally reported in the theoretical literature, and as such suggests a possible direction in which foot inventories may expand.