Almost all work on word stress focuses on edges, weight, and rhythm. However, a small body of work has looked at other influences on stress including structural elements (e.g. onsets, codas, and so on), tone, and sonority levels.
My interest in both tone-/sonority-driven stress has generally not been for its own sake, but rather for the insight it gives into the formal expression of markedness.
My views on tone- and sonority-driven stress fall into two ‘eras’.
Era 1: Acceptance
At first, I accepted that sonority and tone could influence stress. Here’s a summary of this work:
de Lacy, Paul (2007). The interaction of tone, sonority, and prosodic structure. In Paul de Lacy (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology (1st edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch.12 (pp. 281-307).
For more details on tone, see:
• Proposes a tone markedness hierarchy, and its relation to prosodic structure. Aims to account for tone-driven stress and stress-driven tone placement.
There’s a longer version here:
de Lacy, Paul (1999). Tone and prominence, ROA 333.
- A precursor to the (2002) article; also contains discussion of stress-driven tone patterns in Nguni languages.
For details on my sonority theories, see:
• Provides detailed analyses of two sonority-driven stress systems (Nganasan, Kiriwina). Argues that distinctions between markedness categories can be ignored in specific languages.
For historical interest, I had the precursors to this theory in my earliest work, though I really didn’t understand Optimality Theory well back then:
de Lacy, Paul (1997). Prosodic categorization. MA Thesis, University of Auckland. ROA 236.
• Proposes a theory of constraints on subsyllabic constituents and foot form.
And there’s a lot more in the early part of my doctoral dissertation:
de Lacy, Paul (2002). The formal expression of markedness. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. ROA 542.
• Analyses of a variety of sonority-driven stress systems (chs.3,4).
And some in my 2006 book:
de Lacy, Paul (2006). Markedness: Reduction and Preservation in Phonology. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 112. Cambridge University Press.
[abstract] [Google books excerpt] [corrections] [handout] [talk]
• Ch.7 examines the influence of sonority-foot constraints on vowel reduction and stress placement. Provides a detailed analysis of Gujarati sonority-driven stress.
Era 2: Uncertainty -> Skepticism
My PhD students Eileen Blum, Chris Oakden, Vartan Haghverdi, and Shu-hao Shih started to look closely at sonority- and tone-driven stress in the early 2010s. Their findings changed my opinion about whether we are sure that tone- and sonority-driven systems exist. You can read a summary of that skepticism here:
Shih, Shu-hao and Paul de Lacy (2020). Does Sonority-driven stress exist? Catalan Journal of Linguistics 18: 9-40 [PDF] (https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.25)
There’s also a forthcoming book where you can read about everyone’s contributions:
Blum, Eileen, Chris Oakden, Paul de Lacy, and Shu-hao Shih (forthcoming) Non-metrical stress.