foot (n.) (Ft)

A term used by some PHONETICIANS and PHONOLOGISTS to describe the UNIT of RHYTHM in LANGUAGES displaying ISOCHRONY, i.e. where the STRESSED SYLLABLES fall at approximately regular intervals throughout an UTTERANCE. It is an extension of the term used in traditional studies of metrical verse structure, where the many regular patterns of stressed/unstressed syllable sequence were given a detailed classification (e.g. ‘iambic’ for an unstressed+ stressed  pattern: ‘trochaic’ for a stressed+ unstressed  pattern; ‘spondaic’ for a pattern of two stresses; ‘dactylic’ for ; ‘anapaestic’ for ). In a more general phonological sense, the notion is applied to any utterance in a STRESS-TIMED language, not just verse. The rhythm of an utterance, in this approach, is analyzed first in terms of INTONATION units, and these are analyzed into feet, e.g. /the cman is cwalking in the gàrden/ is a single TONE UNIT consisting of three feet. The term has particular relevance in several models of NON-LINEAR PHONOLOGY, such as METRICAL PHONOLOGY, where it refers to an underlying unit of metrical structure (or stress-foot), consisting of syllable RHYMES, and organized into CONSTITUENTS that make up phonological WORDS. Feet are classified as ‘left-headed’ (the leftmost rhyme is stressed) or ‘right-headed’ (the rightmost rhyme is stressed). Feet no longer than two syllables in length are bounded feet; a foot containing only one syllable is called a degenerate foot; the DELETION of a foot from a REPRESENTATION is sometimes called defooting. In later metrical theory, foot dominance is a foot-shape PARAMETER which determines the side of the foot where the head is located: in left-DOMINANT feet, all left nodes are dominant and right nodes RECESSIVE; in right-dominant feet, the reverse situation obtains. In PROSODIC MORPHOLOGY, the foot is a member of the prosodic HIERARCHY of MORA, syllable, foot and (prosodic) word. Syllables are said to be footed if they can be assigned a foot structure; unfooted otherwise. In OPTIMALITY THEORY, the term *footless is used to refer to a CONSTRAINT which requires that all SYLLABLES be footed (the asterisk indicating that the effect is not acceptable).

In the phrase foot-feature principle, the term is used in GENERALIZED PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR: it refers to a principle governing the DISTRIBUTION of FEATURES which express information that CONSTITUENTS are missing or have to be bound to some constituent.