Conclusion and further issues

Abstract

This chapter concludes, summarizing key findings concerning prosodic weight and raising issues for further research. It compares three approaches to weight-sensitivity in phonology, namely, categorical mapping constraints (such as WEIGHT-TO-STRESS), phonetic discriminant analysis (which identifies optimal criteria), and direct phonetics–phonology interface approaches (such as $t$-to-Stress, where $t$ is a numerical weight percept). Advantages and pathologies of each approach are discussed, pointing towards a possible eventual synthesis. The chapter also includes sections treating the opacity of weight criteria, the domain of the weight percept (which is argued to include parts of onsets by way of p-centers), and the varying degrees of categoricity vs. gradience found in different types of phenomena, where the incidence of gradience tends to correlate with domain size.