In this paper we provide a novel and unified formal analysis of the stress microvariation found in verb–enclitic groupings in Barcelona Catalan, with stress stability, in Formentera Catalan, with stress shift to the penultimate and the last syllable of the whole sequence, and in Mallorca and Menorca Catalan, with stress shift to the last syllable. We argue that stress shift in Formentera Catalan conforms directly to the unmarked pattern of nominal stress in Catalan, that is, a right-aligned moraic trochee, with the constraint All-Feet-Right undominated, leading to final and penultimate stress. In Barcelona Catalan, the effects of this constraint are inhibited by an anti-alignment constraint prohibiting the right edge of a foot from coinciding with the right edge of a clitic. In Mallorca and Menorca Catalan, stress shift is also understood as a strategy to meet the unmarked nominal stress pattern of Catalan, although in these dialects the anti-alignment constraint is also undominated, leading to catalexis, in this case a melodically empty mora, and thus to final stress.

Greenberg’s Universal 42 states that all languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers. However, this characterization fails to capture the properties of pronouns in Japanese, which are not bundles of person, number and gender features (so-called phi-features); rather, they contain sociolinguistic information about the interlocutors. We propose that these properties are structurally determined. Following Ritter and Wiltschko, we assume that the highest layer of structure in nominals is interactional structure. As for phi-features, we adopt the standard assumption that they are represented internal to the determiner phrase (DP). We propose that the distinctive properties of Japanese pronouns follow from the hypothesis that they spell out elements of the interactional structure and not the DP. We show that the lack of phi-features in Japanese pronouns correlates with other properties of this language’s grammar. Support for this analysis comes from languages where pronouns with phi-features can optionally be used to encode formality (e.g. German and French). We propose that in these languages, formal pronouns originate within the DP but are interpreted in the interactional structure. Finally, we suggest that this analysis may extend to imposters and vocatives in that they may also be interpreted in the interactional structure.