The role of heads and cyclicity in bracketing paradoxes in Armenian compounds

It is often argued that words have complex internal structure in terms of their morphology, phonology, and semantics. On the surface, Armenian compounds present a bracketing paradox between their morphological and phonological structure. I argue that this bracketing paradox simultaneously references endocentricity, strata, and prosody. I use Armenian as a case study to argue for the use of cyclic approaches to bracketing paradoxes over the more common counter-cyclic approaches. I analyze the bracketing paradox using cyclic Head-Operations (Hoeksema 1985) and Prosodic Phonology (Nespor and Vogel 1986), specifically the Prosodic Stem (Downing 1999a). I argue that the interaction between the bracketing paradox and the rest of compound phonology requires the use of stratal levels and cyclicity. I argue that counter-cyclic approaches like Morphological Merger (Marantz 1988) or Morphological Rebracketing (Sproat 1985) are inadequate because they make incorrect predictions about Armenian phonology.