The vital role of the trochaic foot in explaining Turkish word endings

Turkish roots are divided into two groups: regular and irregular (i.e. Sezer) roots. Regular roots have stress on the last vowel and stress moves rightwards in suffixation. Irregular roots are not stressed on the last vowel and the vowel of the root keeps its stress in suffixation. While all agree that regular stress falls on the last vowel, no one has, to my knowledge, explained how it is assigned. Contrary to popular assumptions, I argue that the fact that roots ending in a consonant and ending in a vowel can form a natural class in having regular stress on the final vowel, leads to the conclusion that Turkish regular stress falls on the penultimate nucleus. I propose that roots and suffixes end in a trochaic foot whose dependent position is restricted to a nucleus with no content. This trochaic foot allows me to establish a link between regular stress and the operation of high vowels spread, make sense of affixal allomorphy and eventually derive the asymmetry of word-final cluster configurations.