Stress variation in English 9783823391807, 3823391801

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Stress Variation in English

Edited by Rainer Schulze Advisory Board: Anita Fetzer (Augsburg), Thomas Herbst (Erlangen), Andreas Jucker (Zurich), Manfred Krug (Bamberg), Christian Mair (Freiburg i.Br.), Ute Romer (Atlanta, GA, USA), Andrea Sand (Trier), Hans-Jorg Schmid (Miinchen), Josef Schmied (Chemnitz) and Edgar W. Schneider (Regensburg)

Alexander Tokar

Stress Variation in English

narr f ranc e\atte mpto

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche National­ bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detail­ lierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet iiber http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

© 2017 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 D-72070 Tiibingen ·

·

Das Werk einschlieBlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschiitzt. Jede Verwer­ tung auBerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulassig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere fur Vervielfaltigungen, Dberset­ zungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf saurefreiem und alterungsbestandigem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: www.narr.de E-Mail: [email protected] Printed in Germany Satz: pagina GmbH, Tiibingen ISSN 0939-9399 ISBN 978-3-8233-9180-7

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations

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1 2

1 Introduction 3 1 . 1 Scope of the study ............. 3 1.2 Previous studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...................................... 1 0 1.3 Structure of the book . . . . . . ..................................... . . . 24 .

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2 Theoretical preliminaries

2. 1 2.2 2.3 2.4

............. Stress vs. accent . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...................................... Primary stress vs. secondary stress ....................... . . . . . . . . . Stress I accent vs. no stress ................................... . . . . . Stress placement across the globe .

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3 Methodology

........... . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................... 3.1 Dictionary-based study: OED . 3.2 Other resources and tools .................................... . . . . . 3.3 YouTube-based study . . . . ...................................... . . . .

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4 Stress assignment in English

25 25 28 31 37 44 44 47 58

.................................... . . . . . 68 4.1 Monosyllables .... . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................... 69 4.2 Disyllables ........ . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................... 70 4.2 . 1 Stress preservation ...................................... . . . . 71 4.2.2 Segmental length . . . ..................................... . . . . 80 4.2.3 Suffix-like endings ............ 87 4.2.4 Hiatus resolution and I or vowel elision ........ . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 89 4.2.5 Disyllables as parts of longer words ............. . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 4.2.6 Rhythm, emphasis, and semantics 91 4. 2 . 7 Compounds . . . . . . . . . . ...................................... . 96 4.2.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...................................... 97 4 .3 Three and more syllables ...................................... . . . . 97 4.3.1 Suffixed and back-derivatives ..................... . . . . . . . . . . 98 4.3.2 Prefixation ............ 104 .

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Contents

VI

4.3.3 More on penultimate stress 4.3.4 Stress non-preservation ............................... . . . . . 4.3.5 Stress shifts 4.3.6 Segmental length in trisyllables ................... . . . . . . . . . 4.3.7 Suffix-like endings 4.3.8 Heavy ults in trisyllables ............................. . . . . . . 4.3.9 Foreignness 4. 3. 10 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................... 4.4 Secondary stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................... 4.5 Concatenations of words . ..................................... . . . 4.6 Across-varietal differences? .

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5 Case studies

........... . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................. 5.1 Stress variation in the OED 5. 1 . 1 Overall results 5. 1.2 Degree-of-stress variation 5. 1.3 Location-of-stress variation 5. 1.3.1 Penultimate vs. antepenultimate stress ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 1.3.2 Final vs. penultimate stress 5. 1.3.3 Final stress vs. other stresses 5.1 .3.4 Other categories 5.1.4 Left-fright-prominence vs. word stress 5.1.5 Stresslessness 5.1.6 Hiatus resolution 5.2 Stress variation in YouTube .................................. . . . . 5.2 . 1 Overall results: YouTube vs. OED ................ . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Adjacent words 5.2.3 Vowel effect . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................... 5.2.4 More on stress non-preservation .................. . . . . . . . . . 5.2.5 More on disyllables ..................................... . . . 5.2.6 Final stress in trisyllables .............................. . . . . . 5.2. 7 Hiatus resolution . . . . ..................................... . . 5.2.8 Within-speaker variation ............................. . . . . . . 5.2.9 Summary .

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107 111 115 117 120 122 123 12 5 126 128 133 134 134 134 139 145 145 152 158 160 163 166 167 170 173 176 181 184 190 193 195 195 197

VI I 6 Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................... 199 6.1 English as a Germanic language ............................ . . . . . . . 199 6.2 Future work ........ . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................... 204 7 References

.............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................. 7 . 1 Dictionaries I databases and corpora ...................... . . . . . . . . . 7 .2 Software and online tools ..................................... . . . . 7 .3 Literature

8 Appendix 9 Index

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211 211 211 212 219

....................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............................. 235

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Professors Irmengard Rauch (University of California at Berke­ ley) and Jean-Michel Fournier (l'Universite Fran�ois-Rabelais, Tours), who re­ viewed this monograph for the Language in Performance series. It is difficult to say how many mistakes, inadequacies, inconsistencies, etc., this book would contain if not for, in particular, Prof. Fournier' s thorough critique of an earlier version of this manuscript. All remaining errors are, of course, entirely my own responsibility! My sincere gratitude goes also to the editor of the Language in Performance series, Professor Rainer Schulze (Leibniz Universitat Hannover), whose com­ ments on the structure of the book have made it more reader-friendly. To Prof. Schulze, my thanks are also due for adding this title to the Language in Perfor­ mance series! I also thank 1) Professors Ulrich Busse and Alexander Brock (Martin-Lu­ ther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg), for inviting me to present parts of this research in their Forschungskolloquium in October 2016; 2) the UC Berkeley Library (represented by Lydia Petersen), for providing access to its vast resourc­ es, without which I would have been unable to write this book; 3) Samantha Tanner, whose native-speaker competence was of great help during the earlier stages of this project back in 20 14; and 4) a number of people-colleagues, fam­ ily, and friends-with whom I had the pleasure of discussing this topic during the many years I spent studying English stress. Some of these people include, in alphabetical order, Denis Balagurov, Sergei Danilov, Yuri Dyomin, Tibaut Houzanme, Natalia Peters, Karen Sullivan, and Viktor Treshchev. For their moral support and much more, I thank my parents Boris and Natalia Tokar. The book is dedicated to them!

Abbreviations

4 5 6

a BNC c

CDO COCA d H H L L L

LDOCE MRC MWO OD OED p r u v V:

i

stressed pre-antepenult or pre-antepenultimate stress stressed pre-pre-antepenult or pre-pre-antepenultimate stress stressed pre-pre-pre-antepenult or pre-pre-pre-antepenultimate stress stressed antepenult or antepenultimate stress British National Corpus consonant Cambridge Dictionaries Online Corpus of Contemporary American English double-prominence/double-prominent accentuation heavy syllable stressed heavy syllable left-prominence/left-prominent accentuation light syllable stressed light syllable Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English MRC Psycholinguistic Database Merriam-Webster Online Oxford Dictionaries Oxford English Dictionary stressed penult or penultimate stress right-prominence/right-prominent accentuation stressed ult or final stress short vowel long vowel/diphthong/triphthong chi-squared test statistic

1 Introduction

This monograph is about English words with stress doublets, i.e., words in which stress is interchangeably placed upon more than one syllable without changing the meaning. For example, in the YouTube video whose unique iden­ tifier is -AnsohxXnQU (17. 09. 2016; to retrieve the video the identifier should be preceded by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=), an American English speak­ er can be heard stressing applicable initially in This name change will be more functionally 'applicable (00:01 :25.899 00:01 :33.979), but in we've made the name change to make it more applicable (00:03:01.980 00:03:04.880), the very same American English speaker can be heard using the stress pattern ap'plica­ ble. (According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (henceforth LDOCE), the variation /g 'pl1kgbgl/ vs. / ' repl1kgbgl/ occurs in both British and American English, but observe that in YouTube videos featuring the voices of British English speakers, the author heard only the stress pattern /g 'pl1-/.) A very similar case is adult, which in British and American English is interchange­ ably stressed I ' redAlt/ and I g ' dAlt/ (LDOCE) (with, however, initial stress being the preferred stress pattern in British and Australian English vs. final stress being more frequently used (than initial stress) in American English); a You­ Tube video in which a British English speaker can be heard vacillating between / ' redAlt/ and /g ' dAlt/ is S5hXrgfwK8o (10. 04. 2017). -->

-->

1.1 Scope of the study

In addition to the obvious questions raised by variably-stressed words such as applicable and adult-I) What are the causes of stress variation exhibited by these and other English words with stress doublets? 2) Why do only some English words have stress doublets? 3) Do words with stress doublets prefer particular stress patterns and if so, why?-the present monograph will attempt to give a more precise answer to the general question of why English words (either with or without stress doublets) are stressed the way they are stressed. According to a popular view, Present-day English is a Latin-like language as far as its stress system is concerned (Hayes 1995: 181). Thus, since ''[i]n the three hundred years that intervened between the Norman Conquest and Chaucer, the [English] language was inundated by Romance words'' (Halle & Keyser 1971: 97), the stress rule of contemporary English is essentially the stress rule of Clas-

4

1 Introduction

sical Latin: ''Stress falls on the penultimate syllable if it contains a long vowel or is closed. [. . .] Else stress is antepenultimate'' (van der Hulst 2010a: 459). An illustration is the word paprika, which in British English, according to LDOCE, is interchangeably stressed / 'prepr1kg/ and /pg 'pri:kg/. As one can notice, when stress in paprika is penultimate, the vowel in the penultimate syllable / ' pri:/, which bears stress, is long. When, by contrast, paprika is pronounced / 'prepr1kg/, the vowel in the unstressed penult /pr1/ is short. The stress patterns / ' prepr1kg/ and /pg ' pri:kg/ can thus both be said to be in accordance with the Latin Stress Rule. At the same time, however, in the case of the stress variation I ' £kskw1z1t/ vs. /1k ' skw1z1t/ (Oxford English Dictionary, henceforth OED), the vowel in the penultimate syllable remains short irrespective of whether stress in exquisite is penultimate or antepenultimate. Similarly, it does not matter whether stalactite and stalagmite are stressed pen- or antepenultimately. In both / ' strelrekta1t/ vs. /stg ' lrekta1t/ (OED) and / ' strelregma1t/ vs. /stg ' lregma1t/ (OED), there is a short vowel in the penult that is followed by a coda consonant, i.e., /lrek/ and /lreg/; stress in the trisyllables stalactite and stalagmite is thus supposed to be penulti­ mate in accordance with the Latin Stress Rule. A fairly similar case is necropsy, for which the OED gives segmentally identical British English transcriptions I ' n£kmpsi/ and In£ ' kropsi/: As one can notice, these transcriptions differ from each other only with regard to the location of the stress symbol ( ). Similar examples can be found among disyllabic English words, which are not covered by the Latin Stress Rule, stating that ''[i]n words with 2 or fewer syllables, primary stress occurs on the initial syllable'' (StressTyp2 database), i.e., in contrast to a disyllabic English word, in which stress is either initial or final (e.g., / ' redAlt/ vs. /g ' dAlt/ of adult), in a disyllabic Latin word, stress can only be initial, i.e., '

Words with a heavy penultimate syllable receive penultimate stress, words with a light penult receive antepenultimate stress, and in all other cases where a word is too short to obey these laws, stress falls as far as possible to the left. (Hayes 1995: 50)

According to van der Hulst (2010a: 445), in the English language ''[p]rimary stress falls on the final syllable in nouns if the vowel is long, in verbs if the vowel is long or there are two closing consonants:' The diachronic basis of this assertion is the view, expressed in Halle & Keyser ( 1971: 99- 101 ), that the stress system of contemporary English was shaped not only by Latin but also by (Old) French: The nonnative vocabulary of Chaucer consisted of two types of words, namely learned words largely of Latin origin and everyday words borrowed from Old French or An­ glo-Norman. These two classes had different stress patterns. (Halle & Keyser 197 1 : 99)

1.1 Scope of the study

5

A convincing critique of this view can be found in Fournier (2007: 232), who argues that: French stress is not a central component of English stress, an analysis confirmed by history: most words of all lengths stressed on the final are relatively late borrowings, from the 17th century onwards. (Fournier 2007: 232; author's italics)

From a purely synchronic perspective, the view that final stress in English cru­ cially depends upon the length of the vowel in the final syllable I the number of closing consonants when the vowel is short cannot be accepted because especially words with stress doublets provide too many counterexamples. For instance, for the verb migrate the OED gives segmentally identical British Eng­ lish transcriptions lmAI ' gre1t/ vs. I ' mA1gre1t/ and the American English tran­ scription / ' ma1 , gre1t/, i.e., migrate is always pronounced with a diphthong in the ult (which counts as a long vowel), but stress in migrate is not always final in Present-day English. A similar case is the adjective overt, for which LDOCE gives segmentally identical British English transcriptions / ' guv3 :t/ vs. /gu 'v3:t/ and American English transcriptions / ' ouv3 :rt/ vs. /ou 'v3:rt/. The adjective un­ der consideration is thus also always pronounced with a long vowel in the ult, even when stress in overt is non-final. The noun decade is interchangeably stressed / ' deke1d/ and /de 'ke1d/ (LDOCE), with both the stressed ult / 'ke1d/ of the latter and the unstressed ult /ke1d/ of the former containing a diphthong. Of the 268 variably-stressed disyllables in LDOCE (including words such as caffeine, which, according to the dictionary, is stressed only / ' krefi:n/ in British English vs. only /kre 'fi :n/ in American English), 173 ("'64.55 3) are disyllables such as caffeine, in which stress differences are not accompanied by segmental differences involving the quality of the vowel in the ult. Thus, if the ult bearing stress contains a long vowel or diphthong, then also the unstressed ult of an initially-stressed alternative pronunciation likewise contains a long vowel or diphthong (e.g., /kre 'fi:n/ vs. / ' krefi:n/ of caffeine). Similarly, if the ult bearing stress contains a short vowel, then (a qualitatively unreduced) short vowel also occurs in the ult of an initially-stressed alternative pronunciation. E.g., address is, according to LDOCE, only /g ' dres/ in British English, but it is /g ' dres/ vs. I ' redres/ in American English. The ult /res/, which contains a short vowel (being followed by only one coda consonant), thus occurs in both the finally-stressed pronunciation /g ' dres/ and the initially-stressed alternative / ' redres/. (Notice, however, that in YouTube videos featuring the spoken occurrences of address, initial stress was heard by the author only in environments such as IP address or street address, whereas in contexts such as State ofthe Union Address, Gettysburg Address, inaugural address, commencement address, etc., where address expresses the meaning ''public speech;' stress in address was exclusively final. The varia-

6

1 Introduction

tion /g ' dres/ vs. / ' redres/ is thus, at least in part, a matter of semantics.) Anyway, the fact that disyllables such as caffeine and address constitute the majority of variably-stressed disyllables in English strongly suggests that the quality of the vowel in the ult plays a relatively insignificant role in the assignment of stress in disyllabic English words. Another important number is that in Oxford Dictionaries (henceforth OD), there are 48,428 solidly-spelled polysyllables whose only stress pattern (given in the dictionary) is non-initial stress. E.g., inhibit is stressed only /in' hibit/ (OD), with stress in the word not falling upon its first syllable /in/. Of the 48,428 poly­ syllabic words in the OD such as inhibit, 28,944 (,.., 59.77 3) have righthand strings such as, e.g., /- 'hibit/ of /in' hibit/, which occur in at least one other English word. E.g., apart from occurring in the transcription /in' hibit/ of inhibit, the righthand string /- 'hibit/, which begins with the primary stress symbol ('), also occurs in the transcription /prg(u) ' hibit/ of prohibit (OD). (The percentage of such cases rises to ,..,6 6.55 3 if, apart from counting only exact matches such as /- ' hibit/ of /in' hibit/ and /prg(u) 'hibit/, we ignore the onset of the primary-stressed syllable. E.g., /kg ' lutgmi/ of colotomy is the only transcription in the OD that contains the righthand string /- ' lutgmi/. At the same time, however, apart from /kg ' lutgmi/ of colotomy, the dictionary also has the transcription /lg ' butgmi/ of lobotomy, which shares with /kg ' lutgmi/ the righthand string /- ' -utgmi/.) Notice further that of the 48,428 polysyllabic words such as inhibit, 35,525 (,..,7 3.36 3) have transcriptions such as /in' hibit/, in which the righthand string that begins with the primary stress symbol (') is segmentally longer (i.e., con­ tains more phonetic segments, with the duration symbol (:) not counting as one of them) than the remaining lefthand string preceding it. Thus, for instance, the righthand string /-hibit/ of /in' hibit/ consists of four phonetic segments while the immediately preceding lefthand string /in/ has only two. (If also the duration symbol (:) is taken into consideration (e.g., in /fi ' ka:ggu/ of Chicago (OD), the righthand string /-ka:ggu/ consists of six rather than five phonetic segments), 36,0 17 (,..,7 4.37 3) non-initially-stressed words in the OD dictionary can be said to have segmentally longer righthand strings such as /-ka:ggu/ of /fi ' ka:ggu/.) The connection between these numbers is the Old English Stress Rule: ''Pri­ mary stress falls on the first syllable (of the root/ stem)'' (van der Hulst 20 10a: 446). Assuming that this rule is still alive in contemporary English, we can ar­ gue that inhibit is stressed /in' hibit/ because the righthand string - hibit counts morphologically as the root of the word. Thus, because apart from occurring in inhibit this righthand string also occurs in, e.g., prohibit, both inhibit and prohib­ it count for an English speaker as morphologically complex words consisting of the components in-/pro- and - hibit. These components do not have meanings of their own, but as many authors suggest, components of which morphologically

1.1 Scope of the study

7

complex English words are made up are not necessarily traditional morphemes (i.e., meaning-bearing units). As, e.g., Aronoff (1976: 12) aptly observes in this connection: ''What even vague sense does prefer share with confer and trans­ fer? or commit with remit and submit? or receive with conceive and perceive? or consume with presume and assume? or reduce with induce and deduce? None." The (purely formal) segmentation in-/pro- + - hibit raises, however, the ques­ tion of which of these components should count morphologically as the root of inhibit and prohibit, for the root is the only obligatory element in a word (e.g., Mel'cuk 200 1 : 69), i.e., a word may be affixless, but it may not be rootless: Any word contains at least one root. As Mel'cuk (2001: 69-79) explains, roots are different from affixes both semantically and formally. With regard to the former, roots are associated with more concrete meanings than those usually expressed by affixes. With regard to the latter, however, roots usually contain more seg­ ments than affixes (Mel'cuk 200 1 : 69). Needless to say, since the components in-/ pro- and - hibit are not associated with discernible meanings of their own, it is only the formal length-criterion that can be relied upon to answer the question of which of these two components counts in inhibit and prohibit as the root. Since the righthand component - hibit contains more segments than the lefthand components in-/pro-, the former is clearly more like a root whereas the latter are more like prefixes. Inhibit and prohibit are, therefore, both stressed /- ' h1b1t/, with the location of stress in these words being the root-prefix boundary location (and precisely because of this fact, it does not matter that the penult I ' hi/, which receives stress, ends in a short vowel and is thus not supposed to be stressed in accordance with the Latin Stress Rule). Likewise, given the numbers present­ ed above, it can be conjectured that similar analyses apply to the majority of non-initially-stressed English words. E.g., colotomy is stressed /kg ' lutgmi/ not (or at least, not only) because the penult /tg/ ends in a short vowel-stress in /kg ' lutgmi/ should thus be antepenultimate in accordance with the Latin Stress Rule-but (also) because the segmentally longer righthand string -otomy, which colotomy shares with lobotomy, counts morphologically as the root. Consider also the stress variation I 'uks1d31ne1t/ vs. /uk ' s1d3gne1t/ of oxygenate (OED; only British English). To begin with, observe that in the view of many authors, suffixes in English have intrinsic properties with regard to stress; e.g., Kettemann (1988: 290) speaks of a diacritic feature that is contained in the lexi­ con entry dedicated to a particular English suffix. This diacritic feature is what triggers, in a particular suffixed derivative, a particular stress-related behavior. Thus, for instance, it can be stated that Anglo-Saxon suffixes never affect the stress of the words to which they are added [ . . .] . Of the others, some, like -esce, take a stress themselves in addition

8

1 Introduction to the stress on the root-word [. . .] ; others, like -ion, invariably throw the stress on to the syllable preceding them [ . . .] ; while others again throw it on to the second syllable before them. (Kingdon 1949: 148)

A challenge to views similar to this is, however, p osed by ''mixed suffixes;' which ''have two or more distinct modes of operation'' (Fudge 1 984: 45). E.g., the suffix -ate of / ' uksid31ne1t/ is a stress-neutral suffix: Stress in the derived verb oxygenate falls upon the same syllable as in the base noun oxygen: / ' uks1d3(g)n/ (OD). Similarly, vaccinate is stressed I ' vaks1ne1t/ (OD) because vaccine is stressed / ' vaksi:n/ (OD) whereas adsorbate is /ad ' sa:be1t/ or /ad ' za:be1t/ (OD) because ad­ sorb is /gd ' za:b/ or /gd ' sa:b/ (OD); the suffix -ate thus again acts as a stress-neu­ tral suffix. In /uk ' s1d3gne1t/, by contrast, the very same suffix -ate acts as a stress-shifting suffix, causing the derived verb oxygenate to have a different stress pattern than the base noun oxygen. What is interesting about the case of oxygenate is that the preferred stress pattern of this verb is not the preferred stress pattern of a similar variably-stressed -ate-derivative hydrogenate, which is I ' ha1drgud3gne1t/ vs. /ha1 ' dmd3gne1t/ according to the OED. Of 69 native English speakers who were found to have pronounced oxygenate in YouTube videos, everybody (100 3) used initial stress in this verb, i.e., / ' uk-/, but of 14 native English speakers who were found to have pronounced the verb hydrogenate, 1 0 ("'71 .43 3) used the antepenultimately-stressed version /ha1 ' dm-/. In agreement with these findings, the OD gives for oxygenate only the initially-stressed tran­ scription / 'uks1d3gne1t/, whereas in the case of hydrogenate the transcription /ha1 ' dmd3gne1t/ is placed before the transcription I ' hA1drgd3gne1t/. This stress difference can only be accounted for if we assume that (for the majority of con­ temporary English speakers) hydrogenate is not a suffixed but prefixed deriva­ tive, with the segmentally longer righthand string -rogenate, which hydrogenate shares with nitrogenate (vacillating, according to the OD, between the stress patterns / ' nA1trgd31ne1t/ and lnA1 ° tmd31ne1t/), counting morphologically as the root and hence receiving stress on its first syllable. Oxygenate is, by contrast, the only -ygenate-word in the OD dictionary; English speakers have therefore no reasons to morphologically segment oxygenate into the prefix ox- and the root -ygenate (or into the prefix o- and the root -xygenate). The morphological structure of oxygenate is thus oxygen + -ate, i.e., the verb is a genuine -ate-de­ rivative and therefore, like other genuine -ate-derivatives, preserves the stress of its base oxygen. Another English suffix that has more than one distinct mode of operation with respect to stress is -al. Thus, for instance, while both the trisyllabic derivative personal and the disyllabic base person are stressed initially, I ' pg: s(g)n( g)1/ and I ' pg: s(g)n/ (OD), in the derivative-base pair parental vs. parent only the latter is

1.1 Scope of the study

9

stressed on the first syllable: /pg 'r£nt(g)l/ vs. / 'pc :r(g)nt/ (OD). It is tempting to say that the stress patterns of personal and parental are both in accordance with the Latin Stress Rule: In / 'pg:s(g)n( g)1/, stress is antepenultimate because the penult /sg/ ends in a short vowel, whereas in /pg ' r£nt(g)1/, stress is penultimate because the penult / ' r£nl is closed. Note, however, that also in the trisyllabic de­ rivatives parentage and parenthood, the penultimate syllable is closed, but they are nonetheless stressed / 0 p£:r(g)nt1d3/ and / ' pc:r(g)nthud/ (OD), preserving the initial stress of the disyllabic base parent. An alternative explanation is that the morphological structure of parental is not the ''correct'' (i.e., semantics-based) parent + -al but pa- + rental, i.e., the disyllabic righthand string rental, which occurs in English as a separate word, counts morphologically as the root and therefore attracts stress on to its first syllable. (Cf. /sat1s' fakt(g)ri/ of satisfactory and /u' kAlt/ of occult, whose righthand strings /- ' fakt( g)ri/ and /- 'kAlt/ also occur in the OD as the transcrip­ tion of the initially-stressed trisyllable factory/the monosyllable cult. Cases such as satisfactory-factory or occult- cult constitute ,.., 2 9.82 3 of the 48,428 non-initially-stressed polysyllabic words in the OD dictionary, i.e., in 14,440 non-initially-stressed English words, the righthand string that begins with the primary-stressed syllable also occurs in the OD as the transcription of either an initially-stressed polysyllable or a monosyllable.) Likewise, simply because there is the word oral, mayoral is in American English stressed not only / ' me1gr(g)l/ (OED), preserving the stress of mayor, but also /me1 ' ar(g)l/ (OED); pastoral is (also in American English) stressed not only / 'prestgr(g)l/, preserving the stress of pastor, but also /pres ' tar(g)l/ (OED); electoral is, according to Merriam-Webster Online, not only e' lectoral, preserving the stress of elect(or), but also elec 'toral. In the YouTube video l oTFB9wdG14 (14. 06. 2016), the stress pattern cli'toral is used by an American English speaker whereas in InJCUDOK2co (14. 06. 2016) a British English speaker can be heard saying cli'toral; a YouTube video in which clitoral is interchangeably stressed 'clitoral and cli'toral by one and the same English speaker is _U_wKwVj8i8 (14. 06. 20 16). These stress patterns strongly suggest that some Present-day English speakers analyze the ( t)oral of these words as the root, i.e., these -al-derivatives are for them not suffixed but prefixed derivatives. Another similar case is the variation I ' kant(g)n(g)1/ vs. /kan ' tun(g)1/ of cantonal (OD). In addition to regarding it as the inherited variation / 'kantun/ vs. /kan ' tun/ of canton (OD), the stress pattern /kan ' tun( g)1/ can also be seen as the preserved initial stress of the disyllabic tonal, which occurs in English as a separate word and may therefore (from a purely formal point of view) be perceived as the root of the trisyllabic cantonal. To reiterate, words with stress doublets challenge the popular assumption that stress in a polysyllabic English word should fall upon a particular syllable

10

1 Introduction

when it exhibits a particular segmental makeup (e.g., a long vowel in the pe­ nult). Additionally, cases of stress variation among suffixed derivatives raise the question of why in the case of some English suffixes, there is apparently more than one diacritic feature triggering a particular stress-related behavior. It is thus the author's hope that a systematic account of the phenomenon of stress variation, which will be presented in the following chapters of this monograph, will contribute to a better understanding of the general stress assignment prin­ ciples by which contemporary English speakers abide when deciding where to place stress in a polysyllabic English word.

1.2 Previous stud i es

With the exception of Berg's ( 1 999) study of stress differences between British and American English, none of the previous publications (on English stress) can be referred to as a systematic analysis of English words with stress doublets; the phenomenon of stress variation is only briefly touched upon in these publi­ cations as a side aspect of the more general issues pertaining to English stress. For example, Chomsky & Halle (1968: 73) observe that in the word umbilicus, which is interchangeably pronounced IAmb1 ' la1kgs/ and IAm ' b1l1kgs/ (OED), ''we have penultimate stress if the penultimate vowel is taken to be tense in the underlying representation, and antepenultimate stress if the penultimate vowel is taken to be lax." (Note that Chomsky & Halle (1968: 73) do not speak of long vs. short vowels because '' [i]n few cases in American English as a whole is time length, or duration, of vowels significant-that is, used to distinguish from each other words otherwise alike'' (Kenyon & Knott 1953[1944] : xxvi). E.g., the phonetic contrast between the ''long'' /i:/ of meal and the ''short'' /1/ of mill is in American English by and large a matter of vowel quality rather than of dura­ tion.) A problem with this explanation is, however, the above mentioned fact that apart from cases such as IAmb1 ' la1kgs/ vs. IAm ' b1l1kgs/, with stress being penultimate when the penult / ' la1/ is heavy vs. antepenultimate when the penult /11/ is light (the Latin Stress Rule is thus in both cases abided by), there are also cases such as / ' £kskw1z1t/ vs. /1k ' skw1z1t/, where stress differences do not corre­ late with segmental differences, i.e., stress in exquisite can be penultimate even when the vowel in the penult is phonetically realized as the short /1/. Another highly problematic explanation for the phenomenon of stress vari­ ation in English is Cruttenden' s (2008: 245) notion of rhythmic pressure. (Crut­ tenden (2008) is, however, the seventh edition of Gimson 's Pronunciation of English. An earlier edition of the same book (Gimson 1 970: 232) also mentions rhythmic pressures as one of the causes of stress variation in contemporary

1.2 Previous studies

11

English.) What is meant by this is that ''[i]n some words containing more than two syllables there appears to be a tendency to avoid a succession of weak syl­ lables, especially if these have /g/ or /1/'' (Cruttenden 2008: 245). For example, deficit is I ' d£f1s1t/ vs. Idi ' f1s1t/ (Cruttenden 2008: 246), with the latter pronunci­ ation representing in the view of the author a more rhythmic alternative to the former, i.e., the initially-stressed / ' d£f1s1t/ contains a sequence of two unstressed syllables both of which have the qualitatively reduced vowel /1/. Notice, how­ ever, that the OD dictionary has 3,466 initially-stressed words in which the first syllable, bearing stress, is followed by two unstressed syllables that have /g/ or /1/ in the nucleus position. E.g., in both / ' ald31brg/ (OD) and / ' an1m(g)l/ (OD), the stressed antepenults / ' al/ and / ' a/ are followed by the unstressed penult-ult sequences /d31brg/ and /n1m(g)l/, which contain the vowels /1/ and /g/. Of the 3,466 antepenultimately-stressed trisyllables such as algebra and animal, only 58 ("'1.67 3) are, according to the OD, also pronounced by contemporary Eng­ lish speakers with penultimate stress. E.g., in addition to the above mentioned / ' papr1kg/ vs. /pg ' pri:kg/ of paprika (OD), also the adjective integral is inter­ changeably stressed / ' 1nt1gr(g)l/ and /1n° t£gr(g)l/ (OD). Observe now that apart from initially-stressed trisyllables such as algebra and animal, the OD also has 234 initially-stressed trisyllables such as, e.g., / ' a:ta:ki/ (OD). The unstressed penult-ult string in trisyllables such as autarky contains any long or short vowel with the exception of /g/ or /1/. Of the 234 initial­ ly-stressed trisyllables such as autarky, five ("'2.14 3) are, according to the OD, also pronounced by contemporary English speakers with penultimate stress. E.g., in addition to the above mentioned / ' nckropsi/ vs. /n£ 0kmpsi/ of necropsy (OD), also autopsy is stressed both / ' a: tupsi/ and /a: ' tupsi/ (OD), conversely is interchangeably / ' kunvg: sli/ and /kgn 'vg: sli/ (OD), covertly is both / 'kguvg:tli/ and /kgu 'vg:tli/ (OD), and patchouli is / 'patJuli/ and /pg ' tfu:li/ (OD). Since the difference of 58 I 3,466 vs. five I 234 does not count as statistically significant-x (1) 0.281, p 0.5959-we can claim that trisyllables such as algebra and animal are in contemporary English not more frequently interchangeably pronounced with antepenultimate and penultimate stress than trisyllables such as autarky. Notice also that among the examples provided by Cruttenden (2008: 246) to substantiate his claim that '' [h] esitancy and variation of accentual pattern occurring at the present time are the result of rhythmic [ . . .] pressures [. . .] '' (Cruttenden 2008: 245) is also the word acumen, which, according to LDOCE, is / ' rekjgmgn/ vs. /g ' kju:mgn/ (cf. the OED, where acumen is only / ' akj�mgn/ as far as the British variety is concerned). As one can see, when stress in acu­ men is antepenultimate, the unstressed vowels in the ult and the penult may undergo qualitative reduction, yielding thereby the rhythmically unfortunate pronunciation I ' rekj gmgn/: This pronunciation contains a sequence of two weak =

=

12

1 Introduction

syllables, both of which have schwas. Note, however, that according to the OED, ''[pJ ronunciation with stress on the first syllable was first noted in the mid 20th cent:'; the original pronunciation of acumen was the penultimately-stressed /g 'kju:m1n/, which etymologically is due to the Latin acumen, in which stress is penultimate because the vowel in the penultimate syllable is long. Proceeding from Cruttenden' s (2008: 245) notion of rhythmic pressure, the pronunciation /g ' kju:m1n/ should be seen as a more fortunate pronunciation of acumen with respect to rhythm (compared to pronunciations in which the stress is antepe­ nultimate), but it has nonetheless been abandoned in British English in favor of the presumably less rhythmic antepenultimately-stressed pronunciation / ' akj�mgn/. Likewise, of 84 General American English speakers whose voices could be heard in YouTube videos containing the spoken occurrences of acu­ men, only four ("'4.76 3) pronounced the word with a penultimate stress. Thus, we can say that not only in British but also in American English, the stress in acumen is close to becoming exclusively antepenultimate. It is fairly obvious, then, that if the variation between penultimate and antepenultimate stress in acumen did indeed have anything to do with rhythm in the sense of Cruttenden (2008: 245), we would now be observing a different tendency: More rhythmic pronunciations with stress on the middle syllable would be supplanting less rhythmic pronunciations with stress on the first syllable. Interestingly, in stark contrast to Cruttenden (2008: 245), Friederich (1967: 25) notes that ''[i]n dreisilbigen Wortern die Mittelsilbe zu betonen, ist ein Rhyth­ mus, der dem Englander nicht sonderlich liegt;' i.e., placing stress upon the middle syllable in a trisyllabic word is a rhythm that an English speaker does not particularly like. To substantiate this claim, Friederich ( 1 96 7: 25) refers to stress shifts such as /kgm ' p£nse1t/ -7 / 'kumpgnse1t/ (OED), which were undergone by many -ate-trisyllables. E.g., apart from compensate, also concentrate, confiscate, contemplate, demonstrate, illustrate, infiltrate, inundate, etc. were originally pro­ nounced with penultimate stress but have over the course of time abandoned this stress pattern in favor of antepenultimate stress (OED). At the same time, however, some -ate-trisyllables still prefer penultimate to antepenultimate stress. E.g., for demarcate, elongate, and impregnate, LDOCE gives only penulti­ mately-stressed American English transcriptions /di ' ma:rke1t/, /1 ' ln:IJge1t/, and /1m'pregne1t/ (whereas in British English, these verbs are stressed / ' di : -/, / ' i : -/, and / ' 1m-/). More generally, Present-day English would have relatively few pe­ nultimately-stressed trisyllables if this stress pattern were indeed dispreferred by English speakers (in trisyllabic words). LDOCE has, however, (no less than) 2,479 penultimately-stressed trisyllables (vs. 4,979 antepenultimately-stressed ones). Penultimate stress in a trisyllabic English word is thus without a doubt not a marginal stress pattern.

1.2 Previous studies

13

Another aspect pertaining to rhythm is the English Rhythm Rule. Because ''adjacent stressed syllables make speech sound jerky'' (Kingdon 1 949: 149) and because some English words vacillate between final and non-final stress, Eng­ lish is believed to have ''a rule that shifts a stress leftward when a stronger stress follows;' resulting in alternations such as thir teen ,.., ' thirteen men (Hayes 1995: 1 8). It is acknowledged, though, that ''the Rhythm Rule is optional, at least in certain contexts'' (Hayes 1 995: 18). For example, Langendoen (1975: 207), who is a native speaker of English, reports that for him, final stress in Detroit in the combination Detroit Lions is as acceptable as initial stress; similarly, in the com­ bination Marlene Deetz, final stress in the modifier Marlene is interchangeable with initial stress. Halle & Vergnaud (1987: 271, f. 29) also mention that the word-internal application of the Rhythm Rule [ . . .] is restricted to lexical com­ pounds. This explains why retraction is (almost) obligatory in Marcel Proust, but al­ most impossible in Marcel left: the former is a lexical compound, whereas the latter is formed in the syntax. The optionality of stress retraction in Marcel's book would then be attributed to the ambiguous nature of the construction: it can be analyzed either as a lexical compound or as a syntactic construction. In the former case retraction is obligatory; in the latter it is impossible. The difference is brought out more clearly by such examples as We know about Marcel's book, but not yet about Mary's. In this sentence Marcel's book must be pronounced without retraction because the pronomi­ nal relation that holds between book and the empty noun following Mary's forces the syntactic analysis of the collocation. (Halle & Vergnaud 1987: 271, f. 29)

Sometimes it is also added that the English Rhythm Rule ''tends to apply in frequent words, e.g., antique book, and not in rare ones, e.g., arcane sort!' (Kras­ ka-Szlenk & Z ygis 2012: 327). Thus, of the finally-stressed modifiers antique and arcane, the former, which is more frequent than the latter, is likely to be initially-stressed as / ' rent1k/ (OED) rather than finally-stressed as /ren ' ti:k/ (OED) when the immediately following head word is either a monosyllable or an in­ itially-stressed polysyllable; by contrast, in the less frequent arcane, stress is likely to stay final in a similar environment. Unfortunately, statements such as these, which describe when the English Rhythm Rule should apply and when it should not, are as a rule based not upon extensive corpus or experimental studies but upon authors' own introspective judgments of how particular English words in which stress is normally final are supposed to be stressed when in an immediately following head word stress is initial. A fortunate exception is Mompean (2014), who has recently studied the stress variation exhibited by the English cardinal numerals ending in - teen and the corresponding ordinal numerals ending in - teenth. For this purpose the

14

1 Introduction

author has drawn a corpus of 1 ,263 newscasts from the BBC World Service Web site. These newscasts were recorded between 1 999 and 2009 and feature mainly RP accents, i.e., British English speakers whose accent is Received Pronuncia­ tion. As the author reports: The analysis of the corpus provides empirical evidence to suggest an informed answer to the research question of the present study, namely how variable stress shift is in expressions involving teen numbers in a corpus of spoken RP speech. The analysis shows that out of the 343 potential cases of stress shift identified, 329 actually involved stress shift (95. 9 3) whereas stress shift did not apply in the remaining 14 potential cases (4.1.3). This shows that stress shift is the rule, rather than the exception, in po­ tential cases involving teen numbers as the first constituent of a compound or as the modifier of a head noun in a noun phrase. (Mompean 2014: 155)

Note, however, that these results do not automatically corroborate the reality of the rhythm rule in English. Thus, Mompean (2014: 156) also reports that in his corpus ''head nouns often designate fractions of 1 00 such as per cent (14 cases) or multiples of ten such as hundred, thousand, million and billion (31 potential cases), with stress shift applying in all potential cases except six." If the so-called English Rhythm Rule is essentially nothing more than a stress clash avoidance strategy, why is stress also retracted in combinations such as thirteen per cent, in which a - teen-numeral modifies a non-initially-stressed head? That is, since the pronunciation thirteen per 'cent would not involve a stress clash, why is thirteen per cent nonetheless as a rule pronounced ' thirteen per ' cent? (A possible answer to this question is that also a one-syllable distance between two syllables bear­ ing stress is not entirely unproblematic with regard to rhythm. Thus, ''adjacent stresses are strongly avoided; stresses that are close but not adjacent are less strictly avoided; and at a certain distance (perhaps four syllables) the spacing becomes fully acceptable'' (Hayes 1 995: 372). E.g., retraction of stress in thirteen per cent occurs because in thir teen per ' cent only one unstressed syllable would separate two stressed ones. A similar example, discussed by Cruttenden (2008: 296), is the alternation West minster ,.., ' Westminster Abbey, where there is also no more than one unstressed syllable separating two syllables bearing stress. An interesting case is the finally-stressed modifier Barack, Jbg 'ra:k/ (Diction­ ary.com), which in the combination Barack Obama is often initially-stressed as / 'brerrek/ (LDOCE) even though the stressed syllables in /bg 'rak ou ' bamg/ (Dictionary.com) are, again, separated from each other by one unstressed one. Retraction of stress in the finally-stressed modifier /bg' ra:k/ occurs even though the penult /bg/ contains a schwa and can thus be said to lack stress altogether, i.e., ''a syllable of English is completely stressless if its vowel is schwa'' (Hayes 1 995: 1 2). The point here is that the Rhythm Rule should, according to Hayes

1.2 Previous studies

15

(1995: 1 9), be ''unable to retract stress onto a completely stressless syllable;' i.e., the finally-stressed /bg' ra:k/ is supposed to be the only stress pattern of Barack, even when it modifies Obama. The alternation Ba' rack ,.., 'Barack Obama thus challenges Hayes' (1995: 19) assertion.) Another interesting fact regarding the stress of the - teen-cardinals is that ''the pattern with primary stress on the first syllable is more common when counting'' (Mompean 2014: 1 52). That is, when an English speaker counts from 1 3 to 19, she usually says ' thirteen, 'fourteen, fi ' fteen, 'sixteen, 'seventeen, 'eighteen, 'nineteen rather than ? thir teen, four teen, fifteen, six teen, seven' teen, eigh' teen, nine' teen. Since both the former and the latter pronunciations have a one-sylla­ ble distance between the syllables bearing primary stress, we cannot say that the initially-stressed version ' thirteen, 'fourteen, 'fifteen, 'sixteen, 'seventeen, 'eighteen, 'nineteen is from the point of view of rhythm better than the finally-stressed

thir teen, four teen, fif'teen, six teen, seven' teen, eigh' teen, nine' teen. Consider also compound dates involving the - teen-cardinals. When these oc­ cur in the beginning of a compound date (for instance, 1821 or 1882), stress in them is almost exclusively penultimate I initial. For instance, in the YouTube videos containing the spoken occurrences of eighteen, this numeral was found to occur in the beginning of a compound date such as 1821 and 1882 87 times. Stress in eighteen was initial in each of these spoken occurrences. By contrast, in compound dates where the - teen-cardinals occur in the end, there is consid­ erable variation. For example, compound dates that end in eighteen (e.g., 1618) were found to occur in YouTube videos 27 times. With final stress eighteen was found to have been pronounced in such compound dates 1 9 times (,.., 70.37 3), the initially-stressed 'eighteen was by contrast attested only eight times: ,..,2 9 .63 3. However, if we specifically consider the compound dates 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, and 1919, the results are different. These dates were found to occur in YouTube videos 367 times. With final stress, the components 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 occurring at the end of these dates were found to have been pronounced only 66 times (,.., 17. 98 3), whereas initially-stressed pronunciations could be heard by the author 301 times: ,.., 82.02 3. Needless to repeat, the English Rhythm Rule, for which alternations such as thir teen ,.., ' thirteen men are nothing more than a stress clash resolution strategy, cannot adequately account for the differences in the stress behavior that the numerals ending in - teen exhibit in the beginning vs. the end of compound dates such as 1821 and 1918. A less problematic explanation for why some English words have more than one stress pattern is emphasis. Emphatic stress shifts usually occur in prefixed words. Prefixes in English are generally stress-neutral (e.g., Cruttenden 2008: 241), but ''[w]hen there is contrast or when the idea expressed by the prefix is given special prominence, the prefix bears the primary stress and the base a

16

1 Introduction

secondary stress [. . .] '' (Poldauf 1984: 24). For example, triangle is supposed to be pronounced /tra1 ' reIJg(g)1/ (OED), with the location of stress in it coinciding with the location of stress in the disyllabic base angle, in which stress is initial. However, since a triangle is a geometrical figure that has three angles, in con­ trast to, e.g., a rectangle, which contains four right angles, stress in triangle is also frequently placed upon the semantically important prefix tri-: / ' traireIJg(g)1/ (OED; cf. the more synchronically oriented OD, which gives for triangle only the prefix stress I ' trAiaIJg( g)l/; likewise, in YouTube videos featuring more than 3,000 spoken occurrences of this prefixed derivative, the root stress I- ' reIJg(g)1/ was heard by the author only once. The prefix stress / ' trAI-/ can thus be said to have over the course of time become the word's default stress pattern). A similar case is / ' sAbmgri:n/ vs. / , sAbmg ' ri:n/ of submarine (LDOCE), with the latter pronunciation preserving the stress of the disyllabic base marine: /mg 'ri:n/ (LDOCE) vs. the former pronunciation emphasizing via stress the prefix sub-, which distinguishes submarine from other English marine-formations (cf. aq­ uamarine, supermarine, transmarine, ultramarine, etc.); note also that especially the meaning of supermarine, ''[t]hat is situated, takes place, or operates above or on the surface of the sea'' (OED; boldface mine), is the spatial opposite of the meaning of submarine, ''[t]hat exists or occurs under the surface of the sea'' (OED; boldface mine). An interesting example is defense vs. offense. In YouTube videos featuring the spoken occurrences of defense, prefix stress could be attested only in sports-re­ lated contexts, namely, when defense is used to refer to actions of a team in a game of sports (especially basketball or American football) when the team does not possess the ball (used in the game). Similarly, when offense is pronounced / ' a , f£ns/ or / ' a , f£ns/ (OED), it invariably refers to actions taken by the team while it possesses the ball. In other contexts, stress in both defense and offense stays final. Examples include self-defense, secretary or ministry of defense, de­ fense forces, legal or criminal defense, defense attorney, defense mechanism, Ph.D. defense, in defense of, etc. Regarding sports, pronunciations with stress falling upon the ult were heard only in chess-related contexts (e.g., Alekhine's Defense). The obvious explanation for this difference is that it is only ball games such as basketball or American football where we find such a prominent semantic op­ position between defense (actions of a team without the ball) and offense (actions while possessing it). In stark contrast: A Ph.D. thesis can only be defended but not offended; there is no such thing as Ph.D. offense understood as the semantic opposite of Ph.D. defense. Similarly, there are secretaries of defense, but there are no secretaries of offense. As for the more difficult chess-example, there is no doubt that just like actions of a team in a game of basketball or American football, chess-players' actions can also be classified into defensive and offensive

1.2 Previous studies

17

actions. Note, however, that terms such as Alekhine's Defense, Sicilian Defense, etc. denote instances of chess openings, which are usually classified into defens­ es and attacks (rather than offenses). Thus, there can only be Alekhine's Defense vs. Alekhine's Attack, but not *Alekhine's Offense. Hence, also in the case of chess-opening names such as Alekhine's Defense, the meaning of defense is not the opposite of the meaning of offense. Stress in defense in names such as Alekh­ ine's Defense, Sicilian Defense, etc. therefore also stays final. The stress patterns exhibited by the words defense and offense in different semantic environments thus corroborate Friederich' s (1967: 62) assertion that ''[a]m haufigsten findet sich emphatische Betonung natiirlich zum Ausdruck des Gegensatzes oder Kon­ trastes;' i.e., since emphatic stress usually serves the expression of opposition or contrast, initial stress in defense and offense occurs only in those environments where the meanings of these two -fense-words do indeed semantically contrast with each other. Emphatic stress shifts occur not only in words beginning with a prefix but also in words ending in a suffix. For example, in mortgagor- mortgagee it is the suffixes -or and -ee that bring about a contrast between borrowers and lenders in a mortgage. Therefore, in addition to stressing, e.g., mortgagor/'ma:g1d3g/ (OED; b oth British and American English), preserving the stress of the base noun ' mortgage, this derivative can also be pronounced / , ma:gi' d3a :/ (OED; British and American English), with the semantically and formally important suffix -or receiving stress. A similar case is registrar, which is stressed /- ' stra:/ vs. I ' re-/ in British English and only / ' re-/ in American English (OED). Given a contrast between registrars (those who keep registers) and registrees (those who register or are registered by others), the stress /- ' stra:/ seems to represent an emphatic alternative to the base stress / ' re-/. (Etymologically, final stress in the shorter English word registrar is due to antepenultimate stress in the longer Latin word registrarius. Since, however, contemporary English speakers-who by and large do not have any command of Latin-no longer remember this historical etymol­ ogy, the stress pattern of registrarius in the source language Latin should not be a factor determining the stress pattern of registrar in the source language Eng­ lish.) The same seems to be true of /'fi:tjugrgt/ vs. /fi:tj ug ' ret/ offeaturette (OED) as well as /br1 ' ket/ vs. / 'br1k1t/ of briquette (OED). Because diminutiveness and artificiality are important aspects of the meanings offeaturette and briquette-''A short feature film or programme'' (OD) and ''A block or slab of artificial stone'' (OED)-the suffix -ette, which expresses these meanings in featurette and bri­ quette, is on some occasions emphasized via stress. Notice also that several English suffixes capable of attracting stress (on to themselves; hence ''autostressed'' in Fudge's (1984: 40) terminology) have a neg­ ative connotation (which is why-as, e.g., Lutz (2009: 290) observes-''[i]n Mod-

18

1 Introduction

ern English, suffix-oriented accent is only rarely final''). This is especially true of the suffix -ese in formations such as academese, ''[t]he language or writing style of academic scholarship, especially when considered dry or over-compli­ cated'' (OD; boldface mine) and Brooklynese, ''[a]n uncultivated form of New York speech associated especially with the borough of Brooklyn'' (OD; boldface mine). Similarly, ''English nouns in which the suffix -ette designates a feminine role or identity have been perceived by many people as implying inferiority or insignificance: bachelorette; drum majorette; farmerette; suffragette; usherette." According to Dictionary.com, ''[o]f these terms, only drum majorette-or some­ times just majorette-is still widely used." Likewise: Nouns in -ess denoting occupation or profession are rapidly disappearing from Amer­ ican English. Airlines now refer to cabin personnel as flight attendants, not stewards and stewardesses. In the arts, authoress, editress, poetess, sculptress, and similar terms are either rejected or discouraged and almost always replaced by author, editor, poet, sculptor. Nouns in -ess designating the holder of public office are hardly ever encoun­ tered in modern American usage. Women holding the office of ambassador, may­ or, or governor are referred to by those titles rather than by the older, sex-marked ambassadress, mayoress, or governess. (Governess has developed a special sense in relation to childcare; this use is less common in the U. S. than in Britain.) Among other terms almost never used in modern American English are ancestress, directress, instructress, manageress, oratress, postmistress, and proprietress. [ . . .] Jewess and Ne­ gress are usually considered offensive today. (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/-ess, 30. 03. 20 17)

Note also that ''women are throughout history and across cultures defined by some kind of sexualization [ . . .] '', whereas ''men have historically figured as non-gendered, non-sexualized, neutered subjects, those who have no sex (de­ spite the attribution of sexual desire to men only) [. . .] '' (Baer 2008: 35 1). Because of this fact, many terms that are used to refer to women ''have sexual meanings. If women are referred to as 'chicks', [. . .] it is not just a reference to animals, but it is also a reference to a sexualized image'' (Baer 2008: 352). An -ess-formation, which emphasizes that the person referred to is female, is thus a priori emphatic in nature. That is why, some of the -ess-formations that have not, as of today, disappeared from the English language have an emphatic alternative to base stress. In contrast to, e.g., actress, which is stressed only I ' aktrgs/ (OD), with the suffix -ess acting as a stress-neutral suffix (Cruttenden 2008: 240), princess is, according to the OED, stressed /- ' sEs/ vs. / ' pr1n-/ in British English and / ' pr1n-/ vs. /- ' sEs/ in American English. (The YouTube data has revealed, however, that also in British English, the base stress / ' pr1n-/ is more frequently used than the suffix stress /- ' sEs/.)

1.2 Previous studies

19

Related to emphasis is what Torsuev called (1 960: 5, 6) the semantic factor of stress in the English language. This factor plays a role in, e.g., the stress variation / 'ju- ' es- ' e1/ vs. / 'ju-es-' e1/ of the alphabetism USA (Torsuev 1960: 5, 6). The semantic factor of English stress manifests itself in the variant / 'ju- ' es- ' e1/. Since the abbreviated components U, S, and A all contribute to the meaning ''USA;' primary stress in I 'ju- ' es- ' e1/ is placed upon each of the three syllables constituting the alphabetism USA. The alternative pronunciation / 'ju-es- ' e1/ is, by contrast, a manifestation of the rhythmic factor. Since, as pointed out above, ''adjacent stressed syllables make speech sound jerky'' (Kingdon 1949: 149), the middle syllable of the alphabetism USA is either completely destressed or its level of stress is demoted to secondary. Noteworthy are also (low) frequency of use and polysyllabicity, which in contrast to emphasis, are, however, not immediate causes of stress variation but rather its prerequisites. A comparison of the pronunciations of all 75,000 entries in Wells's dictionary yields 932 stress-divergent words. This set is found to differ from the entire lexicon in three respects of which the first appears to be more important than the others. The average frequency of the words is lower and their average length is higher. Furthermore, proper nouns are overrepresented. Generally, main stress falls further to the left in British than in American English, with the latter variety accommodating stress more in the word edges than the former. (Berg 1999: 123)

With regard to polysyllabicity, Berg (1999: 127) observes that while disyllabic items occur less often in the stress-divergent set than in the general set, the reverse is true of longer words. The comparison of disyllabic vs. longer words produces a statistically significant difference [ . . .] . This allows us to conclude that words with a stress difference are longer than those without. (Berg 1999: 127)

An explanation for the fact that words with stress doublets are more frequently found among ''longer words'' (i.e., words whose syllabic length is at least three) is that a disyllabic word cannot be derived from a variably-stressed monosyllab­ ic base (in which there is only one syllable to place stress upon) whereas a word of three and more syllables can be derived from a variably-stressed disyllabic base. Thus, since the bases of disyllabic derivatives are as a rule monosyllables (active � act + - ive), stress in the former can only be placed upon the only sylla­ ble constituting the latter, i.e., e.g., in the disyllabic derivative active stress can only fall upon the only syllable constituting the monosyllabic base act. Stress in disyllabic derivatives such as active is thus almost exclusively initial in contem­ porary English. (With final stress, falling upon the suffix, a disyllabic derivative whose base is monosyllabic is pronounced only when the meaning inherent in

20

1 Introduction

the suffix has a strong emphatic potential, such as, e.g., the meaning ''female sex'' of the suffix - ess of the above mentioned princess.) As for trisyllabic derivatives, consider, for example, adeptness, adulthood, adversely, Nobelist, overtly, etc. Each of these derivatives is, according to the OED, interchangeably pronounced with penultimate and antepenultimate stress because also their disyllabic bases adept, adult, adverse, Nobel, overt, etc. are in­ terchangeably pronounced with final and initial stress. (Note also that because, as pointed out above, / ' redAlt/ is the preferred stress pattern of adult in British English whereas American English speakers usually stress it /g ' dAlt/, also adult­ hood is more frequently stressed / ' redAlthud/ in British English vs. /g ' dAlthud/ in American English.) Similarly, among variably-stressed words whose syllabic length is at least four are many derivatives whose bases are variably-stressed trisyllables. For example, since the trisyllabic aberrant is / ' rebgrgnt/ vs. /g' b£rgnt/ and aberrance is / ' rebgrgns/ vs. /g 0 b£rgns/, the tetrasyllabic derivative aberrancy is / ' rebgrgnsi/ vs. /g 0 b£rgnsi/ (OED; only American English); since the trisyllabic consummate is / 'kuns(j)�mgt/ vs. /kgn' sAmgt/, the tetrasyllabic consummately is / 'kuns(j)�mgtli/ vs. /kgn' sAmgtli/ (OED); since the trisyllabic controvert is / ' kuntrgv3 :t/ vs. /kuntrg 'v3:rt/, the tetrasyllabic controvertist is / ' kuntrgv3:t1st/ vs. /kuntrg 'v3:t1st/ (OED). Aspirant is interchangeably /g' spa1grgnt/ and / ' respgrgnt/ (LDOCE; both in British and American English), with the former pronunciation being derived from /g ' spa1g/ of aspire (LDOCE) and the latter being due to / ' respgre1t/ of as­ pirate (LDOCE). That there is a connection between the meanings of the verbs aspire and aspirate is best illustrated by the popular Latin saying Dum spiro spe­ ro, which means ''I hope as long as I breathe." Similarly, from a semantic point of view it is not clear whether impactive, '' [h] aving a strong effect or influence'' (OD), should be regarded as a derivative from an 'impact, ''[a] marked effect or influence'' (OD), or from to im'pact, ''[h]ave a strong effect on someone or something'' (OD). The longer derivative impactive is therefore interchangeably stressed / ' 1mprekt1v/ and /1m 'prekt1v/ (OED). The morphological structure of advertisement that leads to the stress pattern /gd ' vg:t1zm(g)nt/ (which, accord­ ing to the OED, is the only stress pattern in British English while American English speakers prefer the stress pattern I ' redvgr, ta1zm(g)nt/) is advert + - ise + - ment, i.e., the etymon of the English word advertisement is, according to the OD, the Latin verb advertere, ''turn towards." Because the purpose of advertising is attracting other people's attention (to what is being advertised), the semantic connection between the finally-stressed verb advert, whose original sense was ''turn one's attention to;' later ''bring to someone's attention'' (OD), and the noun advertisement is still alive in Present-day English (which is corroborated by the fact that an advert occurs in British English as an informal shortening of adver-

1.2 Previous studies

21

tisement). A natural alternative to pronouncing advertisement /gd 'vg:t1zm(g)nt/, preserving the stress of the disyllabic base /gd 'vg:t/ (OD), is to pronounce it with the stress of the semantically related trisyllabic verb advertise: I ' advgtA1z/ (OD). Thus, the stress of advertisement is either the preserved final stress of to advert (British English) or the preserved antepenultimate stress of advertise (American English). Cases such as these, when more than one word can synchronically be re­ garded as the base form are, again, much more typical of trisyllables and longer words (i.e., one of the few similar cases that involve a variably-stressed disylla­ ble is solute, which means ''[t]he minor component in a solution, dissolved in the solvent'' (OD; boldface mine). In addition to counting as a back-derivative from solution, which leads to the stress pattern /su ' lju:t/ (OD), solute is, just like solvent, also initially-stressed as / ' sulju:t/ (OD), with the location of stress being the monosyllabic base solve.) To conclude, in contrast to Berg ( 1 999: 1 27), who argues that '' [l] ength thus appears to erode the integrity of a word's stress pattern. In other words, it en­ courages variability in lexical-stress placement;' the present monograph argues that the fact that words with stress doublets are more frequently found among words whose syllabic length is at least three is a relatively insignificant, fairly accidental consequence of the impossibility of deriving disyllabic words from variably-stressed monosyllabic bases. Apart from this, however, there is no in­ trinsic connection between syllabic length and stress variation. Both disyllables and longer words are stressed variably by English speakers only when there are reasons (e.g., emphasis) for this. As for (low) frequency of use, an obvious explanation, not requiring a detailed elaboration, is that ''infrequency [. . .] weakens the memory trace (or prevents it from growing strong in the first place) and thereby destabilizes the information to be remembered'' (Berg 1999: 13 7). An example might be albumenize, which, according to the OED, is pronounced only /rel ' bjumg ,na1z/ in American English, but it can be pronounced either al'b umenize or ' albumenize in British English. To find out whether stress in this verb in British English more frequently falls upon the first or the second syllable, the orthographic form albumenize was, together with the word-forms albumenizes, albumenized, and albumenizing, searched for on the YouTube Web site. Additionally, similar searches were performed with respect to the orthographic alternatives albumenise, albuminise, and albuminize, which, according to the OED, also occur in Present-day English. Unfortunately, however, neither the former nor the latter searches have returned any results, i.e., on the YouTube Web site there seem to be no videos in which the verb albumenize is pronounced by an English speaker at least one time. The non-ex­ istence ofYouTube videos featuring the spoken occurrences of albumenize thus

22

1 Introduction

clearly points to the status of the verb under analysis as a low frequency verb. Given this finding, however, it is important to emphasize that the infrequency of the verb albumenize is not the cause of the stress variation in it. The cause is that the base form albumen is pronounced both / ' relbjum1n/ and /rel ' bju:m1n/ (LDOCE). The derived verb albumenize thus merely inherits this stress variation from its base. At the same time, however, it is clear that the infrequency of the verb under consideration contributes to the fact that neither the pronunciation al'b umenize nor the pronunciation 'albumenize becomes the institutionalized pronunciation of albumenize, i.e., ''infrequency [. . .] weakens the memory trace (or prevents it from growing strong in the first place) and thereby destabilizes the information to be remembered'' (Berg 1999: 13 7). Do observe, however, that infrequency is not a conditio sine qua non of stress variation. To be stressed variably, an English word is not required to be a low frequency word. Thus of the variably-stressed English words discussed thus far, many are, according to LDOCE, high frequency words. E.g., address, adult, decade, princess, etc. A more recent study that just like Berg's ( 1 999), exclusively deals with varia­ bly-stressed English words is Henderson (20 10). The latter is, however, a small­ scale study aimed at establishing the preferred stress patterns of the words complex, create, economic, individual, Japanese, necessarily, and research, which are known to be stressed variably in Present-day English. What Henderson (2010) did was analyze how these variably-stressed words are pronounced by American English speakers whose voices can be heard in the videos available on the TED Web site (https://www.ted.com/talks, 10. 06. 2015); this Web site hosts transcribed conference talks dealing with ''Technology, Entertainment and Design'' (hence the abbreviation TED). The findings of Henderson's (20 10) study are as follows: The adjectival lexeme complex was more frequently stressed 'complex than com'plex; create was only stressed ere' ate and never 'create; econom­ ic was more frequently stressed eco' nomic than 'economic, individual was only stressed indi'vidual and never 'individual, Japanese vacillated between Japa' nese and 'Japanese, but this variation did not always constitute a stress clash avoid­ ance strategy, abiding by the English Rhythm Rule (e.g., Japa' nese ,.., 'Japanese 'language); necessarily was more frequently stressed neces'sarily than 'necessarily; research was more frequently stressed 'research than re' search (Henderson 2010: 106- 1 1 0). Needless to say, since only a handful of variably-stressed English words were object of Henderson's (2010) study, the findings reported by her do not justify any meaningful generalizations regarding the phenomenon of stress variation in Present-day English. To reiterate, several authors working on English stress have noticed that some English words have stress doublets, i.e., more than one stress pattern

1.2 Previous studies

23

corresponding to one and the same meaning. However, of the publications cited above, only Berg ( 1 999) can be regarded as a systematic study, i.e., the author has manually analyzed the stress patterns of all English words for which pho­ netic transcriptions are given in the 1 990' s edition of Longman Pronouncing Dictionary (Wells 1 990). Note, however, that Berg's (1 999) study is exclusively concerned with words that have different stress patterns in British vs. American English (e.g., combatant is, according to LDOCE, only / 'kumbgtgnt/ in British English vs. only /kgm ' bretnt/ in American English). Similar studies focusing upon across-varietal stress differences are Peng & Ann (2001), Van Rooy (2002), Wiltshire & Moon (2003), Simo Bobda (201 0), Krivokapic (201 3), Altmann & Kabak (2015), and Tan (201 5). These articles deal with either stress location differences or phonetic properties of stress, which (among other things) make varieties such as Nigerian English, Singapore English, Tswana English, Indian English, and Cameroon English phonetically different from British and Amer­ ican English (the two major contemporary English reference accents). Recall, however, that some English words have different stress patterns within one and the same Present-day English variety (and, as observed above, sometimes even identical English speakers can be heard pronouncing one and the same English word with more than one stress pattern). Recall also that the findings reported by Berg ( 1999) are based exclusive­ ly upon dictionary data: the 1 990' s edition of Longman Pronouncing Diction­ ary. However, even renowned lexicographic resources such as Longman or the OED do not always include all actually occurring stress patterns. E.g., locate is, according to LDOCE, only /lgu ' ke1t/ in British English vs. only I ' louke1t/ in American English. In disagreement with this, however, in the YouTube vide­ os aCMA9LlbQH4 (25. 05. 2017) and qlIGvOCtqXs (25. 05. 2017), British English speakers can be heard pronouncing locate with initial stress; to be more precise, in the former video locate is 'locate in I am drawing a map of Britain, just so I can 'locate where I have been (00:02:14. 1 60 00:02:26.590), but the very same British English speaker stresses locate finally in I am just going to roughly lo' cate these sketches (00:02:36.200 00:02:41.560). Similarly, in YouTube videos where locate is pronounced by American English speakers, the author could hear not only initially- but also finally-stressed pronunciations (with, however, the ini­ tially-stressed / ' louke1t/ being the more frequently-used stress pattern). A fairly similar case is the above mentioned paprika. In both LDOCE and the OED, this word is said to vacillate between the pronunciations / 'prepr1kg/ and /pg 'pri:kg/ only in British English, whereas in American English, stress in paprika is exclu­ sively penultimate: /pg 'pri:kg/. However, in YouTube videos in which paprika is pronounced by native English speakers, both British and American English speakers were heard to have stressed paprika pen- and antepenultimately, with, -->

-->

24

1 Introduction

however, the former stress pattern being more frequent than the latter both in British and American English.

1.3 Structure of the book

The present monograph thus aims to give a systematic account of the phenom­ enon of within-varietal stress assignment instability in Present-day English using both dictionary and corpus data (i.e., YouTube videos in which English words with stress doublets are actually pronounced by contemporary English speakers.) The monograph is organized in the following way. Chapter 2 first discuss­ es the phonetic properties of stress (i.e., differences between syllables bearing stress and syllables lacking it) and then summarizes the inventory of the stress assignment principles in the languages of the world (e.g., differences between fixed-stress languages and variable-stress languages). Chapter 3 elaborates upon methodological issues, such as, for example, the advantages and disadvantages of using YouTube as a corpus of spoken English. Using predominantly dic­ tionary data (LDOCE, OD, etc.), Chapter 4 will discuss the stress patterns of all English words, whereas the first section of Chapter 5 will be exclusively concerned with English words with stress doublets (i.e., the question of why some English words have more than one stress pattern). Finally, using YouTube data, the second section of Chapter 5 will clarify why, in the case of words with stress doublets, one stress pattern is as a rule more frequently used by contem­ porary English speakers than an alternative stress pattern, e.g., why Euclidean is considerably more frequently pronounced /ju: ' k11d1gn/ than /ju:k11 ' di: gn/, with both these pronunciations counting, according to the OED, as the legitimate pronunciations of Euclidean.

2 Theoretical preliminaries

Before proceeding to a more systematic analysis of the contemporary English stress system (i.e., principles governing the incidence of stress in English words), it makes sense to look at the physical nature of the phenomenon of linguistic stress. This chapter will therefore discuss phonetic differences between 1) syl­ lables bearing stress and syllables bearing accent, 2) syllables bearing primary stress and syllables bearing secondary stress, and, more generally, between 3) syllables bearing stress and I or accent and unstressed syllables. Additionally, the chapter will address stress placement from a cross-linguistic perspective, i.e., on the basis of which principles languages of the world, including English, stress words occurring in them.

2 .1 Stress vs. accent

Following authors such as Turk & Sawusch ( 1 997: 25), Cho et al. (2007: 2 18), Scarborough et al. (2009: 1 37), Plag et al. (201 1 ) , Mucke & Grice (2014: 48), etc., the present monograph will use the term accent in the sense ''pitch accent as a phonetic realization of phrasal stress;' whereas the term stress will be used in connection with other phonetic means (mainly duration) that English speakers rely upon in out-of-focus environments, in which a particular syllable bears only word but no phrasal stress. Whereas word stress mainly performs a con­ stitutive function, which means that it merely ''arranges syllables in words'' (Sokolova et al. 1997: 138- 1 39), phrasal stress ''indicates that a constituent con­ tains new or important information: it is focused' (Scarborough et al. 2009: 1 36; authors' italics). Regarding the phonetic realization of phrasal stress, consider, for instance, the combination working theory, which depending upon the meaning it ex­ presses is pronounced working theory or working theory. As Poldauf ( 1 984: 1 18) observes, when phrasal stress in this combination falls upon the righthand component theory, it means ''a theory that works or functions well." In the other case, i.e., when phrasal stress is placed upon the lefthand component working, the meaning is ''a theory that can be used as a point of departure for some work I a theory that is intended for work, working, or functioning." Phonetically, however, the difference is that while in working theory the vowel of the stressed syllable of the lefthand component working has a considerably higher pitch peak 1

1

1

26

2 Theoretical preliminaries

than the vowel of the stressed syllable of the righthand component theory, in working 'theory, by contrast, the stressed vowel of working and that of theory exhibit near-identical pitch peaks (Farnetani et al. 1 988). In other words, from the point of view of the speaker, working ' theory is actually 'working ' theory, i.e., ''both words are accented;' as Farnetani et al. (1988: 171) observe. Nonetheless, listeners ''incorrectly'' perceive the pronunciation 'working ' theory as working ' theory, which is most likely due to the unfulfilled expectation of the declination of pitch, normally occurring at the end of an intonation group (Farnetani et al. 1 988: 1 70). More recently, similar results have been obtained by Kunter (201 1), whose dissertation is concerned with the accentuation of Noun + Noun combinations, such as budget deficit: in right-prominent compounds, left and right elements have nearly indistinguishable pitch values, while the pitch of left elements is clearly higher than that of right ele­ ments if the whole compound is left-prominent (Kunter 20 1 1 : 89).

In other words, when budget deficit is pronounced 'budget deficit, the stressed syllable of the lefthand component budget is pitch-accented. When, however, budget deficit is pronounced budget 'deficit, both the stressed syllable of the lefthand component budget and the stressed syllable of the righthand compo­ nent deficit are pitch-accented, i.e., budget deficit is actually pronounced ' budget 'deficit but perceived to have been pronounced budget ' deficit. Even more recently, Kosling' s (2013) dissertation has studied the accentuation of triconstituent Noun + Noun + Noun combinations. Her main finding is that while in so-called right-branching combinations such as Boston [gang members] (= ''gang members who are from Boston or commit crimes in Boston'') there is usually ''a high pitch on both constituent Nl and constituent N2 and a clearly lower pitch on constituent N3;' left-branching combinations such as [credit card] companies (''companies that issue credit cards'') are normally characterized by ''a high pitch on constituent Nl but clearly lower pitches on both constituent N2 and constituent N3'' (Kosling 2013: 54). In other words, Boston gang members is accented 'Boston 'gang members, but credit card companies is accented 'credit

card companies. As for word stress, it is unfortunate that many authors do not distinguish between its phonetic realizations in accented and non-accented positions. A classic case is Fry (1958: 126), who described ''the all-or-none effect'' caused by changes in the fundamental frequency of a syllable, to which the impression that a particular syllable has a particular pitch level is intrinsically connected. What is meant by this all-or-none effect is that in a situation when a listener is required to make a subjective judgment as to which syllable in a word bears

2 . 1 Stress vs. accent

27

stress, a higher pitch peak of a particular syllable is capable of overriding the effect of a reduced loudness and shorter duration of the same syllable. In other words, a particular syllable is likely to be perceived as stressed even when that syllable only has a higher pitch peak, but is shorter and quieter than the other syllables co-occurring in the same word. Notice that Fry's (1958) experiments involved artificially-synthesized manipulations of the fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity of the syllables in the disyllabic words subject, object, digest, contract, and permit. His subjects listened to these manipulated pronun­ ciations and were then asked to indicate whether the words they had just heard were nouns or verbs. As the nouns subject, object, digest, contract, and permit are stressed initially, whereas in the corresponding orthographically identical verbs the stress is final, the participants' word-class membership judgments served simultaneously as stress-location judgments. Similar results were later obtained by Morton & Jassem (1 965), who studied how test persons' stress-location judgments were affected by manipulations of the pitch, duration, and intensity levels of the syllables occurring in the synthe­ sized pronunciations of the nonsense words *Soso, * Sisi, and * Sasa. Variations in fundamental frequency produced far greater effects than variations in either intensity or duration, a syllable being marked as stressed if it differed from the 'context' fundamental. A raised fundamental was more efficient than a lowered one. (Morton & Jassem 1965: 159)

A serious problem with the treatment of pitch as a cue of word stress is, how­ ever, the well-known fact that phrasal stress usually falls on the same syllable as lexical stress: When a word bears a pitch accent, that accent is usually attached to the syllable bearing lexical stress [ . . .] As a result, a single syllable can be simultaneously lexically stressed and pitch accented, for example, the syllable parin We drove to the 'PARty. For a word in isolation, then, lexical stress is necessarily confounded with phrasal pitch accent, and vice versa [ . . .] (Scarborough et al. 2009: 137)

The same does not, however, apply to out-of-focus positions, in which words do not constitute new or important information and thus do not receive phrasal stress. The determination of the phonetics of 'stress' (whatever kind) has turned out to be notoriously difficult [ . . .] Earlier assessments put duration, fundamental frequency and intensity central, in addition to other factors involving the relative 'strength' of pho­ nemes in 'stressed' syllables. [. . .] Some claimed that fundamental frequency takes the lead in all of this [ . . .] It was then shown that the big role of (changes in) fundamental

28

2 Theoretical preliminaries frequency results from the fact that the pitch properties of ' stressed' syllables are due to the fact that the examined words are uttered in isolation. This causes their 'stressed' syllable to be bearers of intonational pitch movement. When words are examined in positions where their syllables do not attract intonational pitch movement (in 'out-of­ focus' positions) it turns out that pitch is not a major cue at all, but rather duration, spectral tilt and other effects of articulatory force (which may include a small pitch rise). (van der Hulst 2012: 1508)

Indeed, much earlier than van der Hulst (2012: 1 508), Huss (1978: 86) had re­ ported that Stress oppositions between words like import =f:. import are audible in the nucleus of intonation contours where they are distinguished by fundamental frequency. In the post-nuclear position the opposition is neutralized: the two stresses are identical in terms of fundamental frequency, but measurably different in terms of intensity and duration. (Huss 1978: 86)

Similarly, an experimental study by Adams & Munro (1978), which was con­ cerned with word stress cues relied upon in naturally occurring connected speech, has demonstrated that ''duration was by far the most frequently used cue'' (Adams & Munro 1978: 125). Furthermore, even as far as in-focus positions are concerned, the all-or-none role of fundamental frequency was relativized by the findings of Mcclean & Tif­ fany (1973: 283), who had discovered that pitch level contrasts between stressed and unstressed syllables predominate only in initially-stressed (nonsense) disyl­ lables-Say */ ' sasa/ please-whereas in disyllables in which stress occurs final­ ly-Say */sa' sa/ please-the same contrast is mainly cued by duration.

2 .2 Pri m a ry stress vs. secondary stress

The importance of distinguishing between accented and non-accented positions is also exemplified by the (absence of the) phonetic contrast between primary­ and secondary-stressed syllables (in English). According to Plag et al. (20 1 1 : 362), There is a large body of literature available on the acoustic correlates of stress in English (probably starting with Fry, 1955, 1958), and there is a host of parameters that have been suggested to be acoustic correlates of stress. However, previous research has almost entirely focused on the question of how stressed and unstressed syllables differ from each other in terms of their acoustic properties, whereas the distinction between primary and secondary stress has hardly received any attention by phoneti­ cians. (Plag et al. 201 1 : 362)

2.2 Primary stress vs. secondary stress

29

To fill in the research gap, Plag et al. (20 1 1) have studied the phonetic proper­ ties of primary and secondary stress in both left- and right-prominent English words. Left-prominent words are words such as, for example, illustrate, in which primary stress precedes secondary stress, i.e., I ' 11 · g , stre1t/ (Cambridge Diction­ aries Online, henceforth CDO). In right-prominent words, such as, for example, illustration, the order of stresses is reversed: Primary stress is followed by sec­ ondary stress, i.e., I , 11 · g ' stre1 ·Jgn/ (CDO). The most interesting findings of Plag et al.' s (20 1 1) study are as follows. In accented positions, in which words bear phrasal stress, which in English is phonetically realized as pitch accent, the differences between left-prominent words such as illustrate and right-prominent words such as illustration resemble the above mentioned difference between 'working theory and working ' theory (Plag et al. 20 1 1 : 372). That is, in left-prominent words occurring in accented positions there is only one pitch accent, which falls on the primary-stressed syllable: Illustrate is pronounced ' illustrate, with pitch accent being placed only on the primary-stressed initial syllable / ' 1/, but not on the secondary-stressed final syllable / , stre1t/. (Note also that both the OD and LDOCE give the transcrip­ tion / ' 1lgstre1t/, where there is only the primary stress symbol ('). A well-known fact is that -ate-words in English sometimes occur not only as verbs but also as adjectives. E.g., what distinguishes to subordinate from the adjective subordinate is that the former has a diphthong in the ult-/sg ' ba :d1ne1t/ (OD)-whereas the latter is pronounced with a reduced vowel: /sg ' ba:d1ngt/ (OD). Given that both the transcription /sg ' ba:d1ne1t/ and the transcription /sg ' ba:d1ngt/ contain only the primary stress symbol ('), the present monograph argues that with regard to stress, to subordinate is not different from the adjective subordinate, i.e., both the ult /ne1t/ of the former and the ult /ngt/ of the latter are unstressed (but because the ult /ngt/ of the adjective subordinate contains a reduced vowel, it is of course less prominent than the ult /ne1t/ of to subordinate, which contains a diphthong). Similarly, a graduate and to graduate both have antepenultimate stress-/ ' grad3ugt/ and I ' grad3ue1t/ (OD)-but while the former is pronounced with a reduced vowel in the ult, the latter pronunciation contains a diphthong.) In right-prominent words, by contrast, there are two (equal) pitch accents. That is, illustration is pronounced ' illu' stration, with pitch accent being placed b oth upon the secondary-stressed first syllable I , ii and upon the prima­ ry-stressed third syllable / ' stre1/. (In agreement with this finding, the OD gives the transcriptions /i ' mguf1).( g)lAI ' ze1Jn/ for emotionalization, / ' d3ul1f1 'ke1J(g)n/ for jollification, /fg ' rIIJgglAI ' ze1Jn/ for pharyngalization, etc.; similarly, agreea­ bility is /g 'gri : g ' biliti/, allowability is /g ' laui ' biliti/, materiality is /mg' t1gr1 ' al1ti/, etc., with more than one syllable in these transcriptions counting, according to the OD, as syllables bearing primary stress).

30

2 Theoretical preliminaries

With regard to non-accented positions, in which words do not receive phrasal pitch accent, the finding of Plag et al.' s (20 1 1) investigation is that the phonetic contrast between primary- and secondary-stressed syllables is almost complete­ ly neutralized. As the authors report: [. . .] primary and secondary stress syllables are stressed syllables that are different from unstressed syllables, but not from each other, unless the word is accented. In this case the target of a nuclear accent corresponds to what is usually labeled the primary stress syllable. If the word occurs in an environment in which no accents are present (e.g. in post-nuclear position), there is no phonological difference between the first and third syllable in words such as i.so.late and i.so.la.tion. These syllables are simply stressed (or strong) syllables (which, of course, differentiates them from the second syllable .so., which is unstressed, or weak). (Plag et al. 20 1 1 : 373)

Accordingly, ''if we disregard accentuation, there is no difference between sec­ ondary and primary stress'' (Plag et al. 2 0 1 1 : 373). (This conclusion poses a major empirical challenge to Chomsky & Halle' s ( 1 968) highly counterintuitive claim that non-primary stresses in English are not only secondary, but also ter­ tiary, quaternary, quinary, senary, etc., i.e., as Halle & Vergnaud (1987: 37-38) explain, since especially the derivation of a phrase might, depending upon its syntactic complexity, involve a fairly large number of cycles, there is no maxi­ mum number of degrees of stress in English.) The finding that (if accentuation is left out of consideration) primary stress is phonetically not different from secondary stress also has implications for the study presented in this monograph. Consider, for instance, the adjective meningococcic, for which the OED gives the American English transcription /mg' , nIIJgou 'kak(s)1k/. This transcription stands for the variation between the pronunciation /mg 'n1IJgou 'kak(s)1k/, where there are two primary stresses, and /mg , n1IJgou ' kak(s)1k/, where there is only one primary stress. Given, however, Plag et al.' s (20 1 1) findings, we can argue that these pronunciations are identi­ cal. Since in non-accented positions the contrast between primary stress and secondary stress is neutralized, the secondary-stressed syllable / , nIIJI of the pronunciation /mg ,nIIJgou ' kak(s)1k/ is not different from the primary-stressed syllable / ' niIJ/ of the pronunciation /mg 'n1IJgou 'kak(s)1k/. Likewise, also in ac­ cented positions the two pronunciations cannot be different from each other because in right-prominent words such as /mg , n1IJgou ' kak(s)1k/ both primary­ and secondary-stressed syllables are pitch-accented. That is, the acoustic form that the listener will perceive as meningo' coccic will actually be pronounced me' ningo' coccic by the speaker, with two pitch accents being assigned to both the secondary-stressed syllable / , nIIJI and the primary-stressed syllable / ' kak/. The only possible variation that meningococcic can exhibit in an accented po-

2.3 Stress I accent vs. no stress

31

sition is that between the left-prominent pronunciation me'ningococcic and the right-prominent alternative meningo'coccic (which, as just said, is phonetically equivalent to the double-prominent me' ningo' coccic), but this type of variation is not stipulated by the OED' s transcription /mg ' , nIIJgou 'kak(s)1k/, where the stressed syllable / 'kak/ is said to be always pronounced with primary stress, i.e., it is only the stressed syllable / ' ,nIIJI where, according to the OED, the level of stress vacillates between primary and secondary. In summary, the adjective meningococcic, which, according to the OED, vacillates between the pronunci­ ations /mg' nIIJgou 'kak(s)1k/ and /mg, nIIJgou ' kak(s)1k/ (as far as the American variety is concerned), cannot exhibit this variation because the pronunciation /mg' nIIJgou ' kak(s)1k/, which involves two primary stresses, is in no way differ­ ent from the pronunciation /mg , n1IJgou 'kak(s)1k/, where the primary-stressed syllable / 'kak/ is preceded by the secondary-stressed syllable / , nIIJI.

2 .3 Stress I accent vs. no stress

Finally, we briefly discuss differences between stressed and unstressed sylla­ bles without specifically considering whether the former bear not only word but also phrasal stress. According to van der Hulst (2010b: 9), the prototypical characteristics of a stressed syllable are 1) greater duration, 2) a balanced spec­ tral tilt, 3) a higher fundamental frequency/pitch, 4) greater precision or extra phonetic traits (such as full vowel quality, aspiration), 5) extra phonotactic pos­ sibilities I greater complexity, 6) marking sites for morphological processes, and 7) serving as an anchor for intonational tones. Indeed, as already mentioned in the previous sections, syllables bearing stress are longer and louder (than unstressed ones) and, if they bear not only word but also phrasal stress, also higher-pitched. What is meant by ''a balanced spectral tilt'' is ''a more even intensity distribu­ tion across the frequency spectrum for accented vowels'' (van der Hulst 2010b: 4). This is because ''the vowel of an accented syllable is more precisely articulat­ ed (less-centralized) and / or longer'' (van der Hulst 2010b: 4). E.g., Kent & Netsell (1971) studied the production of the words convoy, commune, compact, escort, impact, increase, insight (incite), insult, protest, and suspect, which, depending upon the location of stress in them, function as instances of different morpho­ syntactic categories. The central finding is that the production of stressed sylla­ bles is characterized by ''a relative lowering of the jaw and a greater opening of the lips'' as well as the '' [displacement of] the tongue points in the direction of the presumed articulatory target'' (Kent & Netsell 1971: 33, 36). With regard to the latter, Kent & Netsell (1971: 36) note that, for example, ''the tongue-marker

32

2 Theoretical preliminaries

positions during stressed /i/ are displaced upward and forward relative to the tongue-marker positions during unstressed /i/." In other words, the stressed /i/ is higher and fronter than /i/ that occurs in non-stressed positions. In a more recent article Gay (1978: 348) also mentioned a greater electromy­ ographic activity (i.e., the activity of the muscles) that underlies the production of stressed vowels, and even more recently, Mi.icke & Grice (2014: 49) have ob­ served that ''[a] rticulation is more distinct in prominent positions, resulting in temporal and I or spatial expansion of articulatory movements." The two strate­ gies employed are sonority expansion and hyperarticulation: The Sonority Expansion Hypothesis claims that the intrinsic sonority of a vowel is enhanced to strengthen syntagmatic contrasts, i.e. the contrast between vowels and consonants. Under accent, the speaker intends to produce a louder vowel by opening the mouth wider over a longer time. A more open oral cavity allows for greater radi­ ation from the lips, leading to an increase of the overall acoustic energy. [ . . .] The Strategy of Hyperarticulation involves the enhancement of contrastive features as well as of sonority. A low vowel is produced with a lower tongue position, a front vowel with a more fronted tongue position [ . . .] and a back vowel with a more retract­ ed tongue position (Miicke & Grice 2014: 49)

Of note is also an investigation by Scarborough et al. (2009), which deals with the so-called ''optical phonetics'' of both word and phrasal stress in English. Sim­ ilar to earlier contributions, Scarborough et al. (2009) have studied the produc­ tion of forms that, depending upon their stress contours, function as instances of different morphosyntactic categories: discharge, discount, pervert, and subject. Scarborough et al. (2009) have addressed the question of whether the production of syllables receiving either word or phrasal stress differs from the production of unstressed I unaccented syllables with regard to the following parameters: eye­ brow displacement, head displacement, lip distance, lip displacement in opening and closing gestures, chin displacement in opening and closing gestures, lip opening and lip closing velocities, and chin opening and chin closing velocities (Scarborough et al. 2009: 145). As far as word stress is concerned, syllables bearing it have turned out to be different from unstressed ones with regard to the parameters of head displace­ ment, lip distance, lip opening displacement, lip opening velocity, chin opening displacement, and chin opening velocity: These measures are all larger and faster in stressed syllables (Scarborough et al. 2009: 146). The parameters of lip closing displacement, lip closing velocity, chin closing displacement, and chin closing velocity exhibit the same pattern, but as the authors report, they fail to achieve statistical significance (Scarborough et al. 2009: 146- 147). The only pa­ rameter that apparently has nothing to do with the difference between stressed

2.3 Stress I accent vs. no stress

33

and unstressed syllables is eyebrow displacement: As Scarborough et al. (2009: 147) observe, ''the eyebrows showed no movement at all:' As for phrasal stress, each of the parameters named above has achieved sta­ tistical significance, i.e., the measures for them are larger and faster in accented syllables. Of particular interest are the results for eyebrow and head displace­ ment. According to Scarborough et al. (2009: 1 5 1 - 152), these parameters differ from the others in that they are not directly associated with segmental articula­ tion. Therefore, their movements could be purely prosodic, free to cue stress without being constrained by segmental context. As noted above, the typical movement of the head associated with stress was in a downward direction, while brow movements were typically upward. From our qualitative observation of the tokens, these move­ ments were coordinated such that the eyebrows (or at least one of them) rose just before the stressed word and fell slowly during the word, and the head fell, or nodded, beginning during the closure of the initial stop in stressed words [. . .] (Scarborough et al. 2009: 1 5 1 - 152)

To conclude, Scarborough et al.' s (2009) results indicate that not only is the optical phonetics different for stressed and unstressed syllables as well as for accented and non-accented words. In addition, stressed and accented syllables differ from each other with regard to eyebrow movements. These play an im­ portant role in the production of accented syllables, but they play no role at all when a stressed syllable is produced. The claim that stressed units are generally produced more intensively than unstressed ones seems to be true not only of spoken but also of sign languages. For example, a study by Wilbur & Schick (1 987) addressed the articulatory na­ ture of stress in American Sign Language. Since it is primarily a monosyllabic language, Wilbur & Schick ( 1 987: 303) were concerned with the production of stress at the sentence level. According to the authors, signers who participated in their study [ . . .] frequently used strong facial features, such as brow furrowing, eyebrow raising, puffed cheeks, labial plosions, tongue thrusts, or clenched teeth, to indicate that a particular sign or phrase was stressed. [. . .] In addition to facial behavior, in many stressed signs, subjects would use body shifting, head movement and tilting, and body and head jerks (body shifts) to add emphasis to a sign or its phrasal group. (Wilbur & Schick 1987: 3 10)

Note also that reduction of vowels in unstressed positions, which is so typical of the English language, can likewise be attributed to production differences between stressed and unstressed syllables. Because stressed syllables are longer than unstressed ones,

34

2 Theoretical preliminaries [ . . .] for destressed (or fast) speech, commands for successive articulatory movements are issued at a rate that is too fast for the targets to be attained. The result is articu­ latory (and acoustic) undershoot, the extent of which is directly proportional to the duration of the vowel. In other words, spectral reduction is a natural consequence of a decrease in vowel duration. (Gay 1978: 348)

With regard to marking sites for morphological processes, consider the follow­ ing three transcriptions: I ' ti:ni/, I ' marri/, and /mar/. According to Carter & Clop­ per (2002: 333), these are three possible American English shortenings of the noun martini. The obvious structural differences between them are as follows. In the variant / ' ti:ni/ the stressed syllable / ' ti:/ is the preserved stressed syllable I ' ti:/ of the base form martini. In the variant I ' marri/ the original stressed syllable appears in a reduced, unstressed form Iri/, with the original /t/ being replaced by a flap. Finally, the shortening /mar/ does not contain the original stressed sylla­ ble / ' ti:/ in any form. As the production experiment by Carter & Clopper (2002 : 334) has demonstrated, of these three clipping possibilities, the first possibility, exemplified by / ' ti:ni/, has more often been made use of than the other two possibilities, exemplified by the forms / ' marri/ and /mar/. In other words, when English speakers shorten words, they tend to preserve the original stressed syl­ lables of longer input forms as stressed syllables of shorter output forms. Further examples from Carter & Clopper (2002: 321 -322) include Becca for Rebecca, cause for because, raffe for giraffe, nana for banana, etc. Examples like these provide a good illustration of the fact that stress can be an important factor determining the outcome of a morphological process such as shortening, or as van der Hulst (2010b: 9) notes, stress can ''mark sites for morphological processes." As for the last characteristic-serving as an anchor for intonational tones­ recall once again that the big role of (changes in) fundamental frequency results from the fact that the pitch properties of 'stressed' syllables are due to the fact that the examined words are uttered in isolation. This causes their 'stressed' syllable to be bearers of intonational pitch movement. (van der Hulst 20 12: 1508)

Thus, because in the English language, a falling tone is usually ''associated with finality, completeness, and definiteness'' (Gut 2009: 122), an individual English word cited in isolation (e.g., in online dictionaries, in which a standard pro­ nunciation of a word can often be listened to) is as a rule pronounced with a high-falling tone (Cruttenden 2008: 282); the stressed syllable of such a word is therefore higher-pitched than the other syllables occurring in the same word. In addition to the aforementioned prototypical features of stressedness, pro­ vided by van der Hulst (20 10b: 9), for purely practical purposes of determining

2.3 Stress I accent vs. no stress

35

which syllable in a word (that occurs in a corpus of spoken data) bears stress, any researcher can also rely upon his or her own auditory impressions of some syllable in the word under analysis being more prominent than other syllables constituting the same word. At first glance this may seem fairly subjective, but as Hayes (1995: 22) observes: The relevant facts of segmental phonetics and pitch contours are clear to anyone with a reasonably good ear and a little practice. Since the auditory data involve discrete patterns rather than physical quantities, they are more reliable and easier to interpret. (Hayes 1995: 22)

The assertion that ''the auditory data [. . .] are more reliable and easier to inter­ pret'' is, among other things, justified by the parasitic nature of stress, which means that ''it invokes phonetic resources that serve other phonological ends'' (Hayes 1995: 7). Consider, for instance, the role of vowel duration as a cue of word stress. As Torsuev (1 960) demonstrates, durational differences between English vowels can, apart from the presence I absence of stress, occur due to sev­ eral other reasons. For example, the fact that in pairs of words such as bead- bid, pool-pull, naught- not, etc., the phonetically very similar vowels /i:/ and /1/, /u:/ and /u/, la:/ and /u/ exhibit durational differences has obviously nothing to do with the location of stress in these monosyllabic words. It is simply a peculiarity of the English language that it has vowel contrasts such as /i:/ vs. /1/, /u:/ vs. /u/, la:/ vs. /u/, accounting thereby for a semantic difference between the words bead and bid, pool and pull, and naught and not; according to Torsuev ( 1 960: 45), in cases like these we are dealing with durational differences due to the historical length of English vowels. Another well-known fact is that vowels in English that are immediately fallowed by voiced consonants are longer than those that are followed by voiceless ones (which is also completely unrelated to stress): E.g., the length of the short vowel /1/ of bid, where the following sound is the voiced lb/, can, according to Torsuev ( 1960: 45) , be identical to or even exceed the length of the long vowel /i:/ of beat, where it is followed by the voiceless /ti; similarly, the long vowel /i:/ of see is longer than the same vowel in seat and seen because /si:/ is an open syllable, whereas both /si :t/ and /si:n/ end in consonants (Torsuev 1960: 45). Likewise, reliance of stress on loudness as one of its cues is parasitic in Hayes' ( 1 995: 7) sense because in phonology the primary function of loudness is the organization of segments into syllables. Thus there is the famous Sonority Se­ quencing Principle (see, e.g., Gandour 1998: 2 1 0; Hall 2006: 330; Yava§ 2 0 1 1 : 142; Colina 2012: 137), which explains why English has words such as plate, blame, clue, glue, fly, sly but not * !pate, * lbame, * lkue, * lgue, * lfy, * lsy. The latter are illicit because the Sonority Sequencing Principle requires that onsets that are made up

36

2 Theoretical preliminaries

of multiple segments be characterized by an increasing sonority. That is, the fol­ lowing sound must be more sonorous (i.e., louder) than the preceding one. The words plate, blame, clue, glue, fly, sly are in compliance with this requirement because the following sound /1/ is more sonorous than the preceding sounds Ip/, lb/, /kl, lg/, If/, Isl. In the asterisked words, by contrast, the more sonorous sound /1/ is followed by the less sonorous Ip/, lb/, /kl, lg/, If/, Isl, which violates the Sonority Sequencing Principle. What matters, however, in connection with stress is that just like vowels may exhibit a particular duration irrespective of whether they occur in stressed syllables or not, so is every sound characterized by a particular degree of loudness irrespective of whether the syllable in which that sound occurs bears stress. According to Yava§ (201 1 : 1 35), the two main factors that determine the intrinsic sonority of a sound are the vibration of the vocal folds (voicing) and the degree of opening of the vocal tract during the articulation of that sound. The loudest sounds are obviously low vowels, such as, e.g., /re/, /a:/, /u/ (Yava§ 201 1 : 1 35). Their articulation involves the maximum opening of the vocal tract and like all vowels, they are voiced. The least sono­ rous sounds are voiceless plosives, such as /p/, /ti, /kl (Yava§ 2 0 1 1 : 136). Their articulation involves a complete obstruction to the airflow, and, additionally, the vocal folds do not vibrate. Finally, the parasitic nature of reliance on pitch as a cue of stress is perhaps even more obvious because apart from its association with stress, pitch is to a much larger extent associated with intonation, one of whose aspects is tone. Traditionally, tones are classified into falling tones, rising tones, and combina­ tions of falling and rising tones. (A more refined classification will also distin­ guish between low and high falling and rising tones). As pointed out above, a falling tone in English is ''associated with finality, completeness, and definite­ ness'' (Gut 2009: 122), and this is precisely the reason why such tones occur in words cited in isolation (Cruttenden 2008: 282). To summarize, every syllable is characterized by a particular pitch height, a particular duration, and a particular degree of loudness. These can be measured relatively easily with a speech analysis software, such as Praat (Boersma & Weenink 20 14). But as the values that syllables exhibit with respect to these pa­ rameters might be caused by things other than stress, stress contours, as Hayes (1995: 8) argues, cannot be ''read off'' from the phonetic record. That is, when we measure syllables' fundamental frequencies, durations, and intensities, the values we obtain reflect not only the syllables' stress contours, but also things such as the historical / combinatorial / syllabic length of English vowels, the in­ trinsic loudness of segments constituting a syllable, or the intonational patterns employed by a speaker when uttering a particular word containing a particular syllable, etc. The latter factors do of course also contribute to the acoustic effect

2.4 Stress placement across the globe

37

of the stressedness I stresslessness of a syllable, but they are, strictly speaking, not directly related to stress.

2.4 Stress placem ent across the globe

Enlarging on what was stated in the previous sections, we note that with re­ gard to phonetic realization of stress, languages are traditionally classified into pitch-accent languages and stress-accent languages. Pitch-accent languages rely on (typically a high) pitch as their primary cue, whereas in stress-accent languages other cues such as duration, intensity, and vowel quality play an important role as well (see, e.g., van der Hulst 2010b: 12). According to Hyman (1977: 37-38), Japanese is a prototypical example of a pitch-accent language, whereas English exemplifies a stress-accent language. As Gussenhoven (2006: 2 16) observes in this connection: Whereas the most prominent syllable in a word in English is longer than other sylla­ bles and has a less reduced vowel, in addition to being marked with tone in focused pronunciation, [ . . .] the accented syllable of a Japanese word stands out virtually ex­ clusively because it is associated with pitch features. (Gussenhoven 2006: 2 16)

As regards stress placement, world's languages are often classified into fixed­ stress languages and variable-stress languages (van der Hulst 2010b: 33). An example of the former is Dyirbal, in which primary stress falls on the first syl­ lable in a word (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 672). The latter category (in addition to being exemplified by contemporary English) is also exemplified by Modern Greek, in which stress falls upon one of the last three syllables in a word (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 803). The category of fixed-stress languages can be further divided into languages in which stress assignment rules count from the beginning vs. the end of the word. For example, in Dyirbal, in which stress falls on the first syllable in a word, stress assignment can be said to be left-bound, counting from the be­ ginning of the word (its left edge), whereas, e.g., Macedonian is a right-edge fixed-stress language, i.e., stress in Macedonian falls upon the antepenultimate syllable (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 807), which is the third syllable counting from the end of the word. As van der Hulst (2010b: 33) observes, so far typological studies on stress have discovered only three stress location possibilities for both left- and right-edge languages with fixed stress. That is, in left-edge languages, stress can fall only on the first three syllables (stress in such languages can thus be said to be initial, pen-initial, or post-pen-initial). Similarly, in right-edge languages stress can fall

38

2 Theoretical preliminaries

only on the last three syllables (i.e., the final syllable or the ult, the pre-final syl­ lable or the penult, or the pre-pre-final syllable or the antepenult). There seem to be no left-edge fixed-stress languages in which stress is placed on the fourth syllable counting from the beginning of the word. Likewise, there seem to be no right-edge fixed-stress languages in which stress is placed on the pre-antepenult (i.e., the fourth syllable from the end of the word). Just like fixed-stress languages, languages with variable stress can be further classified into several subcategories. On the one hand, there are languages such as the above mentioned Modern Greek, where the location of stress is ''com­ pletely unpredictable and thus lexically marked'' (van der Hulst 2010b: 42), i.e., as pointed out above, stress in a word of Greek falls upon one of the last three syllables in a word. On the other hand, there are languages with variable stress in which variability can be attributed to what has traditionally been called the weight of a syllable. With regard to this parameter, syllables are usually classi­ fied into heavy and light syllables, but note that an answer to the question of which syllables count as heavy and stressable and which as light and unstress­ able varies from language to language and, what is more, typically within one and the same language, syllables are in different positions required to satisfy different conditions in order to be eligible to receive stress. A case in point is Modern High German, in which the placement of primary stress is said to obey the fallowing rules: 1) final stress if the vowel in the ult is long or there are two coda consonants, 2) penultimate stress if Condition 1 is not fulfilled and if the penult contains a coda consonant, and 3) antepenultimate stress in all other cases (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 803). It is not difficult to see that word-finally, Modern High German only treats syllables whose rhymes exhibit the structures V: or VCC, where C stands for a consonant, V: for a long vowel, and V for a short vowel, as stressable. Thus, ''a word-final syllable must have more consonants to be counted as heavy, since word-final consonants are often extrametrical'' (Hayes 1995: 59) i.e., invisible to metrical construction rules so that the rhyme structure VC is at the end of a word equivalent to the rhyme structure V and counts therefore as light rather than heavy. (By contrast, the rhyme structure VCC is word-finally equivalent to the rhyme structure VC and counts therefore as heavy.) In the penultimate position, by contrast, only syllables with a coda count in German as stressable, i.e., the length of the penultimate vowel does not play a role (with regard to which Mod­ ern High German is different from Present-day English, where a codaless penult also counts as heavy when it contains a long vowel). Finally, in the antepenulti­ mate position, syllables in German are (just as in English) not required to exhibit a particular structure in order to be able to attract stress. Just like Present-day Eng­ lish, Modern High German is therefore also often referred to as a language with

2.4 Stress placement across the globe

39

Latin-like stress (Hayes 1995: 181; cf. Domahs et al. 2014: 80, who conclude that ''German, Dutch, and English must be considered quantity-sensitive languages, with the three languages showing very similar patterns overall;' i.e., stress is pe­ nultimate when the penult is heavy and antepenultimate when the penult is light.) In some quantity-sensitive languages, the weight of the stressed syllable de­ pends on factors other than the length of the vocalic nucleus and the pres­ ence I number of consonants in the coda position, which is typical of Modern High German. For example, in Kera stress is normally placed on a syllable that contains a long vowel, but if no such syllables occur, stress falls on the first syllable that is pronounced with a high tone (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 840). Similarly, in Serbo-Croatian stress is normally placed on the first syllable that is pronounced with a tone (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 814). In Shipibo-Conibo stress is placed on a second syllable if it ends in a consonant or a nasal vowel (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 782). Similarly, in Apurina stress is placed on the final syllable when the vowel occurring in it is characterized by a nasal man­ ner-of-articulation (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 775). Observe also that in Mam the stress placement rules normally assign stress to the last long vowel in a word, but when no such vowels occur, stress is placed on the last syllable that ends in a glottal stop (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 772). Controversies surround the issue of whether consonants occurring in the onset position have any effect on syllable weight. A popular, often repeated view is that this is not the case. According to Hayes (1995: 5 1 ; author's boldface), ''prevocalic segments in the syllables (i.e. onset segments) are prosodically inert: [. . .] VC is prosodically equivalent to CVC and CCVC, V: [is equivalent] to CV: and CCV:, and so on." As Hayes ( 1 995: 5 1) adds, '' [w]hile this claim is not fully valid at the observational level [ . . .] , it is so well supported across languages that it serves as the central observation for formal theories of syllable weight." The present monograph suggests, however, that the question of whether on­ set segments play a role in stress assignment should be split into two separate questions: 1) Is the presence of an onset consonant a necessary condition for a syllable to receive stress and 2) does the presence of an onset consonant increase the probability of a syllable receiving stress? As for Question 1 , the answer to it varies from language to language. For instance, in Thaypan and Mbabaram, stress is placed on the first syllable with an onset, whereas Lamu-lamu, Western Aranda, and Alyawarr place stress on the first syllable if it contains an onset, otherwise stress in these languages is pen-initial (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 685, 680, 677, 669). Similarly, ''[i]n Madi­ madi, an Australian language of New South Wales [. . .] , stress on words of three or more syllables is sensitive to the presence of onsets that have coronal con­ sonants'' (Davis 1 988: 4).

40

2 Theoretical preliminaries

By contrast, in the case of, e.g., the English language, the answer to Question 1 is a clear no, which is strongly supported by the fallowing fact. In the entries of Merriam-Webster Online in which boundaries between syllables are marked by means of (-) (e.g., for animal, the dictionary gives the syllabified transcription / ' a-ng-mgl/), there are 5 1,090 onsetless syllables, i.e., those that begin with a vowel. Since 22, 1 79 of these syllables ("'43.41 3) bear either primary or second­ ary stress (e.g., the first syllable in anima�, we can say that a syllable beginning with a vowel is in the English language almost as frequently stressed as it is unstressed; the presence of an onset consonant is thus clearly not a conditio sine qua non of stress in the English language. At the same time, however, with regard to Question 2, it must be observed that of the 31 1,074 English syllables that (in the entries of the same dictionary that contain syllabified phonetic transcriptions) have at least one consonant in the onset position, 1 69,910 ("'54.62 3) are syllables that bear either primary or secondary stress (e.g., / 'ka-pg-tgl/ of capita�. Syllables with onsets are thus more frequently ("'54.62 3) stressed in the English language than onsetless ones ("'43.41 3), with this difference counting as statistically (hugely) significant: )f (1) 2,2 14, p < 0.000001. Similar results are reported by Kelly (2004) with regard to disyllabic English words. His finding is that percentages of initially-stressed disyllables ''increase monotonically with the number of consonants beginning a word'' (Kelly 2004: 233). Thus, of the disyllables lacking onset consonants in the penult, only 35 3 are stressed initially (Kelly 2004: 233). By contrast, in the case of one, two, and three onset consonants (beginning the penult of a disyllabic English word), the corresponding percentages are 69 3, 83 3, and 98 3 respectively (Kelly 2004: 233). Notice in this connection that in the English language, ''prefixes are rel­ atively common on words beginning with few or no consonants'' (Kelly 2004: 234). E.g., inflame. However, as Kelly (2004: 235) reports, ''the relationship be­ tween word onset and stress is not eliminated when prefixation is factored out'' (author's italics). The fact that, e.g., the verb excel is stressed /1k ' sell (OD) where­ as the verb cancel is stressed / 'kans(g)l/ (OD) cannot then be attributed to the prefix status of ex- in formations such as, for instance, ex-president or external (vs. interna�. What accounts for the stress difference between these two disyl­ labic verbs is that while the first syllable in excel lacks an onset consonant, the first syllable in cancel contains it; stress is therefore final in the farmer, while it is initial in the latter. As Kelly (2004: 237) concludes, =

statistical analyses of a large sample of disyllabic English words document a signifi­ cant relationship between word stress and word onset characteristics. This relation­ ship is both large in magnitude and broad in scope, as it permeates the English lexicon

2.4 Stress placement across the globe

41

and cannot be localized to a small set of atypical words. As such, it conflicts with many theories of English phonology which do not consider onset structure as relevant to stress assignment. (Kelly 2004: 237)

Kelly (2004: 237-239) also studied the assignment of stress in pseudowords (also commonly referred to as ''nonsense words'' or ''nonwords''), i.e., potentially possible but thus far non-existent words in the English language. Thus 20 par­ ticipants expressed their judgments as to which syllable stress should fall upon in pairs of pseudowords such as bontoon- brontoon differing only with regard to the number of consonants occurring in the initial syllable's onset position. The results obtained also ''supported the hypothesis that onset patterns affect English stress assignments. The mean proportion of [initial-stressJ assignments was .78 for CC pseudowords but only .61 for C pseudowords'' (Kelly 2004: 238). That is, pseudowords such as brontoon are more likely to receive initial stress than pseudowords such as bontoon. Consider also the placement of stress in Russian, which is typologically a language with unpredictable stress: ''Stress falls on the first syllable lexically marked for [stress] , else on the first'' (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 813). Notice, however, that of the total number of the 157,877 words (of any syllabic length) for which stress markings are provided in the online version of the Russian Orthographic Dictionary (http://tinyurl.com/q6x5jj6, 1 1. 08. 201 5), 1 ,028 are ini­ tially-stressed words beginning with a vowel, 18, 189 are initially-stressed words beginning with a consonant, and 370 are initially-stressed words beginning with a /j/-glide, which in the Russian orthography is associated with the letters e, e, u, 10, and fl. The /j/-glide is often referred to as a semi-vowel because phonetically it is indeed more like a vowel in that its articulation does not involve a major obstruction to the airflow; phonologically, however, the /j/-glide is more like a consonant in that it does not function as the nucleus of a syllable (see, e.g., Stad­ nik-Holzer 2009: 26). What is important here is that the 1 ,028 initially-stressed words beginning with a vowel constitute only "'3.82 3 of the total number of the 26,907 Russian words beginning with a vowel. By contrast, the 18,189 initial­ ly-stressed words beginning with a consonant constitute ,.., 1 4.04 3 of the total number of the 1 29,582 Russian words beginning with a consonant. And the 370 initially-stressed words beginning with a /j/-glide constitute ,.., 26.64 3 of the total number of the 1 ,389 Russian words beginning with a /j/-glide. These differences all count as statistically significant: For a vowel vs. a consonant, f' (1) 2,159, p < 0.00000 1 ; for a vowel vs. a semi-vowel, f' (1) 1,464, p < 0.00000 1 ; for a consonant vs. a semi-vowel, f' (1) 1 79, p < 0.00000 1. Note also that 1 1 , 923 initially-stressed Russian words whose stressed syllables have only one consonant in the onset position constitute ,.., 1 2.1 3 of the total =

=

=

42

2 Theoretical preliminaries

number of the 98,538 Russian words beginning with a single consonant. How­ ever, 5,297 initially-stressed Russian words whose stressed syllables have two consonants in the onset position constitute ,.., 1 8.57 3 of the total number of the 28,529 Russian words beginning with two consonants and 881 initially-stressed Russian words whose stressed syllables have three consonants in the onset position constitute ,..,3 7_75 3 of the total number of the 2,334 Russian words beginning with three consonants. Finally, 88 initially-stressed Russian words that have four consonants in the onset position (such consonant clusters are impossible in English, but they are possible in Russian: e.g., vstroennyj, ''inbuilt'') constitute ,.., 48.89 3 of the total number of the 180 Russian words beginning with four consonants. These differences are, again, all statistically significant. For one vs. two consonants, i (1) 790, p < 0.000001 ; for two vs. three consonants, i (1) 496, p < 0.00000 1 ; for three vs. four consonants, i (1) 8.76, p 0.003. Thus, very similar to what Kelly (2004) could establish with regard to initial stress in English (disyllabic words), it appears that the probability of initial stress in Russian likewise increases with an increase in the number of consonants in the (initial syllable's) onset position. At the end of this section, it must be also mentioned that in contrast to the languages discussed thus far, few world's languages can be referred to as stress­ less or at least partially stressless languages. Partial stresslessness is character­ istic of, e.g., Chinanteco, which has minimal pairs whose members differ from each other only with regard to the presence I absence of stress. As van der Hulst et al. (2010: 774) report, the form fl means ''handle'' when it is stressed, but it means ''road'' when pronounced without stress. Similarly, in Lak-Dargwa, ''there are stressless words such as turlu 'cloud''' (van der Hulst 2010a: 482). As for languages that completely lack stress, it must be observed that stress­ lessness is usually one of the possible analyses that can be found in the litera­ ture alongside analyses that do not deny the existence of stress. A classic case is modern French, whose stress system is analyzed differently. Sometimes it is argued that word stress in French is final unless the ult ends in a schwa, which leads to penultimate stress (e.g., Carpenter 2010: 367). The latter, however, does not occur very often because ''word-final schwa in French is only pronounced under very specific circumstances nowadays'' (van der Hulst 2010a: 462). Stress in Present-day French is therefore predominantly final. At the same time, how­ ever, it is also suggested that French lacks stress at the word level altogether (see, e.g., Niebuhr 2007: 1 75). Thus: =

=

=

=

when words appear on the edge of larger prosodic units, their edge syllables may be the anchor point for intonational tones [. . .] or boundary phenomena (tonal or segmental) which create the perceptual sensation of these syllables being prominent.

2.4 Stress placement across the globe

43

The linking of intonational pitch movement or other properties to edges of phrases, and thus edges of words that are peripheral in phrases, may lead to the illusion of the words having primary 'stress', while, synchronically speaking, there is no primary word stress at all (which is one way of analyzing French 'word' stress [ . . .] (van der Hulst 2012: 1515; author's italics)

The analysis of French as a stressless language is much more intuitive giv­ en that French is often said to exemplify a syllable-timed language, ''in which all syllables are of approximately equal length'' (Marks 1999: 191 ). Although some authors question the often taken-for-granted syllable-timed nature of the French language-according to Wenk (1985: 158), ''those syllables occurring in final position in rhythmic groups (or ''phonological words'') in French are on average about twice as long as non-final syllables''-there is little doubt that syllables constituting words in French are considerably different than those that make up words in a language such as English: In French, unlike English, all the syllables are fully realized. The accented syllable is always the word's last syllable and the differences in duration, energy, and pitch, are small between accented and nonaccented syllables. Finally, there is a high proportion of open to closed syllables in French [ . . .] . These parameters give an impression of syl­ lable regularity for French, that can be distinguished from the stress-timed rhythmic pattern of English [ . . .] (Dehaene-Lambertz & Houston: 1998: 23)

To conclude, because in a language such as French, ''vowel reduction is much less evident'' than it is in a language such as English (Payne et al. 2012: 204), the former can from the perspective of the latter be regarded as a stressless lan­ guage, i.e., as, e.g., Jones (1917: xl) observes, ''French and Hindustani [. . .] make no use of lexically significant word-stress."

3 Meth odology

This chapter elaborates upon the methodological steps undertaken by the au­ thor to answer the research questions formulated in Chapter 1 .

3 .1 Dictionary-based study: O E D

As Berg (1999: 1 25) points out, ''[i]n view of the fact that comprehensiveness is top priority, the most appropriate method [for studying stress variation in English] is a dictionary analysis." Thus, between October 20, 2013 and December 20, 2013, the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary I OED comprised 273,404 entries. Each of these entries was manually opened by the author and those entries that were found to contain at least two within-varietal transcrip­ tions differing from each other with regard to the location of the primary stress symbol (') were saved to the hard drive on the authors' PC. The entries saved were then manually classified with regard to the parameter ''variety of English in which the words to which these entries refer occur with variable stress." Several .docx-files were created to accommodate the words with stress doublets in different varieties of Present-day English, including American English, Brit­ ish English, New Zealand English, South African English, Australian English, Scottish English, Canadian English, Irish English, and Caribbean English. The information that was copied and pasted into these .docx-files included the words themselves, the word classes to which they belong, and the relevant transcrip­ tions, which, as pointed out above, were found to differ from each other with regard to the location of the primary stress symbol ('). Finally, the words in each separate .docx-file were manually classified with regard to the syllables upon which stress interchangeably falls in these words (i.e., e.g., ult-penult, ult-an­ tepenult, penult-antepenult, etc.). Studying stress placement variation in English using the OED as the source of the information of how words in English are pronounced has both advantages and disadvantages. As for the former, the OED defines itself as ''the definitive record of the English language;' where the adjective definitive is used in the sense ''exhaustive." That is, the OED is a dictionary that aims at an exhaustive coverage of the English language, which is supposed to comprise all words that have ever existed in the language under consideration. With regard to pronunciation, especially the entries that in the online version of the dictionary

3.1 Dictionary-based study: OED

45

have been updated since the year 2000 always contain both British and Amer­ ican English phonetic transcriptions (and in the case of some words, it is even indicated how they are pronounced in other varieties alongside British and American English. Thus, as mentioned above, a manual search for words with stress doublets has yielded instances of within-varietal stress variation not only in British and American English, but also in Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Scottish, Irish, and Caribbean English varieties): The pronunciations given are those in use among educated urban speakers of standard English in Britain and the United States. While avoiding strongly regionally or socially marked forms, they are intended to include the most common variants for each word. The keywords given are to be understood as pronounced in such speech. (http://pub­ lic.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/key-to-pronunciation/, 30. 06. 2015)

Of particular importance is also the fact that in the case ofwords with stress dou­ blets the OED often indicates which stress pattern had appeared in the English language prior to another variant. Thus, for example, it is thanks to the OED we know that applicable was originally pronounced with initial stress as I ' aplikgbl/, whereas the antepenultimately-stressed alternative /g 'pl1kgbl/ has existed in British English only since the late 1 9th century. Likewise, we know, thanks to the OED, that the penultimately-stressed /kgn' t£mple1t/ had been the default pronunciation of contemplate ''down to third quarter of [the] 19th cent[ury] ." Sometimes the OED even attempts to explain why a particular English word has stress doublets in Present-day English. For instance, the word miscellany was in British English, similar to applicable, originally pronounced with initial stress but over the course of time came to be associated with the antepenultimate­ ly-stressed pronunciation /mi ' s£lgni/ (OED). In American English, by contrast, the word still vacillates between the stress patterns I ' m1sg , le1ni/ and /mg ' s£lgni/, with the former stress pattern being, however, more frequent than the latter (OED). With regard to the pronunciation /mi 0 s£lgni/, the OED states that [t]he pronunciation with stress on the second syllable arises by analogy with the stress pattern of other four-syllable words in -any (e.g. ACCOMPANY

v.,

EPIPHANY n. [ . . . ] ,

MAHOGANY n., etc.). Although it is not recorded in dictionaries until the early 20th cent.,

there are traces of some earlier occurrences [ . . .] It has never gained great currency in North America, but by the end of the 20th cent. had become the dominant variant throughout the rest of the English-speaking world. (OED)

In summary, the OED is a very detailed English language dictionary, which lists multiple stress patterns (taking both British and American English into account) and sometimes even offers explanations for how a particular stress pattern could historically be arrived at (e.g., the factor of analogy). Additionally, it is some-

46

3 Methodology

times pointed out which of the stress variants had historically been anterior to another variant. The OED is thus an indispensable research tool for anyone interested in the topic of stress variation in English from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. As for disadvantages, it was already observed that some actually existing stress patterns are not given in the OED. E.g., similar to applicable, comparable is not only / 'kumpgrgb(g)l/ (OED) but also /kgm ' pegrgbgl/ (Cruttenden 2008: 246); an example of within-speaker variation involving these two stress patterns is gc_IZ-F8C 14 (17. 1 1 . 20 16): The first comparable (00:00:20.190 00:00:25.2 1 0) is stressed by the speaker /kgm'pegrgbgl/, while at 00:00:29.360 00:00:33.039 and 00:01 :02.690 00:01 :08.480, the stress pattern used is / ' kumpgrgb(g)l/. Similar­ ly, it was mentioned in Chapter 1 that in the noun research, stress in Present-day English falls either upon the prefix re- or upon the root search. According to the OED, however, this variation is exhibited by research only in the combination market research, which is / , ma:kit ri ' sg:tf/ vs. / , ma:kit ' ri : sg:tf/ in British Eng­ lish and / ' , markgt ' risgrtf/ vs. / ' , markgt rg' sgrtf/ in American English. A fairly similar case is hotel and motel, which are both interchangeably pronounced with final and initial stress, but in the OED, this variation is said to be exhibited by motel only in the combination no-tell motel, which is I ' ngu , tel ' mgu , tel/ vs. I ' neu , tel mg ' tel/ in British English and I ' nou , tel ' mou , tel/ vs. I ' nou , tel mou ' tel/ in American English. The reverse situation is possible as well. In an attempt to serve as ''the defin­ itive record of the English language;' the OED sometimes gives stress contours that are no longer in use in contemporary English (cf. Gimson 1972: v, lamenting that ''[t] oo often, English dictionaries persist in showing pronunciations which are seriously archaic''). For example, desiccate is Idi ' sikeit/ vs. I ' desikeit/ in the OED, but of 3 1 native English speakers whose voices could be heard in YouTube videos containing the spoken occurrences of this verb, not a single one used penultimate stress in it; in full agreement with this finding, the OD gives for desiccate only the antepenultimately-stressed transcription / ' desikeit/. A fairly similar case is decadent, which is / ' dekgdgnt/ vs. /di ' keidgnt/ in the OED, but it is exclusively / ' dekgd(g)nt/ in the OD as well as in 171 YouTube videos in which decadent was found to have been pronounced by native English speakers 2 1 2 times. (Note, however, that if one stress pattern of a word is no longer used by English speakers, this fact must be accounted for in a comprehensive study of English stress, i.e., e.g., it is important to understand why desiccate and deca­ dent are no longer stressed /di ' sikeit/ and /di 'keidgnt/. The inclusion of archaic stress patterns in the OED is thus actually an advantage of this dictionary in comparison with more specialized pronouncing dictionaries, focusing as a rule on contemporary English pronunciations.) -->

-->

-->

3.2 Other resources and tools

47

Note finally that in the phonetic transcriptions given in the OED, there is unfortunately no indication of boundaries between syllables. It is therefore not possible to (automatically) retrieve words exhibiting a particular phonological structure, e.g., trisyllables in which stress is penultimate or disyllables in which stress is final. Since the object of the present study is all English words (rather than only words with stress doublets), the absence of this technical possibility has necessitated the use of other lexicographic resources alongside the OED.

3 .2 Other resources and tools

The Medical Research Council Psycholinguistic Database (henceforth MRC or MRC database) (http://ota.ox.ac.uk/headers/1 054.xml, 07. 02. 2016) contains '' 1 50,837 words and up 26 linguistic and psycholinguistic attributes for each'' (Wilson 1988: 6). Among these attributes are syllabic length and stress pat­ tern, and what is particularly important, for some of the items in the database, phonetic transcriptions are given in which boundaries between syllables are explicitly marked by means of the syllable boundary marker (/). Thus, knowing which phonetic symbols are used in the MRC to represent the sounds of Eng­ lish, the researcher can easily establish, e.g., how many English words whose syllabic length is at least three do indeed exhibit segmental structures that are in accordance with the Latin Stress Rule, i.e., a heavy penult, whose rhyme contains either a long vowel or a coda consonant, when stress is penultimate vs. a light penult, which ends in a short vowel, when stress is antepenultimate. For example, for casino, in which stress is penultimate, the MRC gives the syl­ labified phonetic transcription k@/si/n@U, whereas for algebra, in which stress is antepenultimate, the transcription given is &l/dZI/br@. Since the symbol (i), which we find in the penult /si/ of casino, is used in the MRC to represent the long /i:/ of, e.g., bead, whereas the symbol (I), which we find in the penult /dZI/ of algebra, is used in the database to represent the short /1/ of, e.g., bid, we are justified in claiming (proceeding from the assumption that the assignment of stress in English abides by the Latin Stress Rule) that in the trisyllabic word casino stress is regularly penultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable is heavy) whereas in the trisyllabic algebra stress is regularly antepenultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable is light). For a full list of phonetic symbols used in the MRC to represent English sounds, see the Web page http://websites.psychology.uwa. edu.au/school/MRCDatabase/uwa_mrc.htm (13. 03. 2016). Alternatively, to study stress pattern-segmental structure correspondences, the researcher can also use Merriam-Webster Online (henceforth MWO) (http:// www.merriam-webster.com/, 07. 02. 2016), which is based upon the 1 1 th edi-

48

3 Methodology

tion of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003). Similar to the phonetic transcriptions in the MRC, some of the transcriptions in the MWO likewise contain a syllable boundary marker, (-), and just like in the MRC, the phonetic symbols used in the MWO to represent the sounds of the English language are (sometimes) not the corresponding, usually used symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet. For example, for casino the MWO gives the transcription /kg- ' se-( , )no/, whereas for algebra the transcription given is / ' al-jg-brg/ (for an explanation of the symbols used, see http://www.merriam-webster.com/pron­ symbols.html, 13. 03. 2016). Of particular importance is also the already mentioned Oxford Dictionar­ ies I OD (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/, 07. 02. 2016), which comprises 201 ,079 entries (as of 31. 12. 2015). Since ''Oxford Dictionaries focuses on cur­ rent language and practical usage'' (boldface mine)-the OD is thus essentially the same thing as the OED without, however, obsolete words and archaic stress patterns-the use of these two lexicographic resources has nicely complemented each other. Thus, for instance, for the verb concentrate, the OED gives the tran­ scriptions / 'kunsgntre1t/ and /kgn ' s£ntre1t/ and states that ''[t]he first-mentioned pronunciation, now prevalent, is recent." In the OD, by contrast, we find only the transcription I ' kuns(g)ntre1t/, which, coupled with the historical information provided in the OED, allows us to conclude that in the case of the stress patterns / ' kunsgntre1t/ and /kgn ' s£ntre1t/, we are dealing not with a synchronic stress variation but with a diachronic stress shift, i.e., the stress pattern /kgn ' s£ntre1t/ has been (recently) abandoned by English speakers in favor of the stress pattern I ' kunsgntre1t/. To distinguish between actually occurring and archaic stress patterns, also Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (http://www.ldoceonline.com/), consisting (as of 09. 1 1 . 2016) of 69, 132 entries, can be relied upon. A maj or advantage of LDOCE in comparison with the other lexicographic resources named above is that 1 ,236 of its phonetic transcriptions contain the stress shift symbol (..... ). E.g., academic is / , rekg ' dem1k.,.. / (LDOCE), which means that the two possible stress patterns of this adjective are I , rekg ' dem1k/ (with, howev­ er, the secondary-stressed syllable I , re/ being phonetically not different from the primary-stressed syllable I ' de/) and I ' rekgdem1k/, with the latter being used especially in combinations such as academic year or academic study, in which the head noun, modified by academic, is either a monosyllable or an initial­ ly-stressed polysyllable. Note also that although transcriptions in LDOCE do not contain a boundary symbol, the dictionary does give orthographic hyphenations, such as, e.g., a·ble for able. Using these, the researcher can easily retrieve words exhibiting a par­ ticular syllabic length. Thus, for instance, if the boundary symbol ( ·) occurs only

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once, the word under consideration is a disyllable whereas in a trisyllabic word the same symbol would occur two times, which applies to, e.g., Ko·re·a of Korea. The 26,441 hyphenations given in LDOCE for 26,334 orthographically non-iden­ tical solidly-spelled items fall into 12,46 1 (,..,47. 13 3) disyllabic items (i.e., hyphen­ ations in which the boundary symbol occurs one time), 8,334 ("'31 .52 3) trisyl­ lables, 4,003 ("'15.14 3) tetrasyllables, 1 ,351 ("'5. 1 1 3) pentasyllables, 251 ("'0.95 3) hexasyllables, 34 ("'0. 13 3) heptasyllables, six ("'0.02 3) octasyllables, and one (very long!) word of 18 syllables: Llan·fair·pwll·gwyn·gyll·go·ger·y·chwyrn·dro·bwll·l­ lan·ty·si·lio·go·go·goch, which is ''a small village on Anglesey in North Wales, famous for being the place with the longest name in the UK'' (LDOCE). To find out how frequent a particular word is in contemporary English, the author used the British National Corpus I BNC. To be more precise, the author used 1) the now-defunct BNC Simple Search, which had been available at http:// www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/, 2) the BYU-BNC, which is currently available at http:// corpus.byu.edu/bnc/, and 3) the BNC XML edition, which can be download­ ed for free at http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/2554 (07. 02. 20 16). Note also that 7,879 items in LDOCE are classified into high-, medium-, and lower-frequency words. Thus, for instance, of the 1 ,542 solidly-spelled high-frequency polysyllables, 55 ("'3.57 3) have more than one stress pattern. E.g., the high-frequency word ciga­ rette is I , s1gg ' ret/ in British English (with the diminutive suffix -ette-a cigarette is a small cigar-being emphasized via stress) and / ' s19g , ret/ vs. / , s1gg ' ret/ in American English (LDOCE). By contrast, in the case of medium- and lower-fre­ quency polysyllables, the corresponding percentages are ,..,5 _44 3 (1 1 1 I 2,042) and "'7.52 3 (162 I 2,1 53). E.g., the medium-frequency word controversy is, ac­ cording to LDOCE, in British English interchangeably stressed / 'kuntrgv3 : si/ and /kgn' tmvgsi/ and the lower-frequency word barricade is both in British and American English interchangeably stressed / ' brergke1d/ and / ,brerg 'ke1d/ (LDOCE). For high- vs. medium-frequency words, i (1) 6.948, p 0.008; for medi­ um- vs. lower-frequency words, i (1) 7.5 14, p 0.006; for high- vs. lower-fre­ quency words, i (1) 25, p < 0.000001. These differences are all statistically significant, which supports Berg's ( 1 999: 13 7) assertion that infrequency is a prerequisite of stress instability in English. Note, however, that if cases such as I , rekg ' dem1k44/ (i.e., transcriptions in LDOCE that contain the stress shift symbol) are not counted as instances of stress variation, the corresponding f-statistics are as follows. For high- vs. me­ dium-frequency words (22 I 1,542 vs. 29 I 2,042), i (1) 0.0003, p 0.987; for medium- vs. lower-frequency words (29 I 2,042 vs. 48 I 2,1 53), i (1) 3.809, p 0.05 1 ; for high- vs. lower-frequency words (22 I 1,542 vs. 48 I 2,1 53), i (1) 3.1 15, p 0.078. These differences are not statistically significant. =

=

=

=

=

=

=

=

=

=

=

50

3 Methodology

The point here is that the average syllabic length of a high-frequency poly­ syllabic English word is "'2.47, but the average syllabic lengths of medium- and lower-frequency polysyllables are "'2.76 and "'2.94 respectively. High-frequency polysyllables thus contain on average fewer syllables than medium-frequency polysyllables, which in turn are as a rule shorter than lower-frequency polysyl­ lables. (This is because derived forms are as a rule used less frequently than their base words (Plag 2003: 1 1 1). E.g., the base government is, according to LDOCE, a high-frequency word, but the derivative governmental is a lower-frequency one. Derived forms have on average more syllables than base forms I morphologically simple words.) Accordingly, because medium- and lower-frequency words are on average longer than high-frequency words, the former have more chances of being stressed not only primary but also secondary. Of the 1,542 high-frequency polysyllables, only 1 02 ("'6.61 3) are words such as cigarette, which have both primary and secondary stress. By contrast, in the case of the 4, 195 medium- and lower-frequency polysyllables, the number of secondary-stressed words is 601: ,.., 14.33 3. This difference is statistically hugely significant: f (1) 62, p < 0.00000 1. To conclude, because secondary stress is more typical of medium- and lower-frequency words, stress shifts such as I , gAvg ' mentl.,...; (LDOCE), which involves the promotion of the secondary-stressed syllable I , gAI to the prima­ ry-stressed syllable (i.e., / ' gAvgmentl/), are also more typical of medium- and lower-frequency words. The connection between stress variation and frequency of use is thus a very indirect one! For searches involving regular expressions, the software TextCrawler, Ver­ sion 2.5.0.0 (DigitalVolcano Software 2013), and GNU grep, Version 2.5.4 (Free Software Foundation, Inc.: 2009) were used. For simpler searches (e.g., finding and eliminating duplicates, extracting strings beginning with a particular sym­ bol), Microsoft Excel 2007 was relied upon. Regular expression or simply regex is essentially an advanced search option that is available in many computer programs, such as the above mentioned TextCrawler. One of the most p owerful regular expressions is (I), which in combination with the parentheses matches alternatives, e.g., the search query (aleli olu y) matches any of the vowel symbols used in the English alphabet, whereas the search query (b cldl�g h jlk 1 m n plqlr s tlvlwlxlz) will, by contrast, match any consonantal symbol. Another important regex is the curly braces {}, using which the researcher can indicate the number of occurrences of the string to be matched. For example, (hie d �glh jlk 1 m n plq rlslt vlwlxlz)(aleli o uly) {2} will match a consonant being followed by two vowels (e.g., the string bea- of bead), whereas (b cld �g h jlk 1 m n plqlr s tlvlwlxlz)(aleli olu y){l ,} will, apart from matching bea- of bead, also match bi- of bid, where there is only one vowel oc­ curring immediately after a consonant. =

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Using these two simple regular expressions, it was established by the author that items such as /kg' si:ngu/ of casino (OD), in which stress is regularly pe­ nultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable / ' si:/ contains a long vowel), and items such as I ' ald31brg/ of algebra, in which stress is regularly antepenultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable /d31/ ends in a short vowel), constitute ,..,6 7. 1 5 3 of the total number of the 19,545 items of three and more syllables in the case of which stress patterns and syllabified phonetic transcriptions are available in the MRC. Similarly, in the MWO dictionary, of the total number of the 22,653 antepenults bearing stress, 17 ,032 (,..,7 5.19 3) co-occur with light penults (i.e., cases such as / ' ald31brg/ of algebra), whereas in the case of the 14,961 stressed penults occurring in words of three and more syllables, only 4, 1 1 0 ("'27.47 3) can be referred to as light syllables; e.g., in /prg(u) ' h1b1t/ of prohibit, stress falls upon the light penult / ' h1/. English words of three and more syllables are thus by and large (segmentally) compliant with the provisions of the Latin Stress Rule: Penultimately-stressed trisyllables and longer words have as a rule heavy penults, whereas light penults normally occur when stress is antepenultimate. The question that remains to be answered is, however, whether the stress pat­ terns that these words exhibit are indeed due to their segmental structures. Thus, it was pointed out in Chapter 1 that of the non-initially-stressed words in the OD dictionary, 67 3 have segmentally longer righthand strings such as I- 'h1b1t/ of prohibit, which occur in at least one other English word (inhibit). The location of stress in these words can thus also be seen as their root-prefix boundary location. To automatically identify words exhibiting a particular morphological struc­ ture (e.g., words beginning with a prefix I ending in a suffix), the online tool Morphological Analysis (https://open.xerox.com/Services/fst-nlp-tools/ Con­ sume/Morphological320Analysis-176, 07. 02. 2016) was used. E.g., in the case of the derivative abbreviator the analysis returned by the tool is or}+ Noun+Sg, i.e., the word is correctly analyzed as the product of suf­ fixation of the verbal base abbreviate by means of the suffix -or. Morphological Analysis even copes with derivatives in which the addition of a suffix is accom­ panied by segmental changes. For example, the adjective corrosive is correctly analyzed as the product of suffixation of the verbal base corrode by means of the suffix - ive, i.e., ive}+ Adj; similarly, for secrecy the segmentation returned is cy}+ Noun+Sg. Relying upon base-suffix segmentations similar to these, we can automati­ cally count, e.g., the percentage of suffixed derivatives in English whose stress pattern is the stress pattern of the corresponding base form (counting from left to right, i.e., from the beginning of the word). In the case of, e.g., 14,222 solid­ ly-spelled items from the OD that the tool Morphological Analysis considers to

52

3 Methodology

be suffixed derivatives (i.e., for these items, the tool has returned segmentations that contain the suffix symbol (})), this is true of no less than 9,833 ("'69.14 3) derivatives. These include the following cases (which have been identified by the author with the help of the software Excel): 1) both the derivative and the base are stressed initially (e.g., / ' abgsi/ of abbacy and / ' abgt/ of abbot), 2) the derivative is stressed initially and the base is a monosyllable (e.g., / ' faktJugl/ of factual and /fakt/ of fact), 3) in the transcriptions under comparison, the primary stress symbol ( ) is followed by three identical symbols (e.g., / ' ulg/ of lbAI 'ulgd31st/ of biologist and / ' ulg/ of lbAI 'ulgd3i/ of biology), which helps us find identically-stressed derivatives and bases in which stress is non-initial; ad­ ditionally, with the help of this strategy, we do not miss cases such as lbAI ' aks1gl/ of biaxial vs. / ' aks1s/ of axis, with the former being both a suffixed and prefixed derivative (the more identical symbols in the transcriptions under comparison occur after the primary stress symbol, the more likely it is that we are dealing with a genuine case of stress preservation. E.g., I , r£fg ' r£nf( g)1/ of referential and I ' r£f(g)r(g)nt/ of referent share the string I ' r£/, which comprises two symbols occurring after the primary stress symbol. The strings under comparison do not, however, count as identical if the threshold is raised to three identical symbols (following the primary stress symbol): / ' r£nl vs. / ' ref/; the case of referential vs. referent is therefore not treated in the same way as, e.g., the pair biologist- biol­ ogy), 4) the location of the primary stress symbol (relative to the left transcrip­ tion boundary) is identical in the transcriptions under comparison (e.g., in the transcriptions /prA1 ° urgtA1z/ of prioritize and /prA1 °ur1ti/ of priority the primary stress symbol is not followed by three identical symbols (i.e., / ' urg/ vs. / 'ur1/), but simply because the position in which this symbol occurs is the same in the transcriptions under comparison (i.e., in both /prA1 ° urgtA1z/ and /prA1 °ur1ti/ the stress symbol ( ) is the sixth symbol relative to the lefthand (/)), we have good reasons to assume that stress in the derivative prioritize falls upon the same syllable as in the base priority, and 5) if the position of the primary stress symbol in the base is subtracted from the position of the primary stress symbol in the derivative, the result is either one or minus one (e.g., in /vg: ' bgus/ of verbose the symbol ( ) occupies the fifth position (relative to the left transcription boundary) whereas in /vg ' bus1ti/ of verbosity the corresponding number is four). An obvious alternative to these strategies (especially 3-5) is to count the Lev­ enshtein distance (Levenshtein 1966), i.e., the number of edits required to trans­ form one string of symbols to another string. E.g., the Levenshtein distance be­ tween I ' ban/ of Ig ' bandgnm(g)nt/ and I ' ban/ of Ig ' band(g)n/ is zero (because these strings are identical), but the Levenshtein distance between / ' tg:/ of /d1 ' tg:m1n/ and I ' t3 :/ of Idi ' t3 :m1ngbl/ is one (because the nucleus of the stressed syllable is, according to the OD, non-identical in the transcriptions under comparison, even '

'

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53

though the stress pattern is the same (note that phonetically, / ' tg:/ of /d1 ' tg:m1n/ might be very similar to / ' t3:/ of /d1 ' t3:m1ngbl/, but the only thing that matters now is that the symbol /g/ of / ' tg:/ is not identical to the symbol /3/ of / ' t3 :/); to obtain the stressed syllable / ' t3:/ of /d1 ' t3: m1ngbl/ out of the stressed syllable / ' tg:/ of /d1 ' tg:m1n/, we should thus replace /g/ through /3/). If the Levenshtein distance between the strings under comparison (which should include the pri­ mary stress symbol being followed by at least three further symbols) is either zero or one (i.e., no or only one edit is required to obtain the primary-stressed syllable of the derivative out of the primary-stressed syllable of the base), the case under consideration is most likely an instance of stress preservation. Using these strategies, we can also establish whether a derivative, in addition to preserving the stress, also preserves the segmental structure of the base. Thus, for instance, because the Levenshtein distance between the strings I ' bus/ of /vg ' bus1ti/ and / 'bgu/ of /vg: ' bgus/ is two (i.e., the symbols /g/ and /u/ should be replaced through the symbols /u/ and /s/) and because the location of the primary stress symbol relative to the left transcription boundary is not identi­ cal in the transcriptions under comparison, the pronunciation of the base form verbose can be said to be only partially preserved in the derived form verbosity. The transcription I ' adm(g)r(g)lti/ of the derivative admiralty can, by contrast, be regarded as an instance of ''agglutinative stress:' which means that ''suffixes are simply hooked on, glued on, or 'agglutinated' to a word without influencing its structure'' (Poldauf 1984: 50-5 1). Of the 14,222 suffixed derivatives in the OD, no less than 7 ,486 ("'52.64 3) can be regarded as instances of agglutinative suffixa­ tion, which means that the transcriptions of these words' base forms are part of the transcriptions of the corresponding derived forms; the usual case is when the transcription of a base form occurs in the beginning of the transcription of a corresponding derived form. E.g., the transcription I ' adm(g)r( g)1/ of the base admiral occurs (in the very same form) in the beginning of the transcription I ' adm(g)r( g)lti/ of the derivative admiralty. In the case of prefixed suffixed de­ rivatives, however, the transcription of the base form occurs in the middle of the transcription of the corresponding derivative, which is true of, e.g., / ' ste1tsmgn/ of IAn 0 ste1tsmgnlA1kl. In addition to attributing, e.g., the stress pattern /prAI 'urgtAiz/ of the derivative prioritize to the stress pattern /prAI 'ur1ti/ of the base priority, it can be argued that stress in the derivative is antepenultimate simply because the penultimate syllable /rg/ is light. Likewise, in the case of / ' abgsi/ of abbacy, lbA1 °ulgd31st/ of biologist, and /vg ' bus1ti/ of verbosity, the Latin Stress Rule also requires antepe­ nultimate stress because the corresponding penultimate syllables /bg/, /lg/, and /s1/ are light (and, from a purely diachronic point of view, stress in the English word verbosity is antepenultimate because it is antepenultimate in the Latin

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3 Methodology

etymon word verbositas (Dictionary.com), which has a short vowel in the pe­ nult.) Indeed, of all items in the MRC database, 12,866 are, according to the tool Morphological Analysis, suffixed derivatives, i.e., for these items, the tool has returned segmentations that contain the suffix symbol (}). Stress indications and syllabified phonetic transcriptions are available in the MRC for 4, 990 of these items whose syllabic length is no less than three. Of these 4,990 items, 1 ,329 have regular penultimate stress (e.g., /g ' bju:zg/ of abuser (OD), where stress falls on the heavy penult / ' bju:/) and in 1,909 items, stress is regularly antepenultimate (e.g., / ' akt1VIst/ of activist (OD), where the penult /ti/ is light). In other words, of the 4,990 suffixed derivatives in English whose syllabic length is at least three, 3,238 ("'64.89 3) have stress patterns that are superficially in accordance with the Latin Stress Rule: Stress is penultimate when the penult is heavy and an­ tepenultimate when the penult is light. Notice, however, that abidance by the Latin Stress Rule is more typical of trisyllabic suffixed derivatives: Of the 2,439 trisyllabic suffixed derivatives for which syllabified phonetic transcriptions and stress indications are given in the MRC, 1 ,081 are items such as /g ' bju:zg/ of abuser, in which stress is regularly penultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable is heavy), and 789 are items such as / ' akt1v1st/ of activist, in which stress is regu­ larly antepenultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable is light). Thus, in the case of the 1,870 trisyllabic suffixed derivatives ("'76.67 3), the location of stress can be said to be in compliance with the provisions of the Latin Stress Rule. By contrast, in the case of the 2,55 1 suffixed derivatives whose syllabic length is no less than four and for which syllabified phonetic transcriptions and stress indications are available in the MRC, the same is true of only 1,368 ("'53.63 3) items: 1,120 are derivatives such as /g ' b1l1ti/ of ability (OD), in which stress is regularly an­ tepenultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable /11/ is light), and 248 are derivatives such as I , an1k ' dgutl/ of anecdotal (OD), in which stress is regularly penultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable / ' dgu/ is heavy). The difference of 1,368 I 2,551 vs. 1 ,870 I 2,439 is statistically hugely significant: i (1) = 291, p < 0.00000 1. As for disyllables, the segmentations returned by Morphological Analysis al­ low us to conclude that the location of stress in a disyllabic English word (among other things) crucially depends upon whether it begins with a prefix vs. ends in a suffix. As for prefixed derivatives (i.e., those for which the tool Morphological Analysis has returned segmentations that contain the prefix symbol ({); e.g., {a+Adj, for alive), the proportions in the OD dictionary among the 23, 147 initially- vs. 4,585 finally-stressed disyllables are (55 I 23,147=)"'0.24 3 vs. (538 / 4,585=),.., l l.73, i (1) = 2,417, p < 0.000001, which counts as a statistical­ ly hugely significant difference. As for suffixed derivatives, the corresponding proportions are (2,800 / 23,147=)"'12.l 3 vs. (32 1 / 4,585 =)"'7 3, i (1) = 99, p < 0.000001, which also counts as an extremely significant difference. Final stress is

3.2 Other resources and tools

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thus the preferred stress pattern of disyllables beginning with a prefix whereas disyllables ending in a suffix are, by contrast, more frequently pronounced in English with initial stress. (The latter claim is also supported by the fact that of the 1,918 disyllables in the MRC that the tool Morphological Analysis considers to be suffixed derivatives, 1 ,797 ("'93.69 3) are stressed on their first syllables. E.g., lover is stressed / ' lAvg/ (OD). Final stress in disyllabic suffixed derivatives is thus virtually non-existent in the English language. It can be found in, e.g., /g ' mA1Jst/ of amongst (OD), whose base is the finally-stressed /g ' IllA1J/ of among (OD), to which the suffix -st, which on its own does not constitute a syllable, was added. Additionally, because some English suffixes bring about important semantic distinctions (e.g., lessor- lessee, standing for granters vs. holders of a lease), some English disyllables have final stress as an emphatic alternative to initial stress. In all other cases when the base of a disyllabic suffixed derivative is monosyllabic, stress in the derived form is always placed upon the only syl­ lable constituting the base form, i.e., e.g., stress in lover falls upon the syllable constituting its monosyllabic base love.) Interestingly, initial stress is in English the preferred stress pattern not only of actual suffixed derivatives but also of disyllables such as, e.g., music, which is not segmentable into the base muse and the suffix - ic the way, e.g., cubic is segmentable into the base cube and the suffix - ic. Thus, of the 23, 147 initial­ ly-stressed disyllables in the OD, 259 ("'1 . 1 2 3) end orthographically in - ic, and, what is particularly important, of these, only 1 2 ("'4.63 3) are, according to the tool Morphological Analysis, actual - ic-derivatives: calcic, centric, cubic, cyclic, cystic, fistic, metric, mythic, rhythmic, scenic, spheric, and splenic. By contrast, of the 4,585 finally-stressed disyllables, only five ("'0. 1 1 3) end orthographical­ ly in - ic. E.g., the shorter word ridic is stressed /r1 ' d1k/ (OD), preserving the stress of the longer word ridiculous: /r1 ' d1kjulgs/ (OD). Since the difference of 2 5 9 / 23,147 vs. five / 4,585 is statistically hugely significant- x2 (1) 41, p < 0.000001-we are justified in claiming that initial stress is the preferred stress of an - ic-disyllable irrespective of whether it is a genuine -ic-derivative like cubic or a word like music (comic, magic, panic, topic, etc.). The same is true of the orthographic strings - a, -al, -an, -and, -ard, -cy, -dom, -er, -ess, -et, -ful, - ia, =

- ian - ie - ing -ion - is - ish - ite -less -let - ling -ly - ness -o -oid -ous -ry -ship -some, - ty, -ule, -um, -ward, -way, and -y, which, according to the tool Morpho'

'

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'

'

'

'

'

'

'

'

'

'

'

'

'

'

logical Analysis, also occur in English as suffixes. The median r-statistic of these strings is 18.71 (with the minimum being "'3.961 (- ule) and the maximum ,..,2 96 (-er)), which means that the median p-value is "'0.000015. Notice also that the total number of initially-stressed disyllables that end orthographically in these 36 strings is 1 0,748 and the total number of initially-stressed disyllabic suffixed derivatives (according to the tool Morphological Analysis) is only 2,800.

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3 Methodology

Thus, disyllables ending in these strings (e.g., any, finish, medal, river, topic, etc.) are (as a rule) stressed initially even when these strings are not actual suffixes. As for prefixed derivatives, notice also that with the help of the tool Morpho­ logical Analysis we can find emphatically-stressed English words. An example is subcategory, whose morphological structure is correctly analyzed by the tool as {sub 00:00: 18,719 So we're looking here at a model of the circulatory system and we're looking at the abdominal 4 00:00: 19,060 --> 00:00:20, 160 region. •

5 00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:27,160 So here you can see the abdominal aorta and to the right of it, you can see the inferior 6 00:00:27,470 --> 00:00:34,470 vena cava. So first, let's just talk about the arterial supply to the abdominal viscera.

Searching for words occurring in the closed captions appended to YouTube videos thus represents an indirect means of searching for words occurring in corresponding YouTube videos themselves. In light of this fact, it was first es­ tablished by the author which YouTube videos with (English language) closed captions have occurrences of a particular English word with stress doublets. This was done using the command-line downloader youtube-dl (Gonzalez et al. 2006-), which can be ordered to execute multiple commands; e.g., when ordered --all-subs --skip-download ''ytsearchall:paprika,cc'', youtube-dl downloads only subtitles (but not the corresponding videos files!) of all captioned YouTube vid­ eos that have something to do with the search term ''paprika." It is very fortunate that captions appended to YouTube videos always have language-specific endings (e.g., .de for German, .fr for French, .ru for Russian,

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3 Methodology

etc.) and in the case of subtitles whose language is English, the corresponding endings are .en, .en-GB, .en-US, .en-CA, .en-IE, etc., i.e., the string .en is always part of the name of an English language subtitle file. Note, though, that the fact that the name of a particular subtitle file ends in . en does not ensure that the language of the corresponding YouTube video is (native) English and, similarly, the fact that the name of a particular English language subtitle file has a varie­ ty-specific ending, such as . en-GB, does not necessarily mean that the speaker in a corresponding YouTube video has a British English accent. Subtitles that were found to contain particular search items were then opened and it was manually checked by the author whether the senses in which these items are used there are identical to the senses given for these items in the OED. E.g., a YouTube search for invalid, whose pronunciation vacillates between the finally-stressed /1nvg ' li: d/ and the antepenultimately-stressed I ' 1nvgli: d/ only when used in the sense ''[i]nfirm from sickness or disease; enfeebled or disabled by illness or injury'' (OED), yields many YouTube captions where invalid express­ es the meaning ''the opposite of valid." This sense is, however, exclusively associ­ ated with the penultimately-stressed pronunciation /1n'val1d/ (OD). Similarly, to find out whether Abba, ''[aJn invocation to God as father'' (OED), is in American English more frequently stressed / ' abg/ or /g 'ba/, the occurrences of Abba as the name of a popular Swedish pop band must be left out of consideration. Once youtube-dl finished downloading corresponding video files, i.e., those that are accompanied by English language closed captions found to contain a particular English word with stress doublets, it was checked by the author via playing random parts of those videos whether the speakers whose voices can be heard in them are indeed native English speakers. In addition to deleting videos featuring languages other than native English, the author also deleted English language videos featuring 1) computer-synthesized voices (which sound fairly unnatural and are therefore easily distinguishable from the voices of hu­ man speakers) and 2) the voices of native English speakers occurring in song videos. With regard to the latter, the reason for their exclusion is that singers are known to occasionally alter the usual location of stress in words (which is usually done for rhyming purposes). Hence a researcher cannot be entirely sure whether an occurrence of a particular stress pattern in a song does indeed reflect the singer's genuine linguistic preferences. For example, in the 2009 song Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? (urNyglftMIU, 01. 07. 201 5), stress in avatar is final. This is most likely because avatar in the preceding line Do you wanna date my avatar? rhymes with star in the following line She's a star, i.e., the speaker normally pronounces avatarwith antepenultimate stress, but rhyming with star necessitates exceptional final stressing in the song. Note, however, that since English speakers in general vacillate between stressing avatar finally and ante-

3.3 YouTube-based study

61

penultimately, i.e., /a:vg ' ta: (r)/ vs. / ' revgta: (r)/ (OED), it is theoretically possible that the singer in the video urNyglftMIU pronounces avatar with final stress in other environments as well. The question of whether the former or the latter explanation holds true for the situation at hand cannot be answered only on the basis of the video urNyglftMIU (unless a video like this contains occurrences of avatar in which it is pronounced by the same speaker in other environments with antepenultimate stress). Another problem is posed by multiple videos featuring identical speakers. E.g., among captioned YouTube videos containing the spoken occurrences of antique are 25 videos in which this adjective is pronounced (with initial stress) by an identical British English speaker. Similarly, among captioned YouTube videos containing the spoken occurrences of perfume are 41 videos in which this adjective is pronounced (with initial stress) by an(other) identical British Eng­ lish speaker. Cases such as these might skew the finding of one stress pattern being more frequently used in contemporary English than an alternative stress pattern. To solve the problem, the author used the command --write-info-json in youtube-dl. This command writes video metadata (in the form of a .json-file), containing, among other things, the URL of a YouTube channel from which a particular video stems. Extracting such URLs from corresponding json-files, one can see how many YouTube videos have been contributed by a particular uploader. The solution practiced by the author was thus to delete all but one downloaded videos stemming from one and the same YouTube channel, reduc­ ing thereby the risk of counting identical speakers more than once. When all irrelevant videos were removed, a batch-file was prepared by the author ordering the command-line player ffplay (FFmpeg developers 2000-) to bulk-play portions of the downloaded videos in which, in accordance with the timeframes (e.g., 00:00:06,6 1 0 00:00: 1 1 ,719) given in the corresponding sub­ title file, a particular English word with stress doublets is supposed to be pro­ nounced. While ffplay was playing the portions specified in the batch-file, the number of speakers using a particular stress pattern was counted by the author on the basis of his auditory impressions. Studying stress variation in English using YouTube as the source of the infor­ mation of how English words are stressed has both advantages and disadvan­ tages. As for the former, note that ''300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute'' (https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html, 0 1 . 07. 2015 ) . The platform is thus a very large (freely accessible) online database of spoken language, containing, among other things, 1 ) excerpts as well as sometimes full-episodes of TV shows, 2) movies, documentaries, and cartoon films (like­ wise as excerpts or sometimes as their full-length versions), 3) commercials, 4) music clips, 5) recordings of all sorts of public speeches, including, for instance, -->

62

3 Methodology

university lectures and conference presentations, 6) audio books, 7) amateur videos featuring speakers in natural private settings, etc. As for disadvantages, YouTube is not a genuine linguistic corpus (because it has never been intended to be used that way; conducting phonetic research is clearly not the primary YouTube use the founders of the Web site had in mind when launching it in the early days of Web 2.0). Thus a researcher who will decide to utilize YouTube in a corpus-like manner will most likely end up using other pieces of software (i.e., those that go beyond their Internet browser, where YouTube is running) such as, for example, the aforementioned youtube-dl and ffplay. However, even with these programs, researching how particular words are pronounced by speakers in YouTube videos is an extremely time-consuming activity, which, as pointed out above, took a year of the author's life. Another shortcoming concerns the inaccessibility of some of the actually available video content. As was mentioned in the beginning of this section, it is at present not possible to directly search for words occurring in YouTube videos (because we still do not have an effective automatic speech-recognition technol­ ogy, which would convert in a matter of seconds millions of spoken words to searchable text). Thus only YouTube videos containing closed captions, which document what is spoken in a video during which timeframe, are accessible for phonetic research. By contrast, captionless videos, which might be as relevant as captioned ones, are thus completely left out of consideration (for the only means to access such videos is to listen to them from the beginning to the end. In light of the above mentioned fact that ''300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute;' this is clearly an unrealistic task). In addition to this, many Internet users have noticed that the number of search results that is reported by Google in the first results page once a par­ ticular search has been run is not the actual number of search results that can be physically accessed by means of Google. As, e.g., Jack Schofield points out in a 2012 blog post: Bragging is a long-standing feature of Google's search results, even though it has no practical benefits for users. The fact is, no matter how many results Google claims it has found, it is never ever going to show more than a thousand. (http://www.zdnet.com/ hello-world-google-search-claims-522-million-results-serves-up-934-7000008360/, 01. 07. 20 15)

The same is also true of the YouTube Web site, which is a subsidiary of the Google company. For example, a YouTube search for ''absolute'' (with quotation marks) yields ''about 2,690,000 results." This, however, is only the number of results YouTube claims it has found in its database when ''absolute'' is searched for. In reality, though, when the user reaches results page Nr. 33, the fantastic

3.3 YouTube-based study

63

number of ''about 2,690,000 results'' miraculously changes into only ''about 658 results;' with no further video results being loaded beyond the videos listed in the first 33 pages loaded. The same can be said for any other search term no mat­ ter how popular and frequent it might seem at first glance. For example, there are in reality no more than 661 accessible YouTube videos that have something to do with Barack Obama (or any other individual or thing named Obama), even though the first results page of the search for ''Obama'' (with quotation marks) says that there are ''about 1 1 ,700,000 results." Given these facts, the fallowing question must be answered: If, e.g., of 2,690,000 YouTube videos that have something to do with the search term ''ab­ solute;' only 658 are physically accessible (and of these, only 358 videos were found to contain actual spoken occurrences of the word under consideration), can research that takes only these accessible YouTube videos into account also produce reliable results? The answer to this question (argued for in this monograph) is yes. Observe, first of all, that this problem is relevant only for high frequency words, such as absolute. Recall, however, that words with stress doublets are also often rep­ resented by low frequency words. Thus a fairly large number of these words did not in total yield more than 1 ,000 search results, which is the maximum possible results number. As for high frequency words, observe, for instance, that the spoken occurrences of the word absolute were attested 2, 945 times in the above mentioned 358 captioned YouTube videos that were made accessible by YouTube at the time when a corresponding YouTube search was run by the author. Notice now that the very same word absolute occurs only 2,055 times in the spoken component of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (henceforth COCA), which its creators describe as ''the only large and balanced corpus of American English." What this means is that if it were possible to use the spoken component of the COCA corpus the way YouTube data can be used (i.e., being able to actually listen to the underlying sound files), we would end up with a comparable number of the total occurrences of absolute. Two more issues must be dwelled upon in this section: 1) legality of down­ loading YouTube videos by means of youtube-dl and 2) reliability of the results of this study, which, as explained above, are based upon the author's auditory impressions of a particular English word being pronounced in a particular cap­ tioned YouTube video with a particular stress pattern. The first issue might arise because in accordance with YouTube' s Terms of Use: You may access Content for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the Service and as permitted under these Terms

64

3 Methodology of Service. You shall not download any Content unless you see a "download" or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content. (https://www.youtube. com/t/terms?gl=US, 01. 07. 2015)

In disagreement with this, however, German media lawyer Christian Solmecke argues in a video (http://praxistipps.chip.de/download-von-youtube-videos-le­ gal-oder-nicht_9496, 0 1 . 07. 2015) that YouTube's Terms of Use could only be violated in the legal sense if visitors of the YouTube Web site were required to explicitly accept these terms before being allowed to access content on the YouTube Web site. This, however, does not as a rule take place. To simply play a YouTube video, it is not necessary to accept (or even read) these terms of use. Downloading YouTube videos using third-party applications, such as you­ tube-dl, is thus completely legal notwithstanding what is written with regard to this matter in the corresponding paragraph of the Web site's Terms of Use. As regards reliability, an obvious fact is that a stress placement study in which the location of stress in a sample of spoken data is determined exclusively by the author's own auditory senses is somewhat subjective, especially if the author is not a native speaker of the language the placement of stress in which he is describing in that study. A good illustration of this claim is the stress system of the Indonesian language, which is analyzed differently by Western and Indo­ nesian linguists. As van Zanten et al. (2010: 101) report, the former prefer the penultimate-stress analysis (i.e., Indonesian is a language with fixed stress on the penult), whereas the latter vacillate between fixed final stress and stressless­ ness, i.e., stress in Indonesian is, as Indonesian linguists think, either final or the language lacks stress altogether. Similarly: We must also acknowledge the fact that linguists may claim to perceive rhythmic beats that objectively are simply not present in the signal. If such perceptual beats are, or can be, biased by a linguist's own language, this may result in attributing a rhyth­ mic signature to the language being described that native speakers of that language would not perceive. (van der Hulst 2010b: 30)

In light of such facts, in contemporary phonetic studies dealing with stress (e.g., Mompean 2014), it is usually not the author of the study him- or herself but rath­ er two or three independent judges (preferably, native speakers of the language under study) who do the actual task of deciding which syllables in the words un­ der analyses bear stress. Or, alternatively, author's stress-location conclusions are Praat-supported, i.e., corresponding sound files are opened with a speech analysis software, such as Praat, which then determines the characteristics of syllables that are traditionally seen as the phonetic correlates of linguistic stress (pitch, duration, intensity, vowel quality, etc.).

3.3 YouTube-based study

65

It is clear, though, that these methodologies are suitable only for small-scale phonetic studies, similar to those of Mompean (20 14) and Henderson (20 10), who studied the preferred stress patterns of only a handful of English words. The present monograph analyzed, however, the preferred stress patterns of 1 ,232 English words with stress doublets in the OED that were found to have been pronounced in captioned YouTube videos by at least one native English speaker. Among these words is, for instance, the noun content, which, accord­ ing to the OED, is both / 'kunt£nt/ and /kgn ' t£nt/-'' con' tent is historical, and still common among the educated, but 'content is now used by many, especially by young people; some make a difference, saying con' tents, but cubic 'content; and printers often use 'contents technically, while saying con' tents generally'' (OED)­ but as the subsequent analysis of the corresponding YouTube data has revealed, is almost exclusively / 'kunt£nt/ in Present-day English. The spoken occurrences of the noun contentwere attested 7,127 times (only one of which was found to be an occurrence of the stress pattern /kgn ' t£nt/) in 524 captioned YouTube videos. Analyzing the location of stress in the noun content in each of these spoken oc­ currences using either Praat or relying upon the acoustic impressions of several independent judges would have inhibited the already extremely time-consum­ ing work described above and, in the case of independent judges, would have additionally cost the author thousands of Euros or U. S. dollars (which the au­ thor did not have), for no one would without a serious financial incentive have agreed to spend hours or even days listening to how content is pronounced in 524 YouTube videos, in which it occurs 7,127 times. Given this fact, an important question arises: How likely is it that the author could misinterpret the native English YouTube data in which the words the placement of stress in which he wished to analyze occur? To begin with, observe that the author's native language is Russian, in which just like in English, word stress is mainly cued by duration, vowel quality, and loudness. There are, how­ ever, important differences. According to Sokolova et al. (1 996: 1 23), The nature of word stress in Russian seems to differ from that in English. The quan­ titative component plays a greater role in Russian accentual structure than in English word accent. In the Russian language we never pronounce vowels of full formation and full length in unstressed positions, they are always reduced. Therefore the vowels of full length are unmistakably perceived as stressed. In English the quantitative com­ ponent of word stress is not of primary importance because of the nonreduced vowels in the unstressed syllables which sometimes occur in English words [ . . .] Russian phoneticians [ . . .] insist on the quantitative character of the Russian word stress as its principal feature, though other components of word stress in Russian are not denied. (Sokolova et al. 1996: 123; cf. Pettersson 1982: 68, where quality rather than quantity is termed the decisive feature of a stressed syllable in Russian)

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3 Methodology

The two types of vowel reduction in Russian are the so-called akan 'e and ikan 'e, which essentially mean pronouncing unstressed vowels in particular positions as /a/ and Ii/ (Byun et al. 2014: no pagination in the online-first version of the article). An example of akan' e is okno, ''window;' which is normally pronounced in Russian /ak ' no/ rather than /ok 'no/; an example of ikan'e is easy, ''clock;' whose standard Russian pronunciation is /ci ' sy/ rather than /ca' sy/ (from Byun et al. 2014: no pagination). Similarly, Chrabaszcz et al. (20 14: 1468), who have recently compared how word stress is cued in English, Mandarin, and Russian, report that although the vowel quality cue was the strongest cue for all groups of listeners, pitch was the second strongest cue for the English and the Mandarin listeners but was vir­ tually disregarded by the Russian listeners. Duration and intensity cues were used by the Russian listeners to a significantly greater extent compared with the English and Mandarin participants (Chrabaszcz et al. 2014: 1468).

In other words, native speakers of Russian pay much more attention to dura­ tion and loudness than they do to pitch, which is an important cue (in accented positions) in English. Notice, however, that Chrabaszcz et al.'s (2014: 1468) test persons ''performed a stress identification task on nonce disyllabic words'' (emphasis mine). In con­ trast, the words studied in this monograph are not nonce, but established words, which had been used by English speakers more than once and were therefore included into one of the most famous English language dictionaries: The Ox­ ford English Dictionary. For each of these words, phonetic transcriptions are given in the dictionary and it is these phonetic transcriptions (e.g., / ' rebgrgnt/ vs. /g 0 b£rgnt/ for aberrant, / ' duktr1ngl/ vs. /duk ' tra1ngl/ for doctrinal, / 'kunt£nt/ vs. /kgn ' t£nt/ for content, etc., where different stress patterns sometimes cor­ relate with differences in the segmental makeup) that the author has used as guidelines for deciding which syllable in a word occurring in a YouTube video bears stress. In other words, the author's task was not to determine the location of the stress in unfamiliar words, which he had never heard before, but only to establish a transcription-sound correspondence, i.e., to identify a pronunciation of a word in a particular YouTube video and to determine which pronunciation of the transcription given in the OED for a particular word with stress doublets it most resembles. Thus, even though it is of course possible that the location of the stress in some of the occurrences of these words could indeed be misinter­ preted by the author due to his native language bias (i.e., paying more attention to duration and loudness than to pitch), it is unlikely that the results reported in this monograph misrepresent the tendencies of particular stress patterns as to occurring more I less frequently than corresponding alternative stress patterns

3.3 YouTube-based study

67

(e.g., the fact that paprika is more often pronounced with penultimate than with antepenultimate stress). This claim is strongly supported by the fact that in the case of 556 ("'69.33 3) solidly-spelled words from the OED that also have an entry in the more synchronically-oriented OD, the first or the only stress pattern given in the latter dictionary is also the stress pattern that according to the author, was more frequently I exclusively used in captioned YouTube vid­ eos. E.g., Archimedean, which is /a:k1 ' mi:d1gn/ vs. /-mi: ' di: gn/ in the OED, is only I , a:ki ' mi:dign/ in the OD. In agreement with this, penultimate stress in Archimedean was heard by the author in only one (31rDPh_gqsg, 13. 07. 2017, at 00:38:06.889 00:38:08.829) of the 1 0 captioned YouTube videos in which Archimedean is pronounced by native English speakers 14 times. -->

4 Stress assignment in English

Given the inventory of the stress assignment principles, which were summa­ rized in 2.4, the question of why, in a particular English word, only a particular syllable counts as eligible to receive stress, can be answered in two different ways. First of all, it can be conjectured that the location of stress in English words is simply stored in English speakers' mental lexica, i.e., English speakers simply learn words together with particular stress patterns (see, e.g., Domahs et al. 2014, who provide a critical discussion of this possibility). This view can be found in, e.g., Kettemann (1 988: 329), who makes precisely this claim not only with respect to morphologically simple words but also even with regard to derived forms. Similarly, in more practically-oriented (i.e., applied) descrip­ tions of contemporary English pronunciation, especially learners of English as a second or foreign language are frequently warned that ''[i]n most cases there is no rule to the incidence of the stress [ . . .J It is therefore necessary for the for­ eign student to learn the stress of every word individually'' (Jones 1956; cited in Friederich 1 96 7: 5). Similarly: ''I know of no easy solution to the problem of stress in individual words; it must simply be learned, and dictionaries consulted'' (Halverson 1 967: 214). However, already Friederich (1 967: 24-25) could establish that the assignment of stress in English words is largely in accordance with what he called ''die Grundschemata des englischen Akzents'' (i.e., the basic principles of English stress). Thus disyllabic English words are normally stressed on the first syllable, whereas in words of three and more syllables stress is normally antepenultimate (Friederich 1967: 24-25; in the work of Lionel Guierre and that of his followers (see, e.g., Trevian 2007: 427), these empirical facts are referred to as the Nor­ mal Stress Rule of the English language). Similarly, as Field (2003: 328) reports, ''some 85.6 3 of all content words in running speech are either monosyllabic or stressed on the first syllable." Given these facts, the claim that stress assignment in English is entirely unpredictable (and thus lexically listed) does not seem conv1nc1ng. Another approach to English stress is thus a rule-based approach, which is associated with a computational model of stress assignment. As, e.g., Halle & Keyser ( 1971: 1 1) observe in this connection, •

•

in the English lexicon, that is, in the list of words of the language that every speaker must at least in part commit to memory, there are no indications of stress. Instead,

4.1 Monosyl lables

69

stress contours are computed as required with the help of rules [ . . .] (Halle & Keyser 197 1 : 1 1)

Note, however, that some authors who speak of stress assignment rules in Eng­ lish do not deny the possibility of stress in English words also being lexically stored. This view is characteristic of Hayes ( 1 995: 1 1 2), who mentions the lexicalized character of the English stress system [ . . .] : since English stress is lexi­ cally listed, the stress rules serve essentially as redundancy rules, describing the set of possible (as well as unmarked) patterns. A word has a well-formed stress contour if it is stressable by some derivation provided by the rules. (Hayes 1995: 1 12)

Leaving aside the question of whether stress assignment in English is purely computational or stress rules are redundancy rules because the location of stress in English words is stored in English speakers' mental lexica, let us now enlarge on the exact nature of the English stress rules (or stress principles). What are their provisions? The answer to this question will in the fallowing be given with regard to Eng­ lish words exhibiting different syllabic and/ or morphological structures: mon­ osyllables, disyllables, words of three and more syllables, and concatenations of words (which are usually classified into compounds and phrases even though in the case of especially sequences of two nouns, an answer to the question of whether a combination such as, e.g., budget deficit is a compound or phrase is far from being obvious).

4.1 M onosyllables

Since stress is a relational concept-i.e., if one syllable in a word is considered stressed, than the neighboring syllables co-occurring in the same word are con­ sidered either unstressed or stressed to a lesser degree than the syllable bearing primary stress-it is difficult to speak of stress in a monosyllabic English word, which consists of only one syllable (see, e.g., Poldauf 1 984: 14 and Kenyon & Knott 1 953 [ 1 944] : xxiv, who argue that monosyllables do not have word stress). At the same time, however, from a phonological point of view, there are good reasons to regard syllables of which monosyllabic English words are made up as syllables bearing stress. (For example, for the monosyllabic word cat, the MWO gives the phonetic transcription I ' kat/, where the word's only syllable I ' kat/ is said to bear primary stress.) A reason why a word such as cat, where there is only one syllable, can none­ theless be regarded as a word bearing stress is that the vowel in it is a qualita-

70

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

tively full vowel rather than a schwa, which is an important characteristic of stresslessness in English: Of the 6,229 phonetic transcriptions given in the OD for monosyllabic items, only 18 ("'0.29 3) are transcriptions such as, e.g., /tg/ of to (OD), where the nucleus is a schwa. Notice also that with the exception of function words (e.g., a, the, to), Eng­ lish monosyllables are never light (Hayes 1 995: 88) , i.e., of the 6,229 monosyl­ labic transcriptions in the OD, only 16 ("'0.26 3) have codaless rhymes end­ ing in a short vowel. English monosyllables are thus segmentally similar to finally-stressed English polysyllables, whose final syllables, which bear stress, are virtually never light: A light ult bearing stress occurs in the OD in only 23 finally-stressed (solidly-spelled) polysyllables, which are almost exclusively represented by poorly institutionalized foreign words. E.g., Moskva is stressed /ma ' skva/ (OD), imitating how the word, which is the Russian name for Moscow, is pronounced in the source language Russian (which is a quantity-insensitive language). Finally, observe that 1 ,763 ("'28.3 3) monosyllables in the OD exhibit the rhyme structure VC, i.e., e.g., /kat/ of cat, where a short vowel is followed by only one coda consonant; if monosyllables whose rhymes contain a short vowel that is followed by an affricate, i.e., e.g., lf£tfl of fetch (OD), are left out of con­ sideration, this number drops to 1 ,686 items: ,..,2 7.07 3. The point here is that if word-finally, consonants in English were indeed extrametrical, as it is argued by some authors (e.g., Hayes 1995: 59) , English monosyllables, in which stress falls upon the last syllable (i.e., the syllable that is not followed by any other syl­ lable belonging to the same word), would only exceptionally exhibit the rhyme structure VC, which is exhibited by the monosyllabic word cat. Monosyllables such as cat constitute, however, almost 30 per cent of the Eng­ lish monosyllables. They are by no means exceptional in contemporary English, which is one of the reasons why the present monograph is inclined to reject the notion of consonant extrametricality (at least, as far as the English language is concerned), i.e., if the nucleus of the last syllable in an English word is a short vowel, that syllable should not have two coda consonants to count as eligible to receive stress.

4.2 Disyllables

In the MRC database, syllabified phonetic transcriptions and stress indications are given for 12,882 disyllabic items. For 2,270 of these items the MRC gives the stress pattern 02, which means that the penult is unstressed whereas the ult bears stress-e.g., /g' lg:t/ of alert (OD) or /pg ' li:s/ of police (OD)-whereas for

4.2 Disyllables

71

1 0, 1 19 items the stress pattern given in the MRC is 20, which is the reverse of 02, i.e., the penult bears stress, whereas the ult is unstressed; e.g., / ' e1b(g)1/ of able (OD) or / ' r1vg/ of river (OD). As for the remaining 493 items, the majority of them (483) are said to have the stress pattern 22, which means that both the ult and the penult bear some degree of stress. This is mainly true of disyllabic compounds (e.g., armchair, backside, checkmate, farewell, guildhall, etc.) as well as prefixed formations such as, for instance, distaste, in breathe, misplaced, reload, undone, etc. Similarly, as pointed out in 3.2, the OD dictionary has 23,147 initially- and only 4,585 finally-stressed disyllables. The former are thus considerably more numerous in contemporary English than the latter. Final stress is, as Poldauf (1 984: 77) observes, ''a stress pattern foreign to English;' which, in addition to the numbers just given, is also reflected in the fact that 398 ("'8.68 3) final­ ly-stressed disyllables from the OD have an entry in (the online version of the) Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English (Speake & LaFlaur 2002). E.g., imam, which is a borrowing from Arabic, is stressed /1 ' ma:m/ (OD). By contrast, of the 23, 147 initially-stressed disyllables, only 1,292 ("'5.58 3) count (for Speake & LaFlaur 2002) as essential foreign terms in English. E.g., bureau, which is a borrowing from French, is stressed / ' bjugrgu/ (OD; cf. the OED, where bureau is said to be both /bju: ' rgu/ and / ' bjugrgu/, but in more than 1,000 spoken occurrences of this word in captioned YouTube videos, the author heard only initial stress). The difference of 398 I 4,585 vs. 1,292 I 23,147 is statistically highly significant-;( (1) 64, p < 0.000001 -which allows us to say that a disyllabic word that is perceived by an English speaker as a foreign word is likely to re­ ceive final rather than initial stress. The fact that bureau is no longer stressed /bju: 'rgu/ thus seems to suggest that this word no longer counts for English speakers as a foreign word. Indeed, of the 673 finally-stressed disyllables from the OD that according to Dictionary.com, were borrowed into English from (Old/ Middle / Anglo-)French, 1 06 ("'1 5.75 3) occur in Speake & LaFlaur' s (2002) dictionary. E.g., burlesque, caprice, finesse, gouache, nai"ve, etc. By contrast, in the case of the 1 ,280 initially-stressed im­ portations from (Old/ Middle / Anglo-)French, this is true of only 1 1 3 ("'8.83 3) words, such as the above mentioned bureau. The difference of 1 0 6 / 673 vs. 1 13 I l ,280 is also statistically highly significant: ;( (1) 2 1 , p 0.0000041. =

=

=

4 . 2 . 1 Stress preservation

According to the tool Morphological Analysis, 873 finally- and 1 ,332 initial­ ly-stressed disyllables from the MRC serve in English as bases of suffixed de­ rivatives. E.g., the finally-stressed disyllable employ is, according to the tool

72

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

Morphological Analysis, the base of the suffixed derivative employment and the initially-stressed disyllable beauty is the base of the suffixed derivative beautiful. A difference between the 873 finally- and 1,332 initially-stressed disyllabic bases is that in the former group, 416 bases (,..,4 7.65 3) have fewer occurrences in the British National Corpus I BNC than at least one suffixed derivative containing them. E.g., the derivative employment has 10,684 attestations in the corpus while the base employ occurs only 1 ,706 times; the former is thus considerably more frequent than the latter. By contrast, in the case of the 1,332 initially-stressed disyllabic bases, the same is true of only 238 bases: 17 .87 3. E.g., the base beauty occurs in the BNC only 4,108 times whereas the derivative beautiful has 8,387 attestations. The difference of 416 I 873 vs. 238 I 1 ,332 is statistically hugely sig­ nificant: i (1) = 224, p < 0.00000 1. Similarly, of disyllables that according to LDOCE, are in British English either exclusively or preferably pronounced with final stress, 629 occur in English as the base of at least one suffixed derivative (according to the tool Morphological Analysis). 24 ("'3.82 3) of these bases are, according to LDOCE, less frequently used by contemporary English speakers than at least one suffixed derivative containing them. E.g., election is, according to LDOCE, a high-frequency word whereas elect is a medium-frequency one; assignment is a high-frequency word whereas assign is a lower-frequency one; frustrated, frustrating, and frustration are medium-frequency words whereas frustrate is a lower-frequency one; etc. (Cf. invest vs. investment, which occur in the BNC 1 ,572 vs. 1 0,853 times respec­ tively (the longer noun investment can thus be said to be considerably more fre­ quent in the corpus than the shorter verb invest). In spite of this fact, however, in LDOCE both invest and investment are said to be medium-frequency words. This pair is therefore not analyzed in the same way as the pairs elect vs. election, assign vs. assignment, and frustrate vs. frustrated, frustrating, and frustration.) By contrast, in the case of (in British English either exclusively or prefera­ bly) initially-stressed disyllables from LDOCE, the corresponding proportion is 1 3 I 907(="'1.43 3). E.g., punishment is, according to LDOCE, a high-frequency word whereas punish is a medium-frequency one. The difference of 24/ 629 vs. 1 3 / 907 is also statistically significant: i (1) = 8.967, p = 0.003. The importance of these findings stems from the well-known fact that ''[i]n general, there is a strong tendency for derived words being less frequently used than their base words'' (Plag 2003: 1 1 1). (As Plag (2003: 1 1 1) explains, the reason for this is that ''[b ] eing semantically more complex, derived words tend to have a narrower range of meaning, to the effect that they cannot be used in as many contexts as their base words.") Of the 1 2,866 items in the MRC that the tool Mor­ phological Analysis considers to be suffixed derivatives, 1 0, 1 79 (,..,7 9. 12 3) have fewer occurrences in the BNC than the corresponding base form (according to ,..,

4.2 Disyllables

73

the tool Morphological Analysis); the mean of these base vs. derivative frequen­ cy differences is ,..,4,948. 1 1 and the median is 744 (e.g., torture has 848 attestations, but torturous occurs only 1 0 times). The base of a suffixed derivative is thus (in the English language) as a rule considerably more frequent than the derivative. (Similarly, in LDOCE there are 1 ,776 suffixed derivatives (according to the tool Morphological Analysis) in the case of which a frequency-related characteris­ tic-high-frequency, medium-frequency, lower-frequency-is given for both the base and the derivative. Of these derivatives, only 1 1 1 (6.25 3) are derivatives such as amazing, equipment, eraser, instruction, permission, etc., which, accord­ ing to LDOCE, are in contemporary English more frequently used than the cor­ responding base forms amaze, equip, erase, instruct, permit, etc. E.g., instruction is a high-frequency word whereas instruct is a medium-frequency one). Accordingly, since unlike the majority of suffixed derivatives in English, e.g., the semantically related longer noun employment has considerably more attes­ tations in the BNC than the shorter verb employ, the latter should from a syn­ chronic point of view be seen as a back-derivative from the former: to employ = to give employment to somebody. What is important in this connection is that, as pointed out in 2.3, when English speakers shorten longer words, the stressed syllable of a longer input form is as a rule preserved as the stressed syllable of a shorter output form. Thus, for example, the verbs liaise and secrete are stressed /11 ' e1z/ and /si 'kri:t/ (OD) because they were back-derived from the nouns liaison and secretion, which are stressed /11 ' e1z(g)n/ and /si 'kri :J(g)n/ (OD). (By contrast, the verbs edit and injure are stressed / ' edit/ and / ' 1nd3g/ (OD) because they were back-derived from the nouns editor and injury, which are stressed I ' £d1tg/ and / ' in(d)3( g)ri/ (OD), i.e., the stress pattern of the longer input words is thus also preserved in the shorter output words. In general, however, back-derivation is, as suggested above, more typical in English of finally-stressed disyllables, especially verbs.) Similarly, we argue that because the shorter verb employ is synchronically secondary to the longer noun employment, final stress in the for­ mer can be regarded as the preserved penultimate stress of the latter, i.e., employ is pronounced /1m 'pla1/ or /£m0pla1/ (OD) because employment is pronounced /1m 'pla1m(g)nt/ or /£m0 pla1m(g)nt/ (OD). (Penultimate stress in the base employ­ ment can be attributed either to the Latin Stress Rule (i.e., the penult / ' pla1/ is heavy) or to the prefixation analysis (i.e., the segmentally longer string -ploy­ ment, which employment shares with deployment, is like a root and therefore attracts stress on to its first syllable).) Note also that [o]ne important semantic consideration is that the meaning of the derived form de­ pends on the meaning of the base. This manifests itself on the level of the underlying

74

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish sentence [. . .] and all later levels of analysis in the fact that the base appears in the paraphrase of the derivation. (Schmid 20 1 1 : 192)

Given this, observe that for 99(/873=,.., l 1.34 3) finally-stressed disyllabic bases from the MRC, WordNet (semantic database) gives meaning definitions such as ''be abundant'' (= abound), ''make an announcement'' (= announce), ''be at­ tractive to'' (= attract), ''have a beginning'' (= begin), ''show a certain behavior'' (= behave), ''have a discussion'' (= discuss), ''become inflated'' (= inflate), ''follow a procedure'' (= proceed), ''make a proposal'' (= propose), ''be or become joined or united'' (=unite), etc. Paraphrases such as these also support the analyses of the (less frequently used) disyllabic verbs abound, announce, attract, begin, behave, discuss, inflate, proceed, propose, and unite as back-derivatives from the (more frequently used) longer words abundant, announcement, attractive, beginning, behavior, discussion, inflated, procedure, proposal, and united. Final stress in the former can therefore be regarded as the preserved stress of the latter. E.g., the derived verb begin is stressed /bi ' gin/ (OD) because the base noun beginning is stressed /bi ' giniIJ/ (OD). (By contrast, in the case of the initially-stressed disyl­ labic bases, the corresponding percentage is (79 I 1 ,332=)"'5.93 3. E.g., ''have an argument about something'' (= argue), ''frequently encountered'' (= frequent), ''provide or equip with furniture'' (= furnish), ''knowingly tell an untruth in a legal court and render oneself guilty of perjury'' (= perjure), ''inflict punishment on'' (= punish), etc. The difference of 99 I 873 vs. 79 I 1 ,332 is statistically highly significant-)f (1) = 2 1 , p = 0.000005-which lends further support to the claim that back-derivation is more typical in English of finally-stressed disyllabic words.) That final stress in disyllabic English verbs is often the preserved stress of longer English words is also a reason why in the case of some English disyl­ lables, stress differences accompany word class differences, i.e., an identical­ ly-spelled disyllable is stressed finally when occurring as a verb vs. initially when functioning morphosyntactically as a noun and/ or adjective. For exam­ ple, the string object occurs in the BNC 6,208 times, of which, however, only 969 are occurrences of object as a verb. To object is thus less frequent than objection (1 ,273) and can therefore be regarded as its back-derivative: to object = ''express or raise an objection'' (WordNet). The derived form to object is therefore stressed /gb ' d3£kt/ (OD) because the base form objection is stressed /gb ' d3£kf(g)n/ (OD). The more frequently used an object is, by contrast, stressed initially: I 'ubd3£kt/ (OD). Similarly, the string project occurs in the BNC 15,265 times, of which, however, only 498 are occurrences of project as a verb. To project is thus less fre­ quent than projection (603) and can therefore be regarded as its back-derivative: to project = ''draw a projection of;' as defined by WordNet. The derived form to

4.2 Disyllables

75

project is therefore stressed /prg ' d3ekt/ (OD) because the base form projection is stressed /prg ' d3ekf(g)n/ (OD). The more frequently used a project is, by contrast, pronounced with initial stress: / 'pmd3ekt/ (OD). As a verb, contract occurs in the BNC only 494 times (with the total number of occurrences of this string in the corpus being 1 1 ,884) and is thus less frequent than contractual (876) , contracted (785), contractor (708), and contraction (5 14). The back-derivative to contract-''enter into a contractual arrangement'' (WordNet)-is therefore pro­ nounced with final stress, /kgn ' trakt/ (OD), whereas in the more frequently used a contract, stress is initial: / ' kuntrakt/ (OD). Another similar case is to second, which occurs in the BNC only 56 times and can thus be regarded as a back-deriv­ ative from secondment, which occurs in the corpus 1 84 times. The derived form to second is therefore stressed /si 'kund/ (OD), preserving the stress of the base form /s g ' kundm(g)nt/ (OD). The considerably more frequently used noun/ ordi­ nal numeral second is, by contrast, stressed I ' sek(g)nd/ (OD). Absent themselves/ himself! herself! oneself! myself has only 22 attestations in the BNC and is thus less frequent than absentia, which occurs in the corpus 41 times. The former is therefore pronounced /gb ' sent, reb-/ (LDOCE) because the latter is pronounced /reb ' sentig/ (LDOCE). The considerably more frequently used adjective absent has, by contrast, regular initial stress: / ' rebsgnt/ (LDOCE). Note also that contemporary English does not have the words * limission and * vomission, but it has the words admission, commission/ commitment, emission, omission, permission, remission, submission, and transmission, which are as a rule ("'62.5 3) more frequent in the BNC than the finally-stressed - mit-verbs admit, commit, emit, omit, permit, remit, submit, and transmit. Thus we argue that, e.g., transmit is stressed /trrenz ' mit/ (LDOCE) because it is a back-derivative from transmission (which occurs in the BNC 1,463 times while transmit has only 322 attestations), but limit and vomit, which are not back-derivatives, have regular initial stress: / ' limit/ and / ' vum1t/ (LDOCE). In some cases, however, a less frequently used verb vacillates between final and initial stress. E.g., for to accent, the OED gives the British English transcrip­ tion /- ' sent/ and the American English I ' rek-/ vs. /- ' sent/. In COCA, which is a corpus of contemporary American English, to accent is less frequent than accent­ ed (which, according to the OED, is stressed /- ' sen-/ vs. / ' ak-/ in British English and / ' rek-/ vs. /- ' sen-/ in American English). The respective frequency numbers are 289 (accent as a verb) vs. 894 (accented). These numbers suggest that to accent is a back-derivative from accented: to accent = to make something accented. At the same time, however, accent as a verb is considerably less frequent in COCA than accent as a noun: 289 vs. 6,88 1 . These numbers suggest, by contrast, that to accent is a product of conversion of an accent, i.e., to accent = ''utter with an accent'' (WordNet). Stress in the derived form to accent should thus be the

76

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

preserved stress of the base form an accent. In this way, we obtain the variation between final and initial stress in to accent (and since an accent is more frequent not only than to accent but also than accented, the latter is likewise stressed interchangeably). According to the OED, this variation currently occurs only in American English, but since the corresponding frequency numbers from the BNC are fairly similar to those of the COCA corpus, we can be sure that it is only a matter of time before also British English speakers start stressing to ac­ cent / ' ak-/, preserving thereby the stress of the more frequently used an accent. E.g., to progress is in British English interchangeably stressed /prg(u) ' gr£s/ and / ' prgugr£s/ (OED). The former stress pattern is due to the analysis of to progress as a back-derivative from longer English words, i.e., the string progress occurs in the BNC 8,081 times, of which, however, only 613 are occurrences of progress as a verb; to progress is thus less frequent than progression (735) and especially progressive (1,763). At the same time, however, because one of the meanings of to progress is ''[t]o make a progress'' (OED), to progress also counts as a converted verb. There are therefore good reasons to pronounce to progress with the stress of the more frequently used a progress: / ' prgugr£s/. (Cf. to object and to project, which semantically do not have much to do with an object and a project. The stress pattern of the former is therefore not destabilized by the stress pattern of the latter. The same is true of second as a verb vs. second as a noun I ordinal numeral, but notice also that apart from the finally-stressed to second, which means ''transfer an employee to a different, temporary assignment'' (WordNet), there is also the initially-stressed to second, which means ''give support or one's approval to'' (WordNet). Since the connection between these senses is far from being obvious, we can assume that the stress difference between these two identically-spelled verbs is only semantically-conditioned.) Similar cases of stress preservation can be easily found among disyllabic instances of other morphosyntactic categories (but note that in contemporary English, ''the most productive process within [back-formation] is the formation of verbs from action nouns'' (Staskova 2012: 1 04); e.g., gentrification � gentrify, ''to attempt or accomplish the gentrification of'' (Staskova 2012: 1 04). Back-de­ rived verbs are therefore more numerous in English than back-derived instances of other morphosyntactic categories). For example, the adjectives abrupt, adroit, exact, extreme, precise, profuse, sincere, and succinct are less frequent in the BNC than the corresponding adverbs abruptly, adroitly, exactly, extremely, precisely, profusely (as well as profusion), sincerely, and succinctly (481 vs. 1,154, 34 vs. 42, 2,237 vs. 10,305, 3,626 vs. 6,632, 57 vs. 92 and 1 66, 457 vs. 1,1 14, 1 04 vs. 1 86; the mean of these differences is 1 ,579.75 and the median is 383). Similarly, in the BNC, the shorter word austere is less frequent than the longer word austerity (292 vs. 423), the shorter averse is less frequent than the longer aversion (142

4.2 Disyllables

77

vs. 196), the shorter conjunct is less frequent than the longer conjunction (six vs. 1,488), the shorter discrete is less frequent than the longer discretion (489 vs. 1 ,870), the shorter distinct is less frequent than the longer distinction (3,158 vs. 4,088), the shorter diverse is less frequent than the longer diversity (1,3 1 1 vs. 1 ,394), the shorter humane is less frequent than the longer humanity (355 vs. 1, 1 99), the shorter inert is less frequent than the longer inertia (292 vs. 345), the shorter intent is less frequent than the longer intention (1 ,847 vs. 4,653), the shorter rotund is less frequent than the longer rotunda (43 vs. 53), etc. Notice also that it is only the adjective august, ''of or befitting a lord/ profoundly honored'' (WordNet), that is stressed la : ' gAst/ (OD), preserving the penultimate stress of la: ' gAstgs/ of Augustus (OD), whereas the noun august (month of the year) is stressed / ' a:ggst/ (OD). Etymologically, both adjectival and nominal uses of august go back to the first Roman emperor Augustus (OD), but what matters from a synchronic perspective is that it is only the adjective august that is less frequent in the BNC than the proper noun Augustus: 94 vs. 369. A fairly simi­ lar case is / ' hju:mgn/ of human vs. /hju ' me1n/ of humane (OD), of which only the latter has fewer attestations in the BNC than humanity, which is stressed /hj u ' man1ti/ (OD). The analysis of humane as a back-derivative from humanity is also supported by the definition ''pertaining to or concerned with the human­ ities;' given for one of the senses of humane in the WordNet database. An example of a finally-stressed back-derived noun is dement-''A person suffering from dementia'' (OD)-which is stressed /d1 ° m£nt/ (OD), preserving the stress of its base /d1 ° m£nfg/ (OD). Similarly, the noun caprice, which is stressed /kg 'pri:s/ (OD), occurs in the BNC only 36 times whereas the adjective capricious, which is stressed /kg 'pr1Jgs/ (OD), has 1 1 4 attestations. An objection that can be raised against the back-derivation analysis is that of the aforementioned finally-stressed disyllables, some do not preserve the segmental structure of the corresponding more frequently used longer word(s). E.g., we have a short vowel in the stressed antepenult of /hju ' man1ti/ of hu­ manity, but the stressed ult of /hj u ' me1n/ of humane contains a diphthong. To account for this, recall that, as we established in 3.2, of the 14,222 suffixed de­ rivatives in the OD, 7 ,486 ("'52.64 3) exemplify agglutinative suffixation, which means that the derived form preserves not only the stress but also the segmen­ tal structure of the base. At the same time, however, we also established that in 9,833 ("'69. 14 3) suffixed derivatives in the OD, stress falls upon the same syllable (counting from left to right) as in the corresponding base form. Since these two numbers-7,486 and 9,833-are not identical, it is clear that stress preservation cannot be equated with agglutinative suffixation: A derived form may preserve the stress of its base form, without, however, preserving each and every phonetic segment constituting it. E.g., the shorter word cadaver is,

78

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

according to the tool Morphological Analysis, the base of the longer word ca­ daverous. This analysis is strongly supported by the fact that the former occurs in the BNC 43 times whereas the latter has only 13 attestations in the corpus. In spite of this fact, however, the base cadaver is, according to the OD, pronounced /kg ' da:vg/ or /kg ' de1vg/, with the nucleus of the stressed syllable being filled by either a long vowel or diphthong, but the derivative cadaverous is pronounced only /kg ' dav(g)rgs/ (OD), with the nucleus of the stressed syllable containing a short vowel; to account for cases similar to this, it is usually assumed that ''[i]n stressed antepenultimate syllables followed by a stressless penult, long vowels are subject to so-called 'trisyllabic shortening': e.g. sane"" sanity, serene"" serenity'' (Bermudez-Otero & McMahon 2006: 386). As for the question of why the stressed syllable of /hju ' me1n/ of humane contains a diphthong in the nucleus, the answer to it is that there simply exists an association between the orthographic form -ane (occurring at the end of a word) and the phonetic realization (of this string) as /e1n/: Of the 201 words in the OD that end orthographically in -ane, 174 (""86.57 3) also have /-e1n/ at the end of the corresponding phonetic transcription(s) given in the dictionary. At the same time, however, of these 174 -ane-words, only 19 (""10.92 3) are final­ ly-stressed words such as humane, in which the phonetic string /-e1n/, in which these words end, receives stress. In the majority of the English -ane-words, this string does not receive stress even when it is phonetically realized as /-e1n/. E.g., membrane is initially-stressed as / 0 m£mbre1n/ (OD) even though the ult in it, just like the ult in /hj u ' me1n/ of humane, also contains the diphthong /e1/; the 57 initially-stressed -ane-disyllables in the OD are mainly represented by chemistry-related -ane-formations such as, e.g., methane (� methyl + -ane): Just like in other disyllabic suffixed derivatives in English, stress in them is supposed to be initial, irrespective of the phonetic realization of their orthographic final string -ane as /-e1n/. Notice also that both finally- and initially-stressed disyllables sometimes pre­ serve not primary but (as explained in Section 2.2, phonetically not different) sec­ ondary stress of a longer English word (Kreidler 1 979: 29). E.g., the stress pattern /19 ' zam/ of exam (OD) is the preserved secondary stress of /19 , zam1 ' ne1J(g)n/ of examination (OD) and similarly, because the longer word Alexander is stressed I , al19 ' za:ndg/ (OD), the shorter word Alex is stressed / ' al1ks/, with the secondary stress of the former becoming primary stress in the latter. The shorter words exam and Alex are not back-derivatives but shortenings of the longer words examination and Alexander. The difference between back-der­ ivation and shortening is that the former process gives rise to (a semantically more complex) new lexeme (i.e., e.g., while the base form dementia means ''de­ mentia;' the derived form dement means ''a person suffering from dementia'';

4.2 Disyllables

79

the meaning of the latter is thus more complex than the meaning of the former), the latter process yields an allolex of an already existing lexeme. That is, Alex is simply a shorter alternative to Alexander and, similarly, the meaning of the shorter word exam is one of the meanings of the longer word examination: ''a set of questions or exercises evaluating skill or knowledge'' (WordNet). Note also that etymologically, many finally-stressed disyllables appeared in English not via back-derivation but rather as shortenings (of especially Latin words). E.g., the above mentioned sincere is historically not back-derivative from sincerely but shortening of the Latin sincerus (Dictionary.com), in which stress is penultimate because the vowel in the penult is long; likewise, antepenulti­ mate stress in the Latin permittere, which has a short vowel in the penult, is the diachronic reason why to permit in English has final stress. Cf. exist, for which different etymological analyses are given in Dictionary.com vs. the OD: The for­ mer regards the verb under consideration as a shortening of the Latin ex(s)istere (where, just as in permittere, stress is antepenultimate because the vowel in the penult is short), whereas the latter analyzes exist as ''probably a back-formation from existence'' (which also makes sense from a synchronic point of view: The shorter exist occurs in the BNC 5,356 times whereas the longer existence has 6,472 attestations; additionally, the meaning of exist is, according to WordNet, ''have an existence''). The last number that must be presented in connection with stress preserva­ tion is that of the 4,585 finally-stressed disyllables in the OD, 50 ("'1 .09 3) lack orthographic vowels. E.g., RP is stressed /a: ' pi:/ (OD). By contrast, in the case of the 23, 147 initially-stressed disyllables, the same can be said about only nine ("'0.04 3) words. E.g., Jr is stressed / ' d3u:njg/ (OD). The difference of 50 I 4,585 vs. nine / 23,147 is statistically hugely significant: )( (1) 1 94, p < 0.000001 (with Yates' correction, because one of the expected values is smaller than 1 0). The point here is that stronger stress in an English phrase falls as a rule upon its rightmost primary-stressed syllable. Thus, as, e.g., Hayes (1995: 368) observes, ''[a] common but not invariant pattern across languages is for syntactic phrases to receive final prominence." E.g., Re, ceived Pronunci'ation (LDOCE). According­ ly, when a bi-constituent phrase such as Received Pronunciation is abbreviated to an initialism such as RP, the latter is pronounced with final stress: /a: ' pi:/; words such as RP, which do not contain orthographic vowels, are therefore more numerous in English among finally-stressed disyllables. (The orthographic abbreviation Jr is, by contrast, phonetically in no way different from junior.) =

80

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

4 . 2 . 2 Segmenta l length

Apart from shortening of/back-derivation from longer English words, stress in a disyllabic English word may be final due to the already mentioned principle of not placing primary stress upon an element that counts morphologically as a prefix (unless there are reasons to emphasize the meaning inherent in it). This stress principle continues the Old English Stress Rule, which, as observed in Chapter 1, places primary stress in a polysyllabic word upon the first syllable of its root or stem. Recall also that, as argued in Chapter 1 , prefixed derivatives in English are not necessarily formations such as, e.g., regain, whose segmentation into the prefix re- and the base gain is fully transparent both formally and semantically; additionally, gain is considerably more frequent in the BNC than regain: 12,300 vs. 598. Stress in the disyllabic derivative regain is therefore placed upon the only syllable constituting its monosyllabic base gain, i.e., /r1 ' ge1n/ (OD). Consider, however, the nature of final stress in the verb I noun approach, i.e., /g 'prgutf/ (OD), which, just like, e.g., approve, seems to be made up of the prefix ap- and the root proach. Note, however, that whereas the righthand component prove of approve occurs in English as a separate word and, in addition to this, is in the BNC considerably more frequent than approve- 14,329 vs. 1,037-the righthand component proach of approach does not occur in the BNC and, sim­ ilarly, in the corresponding OD entry referring to it, it is said to be ''[n] ow rare (archaic and poetic in later use)." The justification for the segmentation of approach into the bound components ap- and -proach is thus the existence of the formally similar word reproach, which shares with approach the ult .proach. The segmentation ap- + -proach necessitates, however, the treatment of either the former or the latter as the root of approach, for, as pointed out in Chapter 1 , the root is the only obligatory element in a word; a word may be affixless, but it may not be rootless. Since the components ap- and -proach of approach are not associated with discernible meanings of their own, it is only the segmental length principle (which states that the root should contain more phonetic seg­ ments than the affix) that can be relied upon to answer the question of which of these two components counts in approach as the root. Since the ult I 'prgutfl contains more phonetic segments than the penult /g/, the former is clearly more like a root whereas the latter is more like a prefix. Stress in approach is therefore placed upon the only syllable constituting the bound root -proach. This analysis is strongly supported by the following numbers. Of the 2,270 finally-stressed disyllables in the MRC, 872 ("'38.41 3) are HH-disyllables, i.e., not only the ult bearing stress but also the penultimate syllable, which is un­ stressed, are heavy. E.g., /gb ' sg:d/ of absurd (OD), with both the ult / ' sg:d/ and

4.2 Disyllables

81

the penult /gb/ counting as heavy. At the same time, however, of the 10, 1 1 9 initially-stressed disyllabic transcriptions, 4, 141 ("'40.92 3) exhibit the structure HH, i.e., e.g., / ' r£skju:/ of rescue (OD), with both the penult / ' res/, bearing stress, and the unstressed ult /kju:/ counting as heavy. Although this difference does achieve statistical significance-x2 (1) 4.845, p 0.0277 (with the p-value being, however, not far away from the threshold of 0.05)-it is nonetheless clear that in general, the phonological weight is a very poor predictor of the location of stress in a disyllabic English word: In disyllabic English words in which both syllables are heavy, final stress is almost as frequent as initial stress: ,..,3 8.41 3 vs. ,..,40. 92 3. What distinguishes the 872 HH-disyllables such as absurd from the 4, 141 HH-disyllables such as rescue is the segmental length of the ult in comparison with the corresponding length of the neighboring penult. Of the 872 HH-disyllables, 624 ("'7 1.56 3) have segmentally longer ults (i.e., those that contain more segments than the corresponding penults), whereas in the case of the 4, 141 HH-disyllables, the same can be said about only 1,996 items: ,..,4 8.2 3. This difference is, in contrast to that of 872 I 2,270 vs. 4,141 I 1 0, 1 19, statistically hugely significant: x2 (1) 1 58, p < 0.00000 1 . Applying the notion of weighted arithmetic mean (see, e.g., Ventcel' 1969: 87-88), i.e., taking into account the number of occurrences of a particular value (e.g., the number of English disyllables in which the ult consists of, e.g., four segments), this length difference between HH- and HH-disyllables can also be presented in the following way: In the case of the 872 HH-disyllables, the average segmental length of the ult is ,..,3_ 7 (symbols used in a corresponding MRC transcription; e.g., for absurd the MRC gives the phonetic transcription @b/s3d, in which the ult /s3d consists of three symbols. MRC transcriptions do not employ the duration symbol (:) and are therefore particularly suitable for analyzing the segmental length: One symbol in an MRC transcription normal­ ly corresponds to one sound, with two symbols being only used to represent diphthongs and affricates, which can be regarded as bi-segmental sounds) and the average segmental length of the penult is "'2.6; the difference between the segmental length of the former and that of the latter is thus 1 . 1 . As for the 4,141 HH-disyllables, the average segmental length of the ult is ,..,3 _5 and the average segmental length of the penult is "'2.99; the length difference is thus only 0.51. The ult of a finally-stressed disyllable in English thus contains on average more phonetic segments than the ult of an initially-stressed disyllable (3. 7 vs. 3.5), whereas the penult of an initially-stressed disyllable has, by contrast, more segments than the penult of a finally-stressed disyllable: 2.99 vs. 2.6. This is the reason why Kelly's (2004) study has demonstrated that in disyllab­ ic English words, an increase in the number of onset consonants in the penult correlates statistically with an increase in the incidence of initial stress: The =

=

=

82

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

fewer consonants in the onset of the penult, the shorter the penult in compari­ son with the ult, the more reasons English speakers have to regard the latter as root and the former as prefix. By contrast, the more consonants in the onset of the penult, the longer the penult in comparison with the ult, the fewer reasons English speakers have to regard the latter as root and the former as prefix. Note also that of the 2,270 finally-stressed transcriptions in the MRC, only 341 ("'1 5.02 3)-the minority-are transcriptions such as /bi ' gin/ of begin and /gd' mit/ of admit (OD), in the case of which the rhyme of the ult, bearing stress, is made up of a short vowel being fallowed by only one consonant. Similarly, in the OD dictionary, the number of such words among the 4,625 finally-stressed disyllables is 925 (20 3). The fact that among finally-stressed disyllabic English words, disyllables such as /bi ' gin/ and /gd' mit/ are outnumbered by disyllables such as /g ' dapt/ (OD), in which there are at least two consonants following a short vowel in the rhyme of the ult, creates the illusion of word-final consonants being extrametrical in English, i.e., it is argued by some authors that the rhyme structure VC counts word-finally as light rather than heavy; to count as heavy and stressable, a final syllable must therefore either contain a long vowel or be closed by at least two consonants. As pointed out in the previous section, the present monograph rejects this claim. The rhyme structure VC is word-finally as heavy and stressable as it is in the penultimate position; e.g., the final syllables / ' gin/ of begin and / ' mit/ of ad­ mit are no less heavy than the final syllable / ' dapt/ of adapt. That finally-stressed words such as begin and admit, whose ults exhibit the rhyme structure VC, are outnumbered in English by finally-stressed disyllables such as adapt, in which the structure of the rhyme of the ult is VCC, is a consequence of the fact that the assignment of stress in disyllabic English words is by and large conditioned morphologically (rather than phonologically): The more consonants in the coda of the ult, the longer the ult relative to the penult, the more reasons English speakers have to regard the latter as root and the former as prefix. By contrast, the fewer consonants in the coda of the ult, the shorter the ult in relation to the penult, the fewer reasons English speakers have to regard the former as root and the latter as prefix. This is also the reason why in contrast to the structure HH, among the in­ stances of which final stress is, as reported above, almost as frequent as initial stress, in disyllables exhibiting the structure LH (light penult + heavy ult), final stress is considerably more frequent than initial stress. Of the 2,270 syllabified phonetic transcriptions that are given in the MRC for finally-stressed disylla­ bles, 1 ,209 ("'53.26 3) are transcriptions such as /g ' lg:t/ of alert and /pg ' li:s/ of police, which exhibit the structure LH. By contrast, in the case of the 10, 1 1 9 transcriptions whose stress pattern in the MRC is 20, the same can be said

4.2 Disyllables

83

about only 1,588 transcriptions: ,.., 1 5.69 3. For example, in / 'fadgu/ of shadow (OD), the penult / 'fa/, which bears stress, is light, whereas the ult /dgu/, which is unstressed, is heavy. This difference (i.e., 1,209 I 2,270 vs. 1,588 I 1 0, 1 19) is sta­ tistically hugely significant: i (1) 1,497, p < 0.00000 1. (In metrical phonology, the structure LH is referred to as the canonical iamb, which ''is quantitatively unbalanced, and contains a light syllable fallowed by a heavy syllable'' (Kager 1 995: 438). Iambs are different from trochees in that an iambic foot ends in a stressed syllable, whereas a trochee begins with it (see, e.g., Alber 2006: 541) and the standard definition of the foot is that of ''a grouping of syllables that contains exactly one stressed syllable'' (Jensen 1 993: 77). Notice, however, that as Domahs et al. (20 13: 272) point out, ''[. . .] it remains still unknown whether feet are cognitively valid concepts:') An explanation for the finding that the stress pattern LH is more frequent in English than LH is (thus not that the former gives rise to a canonical iamb but) that light syllables contain on average fewer phonetic segments than heavy syllables, i.e., a light syllable ends in a short vowel, but a heavy syllable contains a long vowel I diphthong I triphthong or I and a coda consonant. That is why, of the 1 ,209 LH-transcriptions in the MRC, 1 , 1 1 3 ("'92.06 3) have (heavy) ults con­ sisting of more phonetic segments than the corresponding (light) penult: The weighted arithmetic means are "'3.62 segments in the ult vs. "'1.78 segments in the penult. Stress in disyllables such as these should naturally be final rather than initial. Due to the very same reason, final stress is, as established in 4. 1, in general non-existent in English when the ult of a polysyllabic word is light. Because 1) roots are segmentally longer than affixes and 2) light syllables are segmentally shorter than heavy ones, a light syllable occurring at the end of a polysyllabic English word is segmentally too short to count morphologically as its root. Notice also that of the 1 0, 1 19 initially-stressed transcriptions in the MRC, only 2,954 ("'29.19 3) are transcriptions such as the above mentioned / 'fadgu/ of shadow, in which the penult / 'Jal, which bears stress, is light. Further similar examples include / ' £ni/ of any (OD) and / ' r1vg/ of river (OD), with stress in these disyllabic words likewise falling upon the light penults / ' £/ and / ' r1/. What we see is that, on the one hand, in stark contrast to final stress, initial stress in a disyllabic English word does occur even when the syllable upon which it falls is a light one (i.e., given that almost 30 per cent of initially-stressed disyllables in English have light penults, it would be counterintuitive to regard stress pat­ terns such as I 'fadgu/ of shadow as exceptions.) At the same time, however, heavy penults among initially-stressed disyllables outnumber in English light penults-70 3 vs. 30 %-because, again, as pointed out above, the longer the penult, the fewer reasons there are to regard the ult as the root. =

84

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

An even more precise predictor of the location of stress in a disyllabic English word seems to be the orthographic length of the ult in comparison with the cor­ responding length of the neighboring penult. Consider, e.g., the stress difference between the verbs differ and defer. I ' difg/ vs. Idi ' fg :/ (OD). This difference cannot be accounted for if we consider the segmental length of the ult / ' fg:/ of defer in comparison with the segmental length of the penult /di/: With regard to this parameter, the finally-stressed /di ' fg:/ is not different from the initially-stressed / ' difg/ (i.e., since we are only concerned with the segmental length, we ignore the duration symbol (:) in the transcription /di ' fg:/.) This difference can, howev­ er, be accounted for if, instead of considering the phonetic transcription /di ' fg:/, we consider the orthographic form defer. Assuming that defer is underlyingly de.fer while differ is underlyingly dif.fer (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968: 83, argu­ ing that umbrella is stressed /Am ' br£lg/ (OD) because under the orthographic syllabification um. brel. la, the penult, which contains a short vowel, is closed and counts therefore as heavy), we note that it is only defer where the ult is orthographically longer than the penult. Stress is therefore final in defer while it is initial in differ. (Initial stress in differ can, however, also be seen as the pre­ served initial stress of I ' dif(g)r( g)ns/ of difference (OD), which has considerably more attestations in the BNC than differ. 1 1, 1 67 vs. 1 ,806. To differ = to exhibit a difference, cf. ''be different;' ''be of different opinions;' which is how to differ is defined in the WordNet semantic database.) A similar case is the stress pattern / 'Jadgu/ of shadow. Under the orthographic syllabification sha. dow, the ult and the penult in this word both consist of three orthographic segments; stress in shadow should therefore be initial. Indeed, of the 2, 147 hyphenations given in LDOCE for disyllables that in British English are either exclusively or preferably pronounced with final stress, 1 ,866 ("'86.91 3) are hyphenations such as, e.g., ab-surd of absurd, whose righthand strings that follow the boundary symbol (·) contain more orthographic segments than the corresponding lefthand string preceding it; the weighted arithmetic means are ,..,4 _3 (ult) vs. "'2.4 (penult). By contrast, of the 1 0,312 hyphenations given in LDOCE for (in British English either exclusively or more frequently) initially-stressed disyllables, only 3,020 ("'29.29 3) have segmentally longer ults (e.g., colleague, whose hyphenation in LDOCE is col· league, is stressed / ' kuli:g/ (LDOCE) even though the ult in it contains more orthographic segments than the penult); the average values are "'3.24 (ult) vs. ,..,3 _55 ("'penult), which means that prototypically, the ult and the penult in an initially-stressed disyllabic Eng­ lish word consist of approximately the same number of orthographic symbols (which is what we find in hyphenations such as, e.g., res·cue of rescue). The difference of 1 ,866 / 2,147 vs. 3,02 0 / 10,3 1 2 is statistically hugely significant: f' (1) = 2,476, p < 0.000001.

4.2 Disyllables

85

Whereas LDOCE gives hyphenations, such as ab·surd and res·cue, the OD provides line breaks, such as ab:surd and res:cue. The difference is that for, e.g., the trisyllabic artery the OD gives the line break ar:tery, where the bounda­ ry symbol (:) occurs only once, whereas in the hyphenation ar·te·ry, given in LDOCE, the boundary symbol (·) occurs twice. Hyphenations in LDOCE are therefore more suitable for analyzing trisyllables and longer words. Of the 3,195 line breaks given in the OD for finally-stressed disyllables, 2,548 (,..,7 9.75 3) have orthographically longer ults; the average values are "'2.63 (pe­ nult) vs. "'4.35 (ult). As for the initially-stressed disyllables, the corresponding proportion is 4,140 / 13,2 1 9 (,..,3 1 .32 3) and the corresponding average values are "'3.64 (penult) vs. "'3.62 (ult). The difference of 2,548 / 3,195 vs. 4,140 / 13,2 1 9 is also statistically hugely significant: x2 (1) 2,500, p < 0.00000 1 . Thus, we can reiterate that in finally-stressed disyllabic English words, the ult is orthographically longer than the penult, with the length difference between them approaching two orthographic symbols (which is what we observe in cases such as ab:surd of absurd). In initially-stressed disyllables, by contrast, the ult has as a rule the same orthographic length as the penult, which is what we observe in cases such as res:cue of rescue. Notice also that in LDOCE, 2,092 initially- and 770 finally-stressed disyl­ lables are classified into high-, medium-, and lower-frequency words. Of the 262 high-frequency finally-stressed disyllables (e.g., about), 232 (,..,8 8.55 3) have orthographically longer ults, but in the case of the 740 high-frequency initial­ ly-stressed disyllables (e.g., colleague), this is true of only 227 (,..,3 0.68 3) words. This difference is statistically hugely significant: x2 (1) 261, p < 0.00000 1. Like­ wise, of the 236 medium-frequency finally-stressed disyllables (e.g., extinct), 2 1 3 (,..,9 0.25 3) have orthographically longer ults, but in the case of the 759 me­ dium-frequency initially-stressed disyllables (e.g., evi�, this is true of only 223 (,..,2 9.38 3) words. This difference is also statistically hugely significant: x2 (1) 271, p < 0.00000 1 . Finally, of the 272 lower-frequency finally-stressed disyllables (e.g., eclipse), 256 (,..,94. 1 2 3) have orthographically longer ults, but in the case of the 593 lower-frequency initially-stressed disyllables (e.g., archive), this is true of only 180 (,..,3 0.35 3) words. This difference is also statistically hugely signifi­ cant: x2 (1) 303, p < 0.00000 1. Abidance by the segmental length principle can thus be said to be equally characteristic of high-, medium-, and low-frequency disyllabic English words. Finally, observe that in contrast to the MRC, where any is e/nl, finish is fl/nIS , medal is me/dl, river is rl/v@, topic is tO/plk, etc. (i.e., in the syllabified transcrip­ tions given in the MRC database, the medial consonants In/, /di, Iv/, and /p/ are in accordance with the Maximal Onset Principle (e.g., Yava§ 20 1 1 : 137) regarded as onset of the ult), LDOCE gives for the same words the hyphenations an·y, fin·ish, =

=

=

=

86

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

med·al, riv·er, and top·ic, where the same medial consonants are analyzed as coda of the penult. Disagreements such as these are due to the fact that apart from the Maximal Onset Principle, there is also, e.g., the morphemic principle, which requires that syllable boundaries be aligned with morpheme boundaries (Cruttenden 2008: 50); additionally, Cruttenden (2008: 50, 258) also mentions the phonotactic principle (''align syllable boundaries to parallel syllable codas and onsets at the ends and beginnings of words'') and the allophonic principle (''align syllable boundaries to best predict allophonic variation, e.g. the voicing of /r/ following /t/''). ''Unfortunately such principles often conflict with one an­ other'' (Cruttenden 2008: 50), which is why we sometimes find syllabification disagreements such as fl. nish in the MRC vs. fin. ish in LDOCE. Given cases such as this, a question arises as to what extent compliance with the segmental length principle (in especially initially-stressed disyllabic Eng­ lish words) is due to the fact that the syllabification principles abided by the compilers of LDOCE as well as the OD are different from those of, e.g., the MRC database. The answer to this question is that of the 2,270 syllabified phonetic transcriptions given in the MRC for 1, 935 orthographically non-identical final­ ly-stressed disyllables, 1,882 ("'82. 9 1 3) have segmentally longer ults. By con­ trast, in the case of the 10, 1 1 9 transcriptions given in the database for 8,879 or­ thographically non-identical initially-stressed disyllables, the same can be said about no more than 3,881 ("'38.35 3) transcriptions. This percentage is, just as expected, higher than the corresponding percentages in both LDOCE ("'29.29 3) and the OD ("'3 1.32 3), but the difference of 1 ,882 / 2,270 vs. 3,88 1 / 1 0, 1 19 still counts as statistically hugely significant: i (1) 1 ,479, p < 0.000001. The seg­ mental length principle is thus also in the MRC by and large abided by. Notice further that the 2,270 finally-stressed transcriptions in the MRC da­ tabase fall into two ("'0.09 3), 149 ("'6.56 3), 857 ("'37.75 3), 926 ("'40.79 3), 286 ("'12.6 3), 45 ("'1.98 3), and five ("'0.22 3) transcriptions in which the ult contains one-seven phonetic segments. The 1 0, 1 1 9 initially-stressed transcriptions in the database fall, by contrast, into 1 04 ("'1.03 3), 3,574 ("'35.32 3), 3,742 ("'36.98 3), 2,120 ("'20.95 3), 528 ("'5.22 3), and 5 1 ("'0.5 3) transcriptions in which the ult con­ tains one-six phonetic segments. For one segment (two / 2,270 vs. 104/ 10,1 19), i (1) 19.3, p < 0.0001; for two segments (149 / 2,270 vs. 3,574/ 10,1 1 9), i (1) 729, p < 0.00000 1 ; for three segments (857 / 2,270 vs. 3,742 / 10 , 1 1 9), i (1) 0.475, p 0.4907; for four segments (926 I 2,270 vs. 2,120I 10, 1 1 9), i (1) 394, p < 0.000001 ; for five segments (286 I 2,270 vs. 528I 1 0, 1 1 9), i (1) 165, p < 0.00000 1 ; for six segments (45 / 2,270 vs. 5 1 / 10, 1 1 9), i (1) 53, p < 0.00000 1 ; for seven segments (five / 2,270 vs. zero / 1 0, 1 1 9), f (1) 22, p < 0.0000 1. What we see, then, is that final stress is the preferred stress pattern of a disyllabic English word only when its ult contains no less than four phonetic segments, whereas initial =

=

=

=

=

=

=

=

=

4.2 Disyllables

87

stress is the preferred stress pattern when the segmental length of the ult is one or two and in the case of disyllables whose ults contain three segments, initial stress is as frequent as final stress; there is no preferred stress pattern. Thus, for instance, analyzing the stress patterns / ' argb/ of Arab (OD) and / ' v1z1t/ of visit (OD), we note that in contrast to LDOCE, which gives the hyphenations Ar·ab and vis· it (stress in these words is thus in accordance with the segmental length principle initial), the MRC gives the syllabified transcriptions &/r@b and vl/zlt, where the medial consonants /r/ and /z/ are analyzed not as coda of the penult but as onset of the ult. (In the MWO, visit is, just like in the MRC, only / ' vi-zgt/, but for Arab, the dictionary gives both the syllabifications / ' a-rgb/ and / ' er-gb/.) Note, however, that even if we proceed from the syllabifications A.rah and vi. sit rather than from Ar. ab and vis. it, the ults in these words still fail to achieve the segmental length of four symbols, which is prototypically exhibited in English by the ult of a finally-stressed disyllable. The disyllables Arab and visit are there­ fore stressed initially even though the ult in these words is segmentally longer than the penult. 4 . 2 . 3 Suffix-like endings

Further deviations from the segmental length principle can be found among disyllables whose ults occur in English as suffixes. Thus it was reported in 3.2 that not only actual suffixed derivatives (such as active and lover), which are almost exclusively (94 3) pronounced in English with initial stress, but also disyllables such as any, finish, medal, river, topic, etc., whose final syllables end orthographically in strings such as -y, -ish, -al, -er, - ic, etc., which occur in Eng­ lish as suffixes, clearly prefer initial to final stress. Accordingly, irrespective of whether we analyze the medial consonants In/, /di, /v/, and /p/ as onset of the ult vs. coda of the penult, stress in any, finish, medal, river, and topic is supposed to be initial simply because the strings -y, - ish, -al, -er, and - ic, in which these disyllables end, occur in English as suffixes and therefore repel stress. Note also that virtually any English -ate-disyllable (e.g., frustrate, migrate, stagnate, truncate, etc.) vacillates between final and initial stress (with the for­ mer being the preferred stress pattern among British English speakers vs. the latter being more frequently used by American English speakers). With final stress an -ate-disyllable is supposed to be pronounced not only because of the segmental length principle but also because of the fact that of the 795 -ate-words with an - ion-counterpart in the MRC, 495 ("'62.26 3) have fewer occurrences in the BNC than a corresponding - ion-word. E.g., while the shorter verb locate oc­ curs in the corpus 843 times, the longer noun location has 3,894 attestations (cf. LDOCE, where location is said to be a high-frequency word and locate a medi-

88

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

um-frequency one); the mean of the frequency differences between the 495 -ate­ and corresponding - ion-words is ,..,5 1 2.06 and the median is 56. The analysis of locate as a back-derivative from location, which is also in accordance with the meaning definitions ''assign a location to I discover the location of;' given in the WordNet semantic database, results in the finally-stressed pronunciation llgu ' ke1tl (OED), which is the preserved stress of the base llg(u) 'ke1J(g)n/ (OD). At the same time, however, because the string -ate occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., pulsate f- pulse + -ate) and should therefore be stress-repellent, locate is also (especially by Americans as a rule stressed) l ' lguke1tl (OED). A fairly similar case is -ose-verbs, which appeared in the English language as back-derivatives from -osis-nouns (OD). For example, because the longer base noun necrosis is stressed In£ ' krgus1sl (OD), one of the stress patterns of the short­ er derived verb necrose is In£ ' krgusl (OD). At the same time, however, because the string -ose, in which necrose ends, occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., comatose), necrose is also sometimes pronounced l0 n£krgusl, with the ult in it repelling stress. Finance is, according to LDOCE, I ' fa1nrensl vs. lfg ' nrensl in British English and lfg 'nrensl vs. I ' fa1nrensl in American English. Because the shorter finance occurs in the BNC only 7 ,553 times while the longer financial has 16,559 attes­ tations (cf. 1 6, 1 63 vs. 66,815, which are the corresponding frequency numbers from the COCA corpus), the former is supposed to be pronounced lfg 'nrensl, preserving the stress of the more frequently used longer lfg 'nrenJgll (LDOCE). Because, however, the string -ance, in which finance ends, occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., vengeance), stress in finance can also be initial. Likewise, romance occurs in the BNC only 991 times, but the penultimately-stressed trisyllabic ro­ mantic has 1 ,987 attestations; similarly, in COCA, the corresponding frequency numbers are 8,240 vs. 1 2,073. The back-derivation analysis (coupled with the segmental length principle: ro ·mance) results in the finally-stressed pronun­ ciation lrgu ' mrensl (LDOCE) whereas the ending -ance is responsible for the initially-stressed alternative l 'rgumrensl (LDOCE). In Here's how it is with the police (at 00: 15:42,023 00:15:45,288) of Kill Switch (2008 action film), American actor Steven Seagal can be heard pronouncing police with initial stress. The pronunciation l 'poulisl is, according to Diction­ ary.com, especially characteristic of South Midland and Midland U. S. speakers; similarly, according to the OD, Scottish and Irish English speakers pronounce police l ' pgul1sl or l ' pul1sl (and spell it polis). Because the string -ice occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., justice, service), many - ice-disyllables have initial stress even when this string, in which these disyllables end, is not an actual suffix. E.g., office is stressed l 'uf1sl (OD) even though it cannot be segmented into the base offand the suffix - ice the way, e.g., justice is segmentable into the base just and the suffix - ice. -->

4.2 Disyllables

89

4 . 2 . 4 H iatu s reso l ution a n d I or vowel elis ion

In the case of no less than 273 initially-stressed disyllabic transcriptions in the MRC, we are dealing with a syllabification variation, involving especially hiatus resolution. Hiatus, which means that a codaless syllable is followed by an onset­ less one, is ''dispreferred cross-linguistically'' (Chitoran & Hualde 2007: 6 1 ; cf. Hieke 1 984: 346, who speaks of ''the avoidance of hiatus where possible''). That is why, pronunciation of, e.g., the word radiant vacillates between the trisyllabic version / 'ra-de-gnt/ (MWO), which involves a hiatus (i.e., ra. di. ant), and the disyl­ labic alternative rel/dj@nt (MRC), where the hiatus i. a is resolved via replacing the preceding vowel i through the phonetically similar glide /j/: ''Glide Formation is a subrule of the general resyllabification device which is responsible for the avoidance of vocalic hiatus in a variety of languages'' (de Haas 1988: 244). Another popular strategy serving the same purpose is diphthongization. Thus, as, for example, Jones (1917: xxx) points out, the adjective glorious vac­ illates between the trisyllabic pronunciation glo. ri. ous, which involves a hiatus (i.e., /r1-gs/), and the disyllabic alternative glo. rious, with the hiatus sequence /1-g/ being pronounced ''in the gliding (diphthongal) manner." According to Jones (1917: xxx), hiatus-involving pronunciations such as glo. ri. ous are mainly typical of '' slow utterance of certain classes of words." (Notice, however, that in contrast to the MRC, where glorious is glO/rI@s, the MWO gives for glorious only the trisyllabic hiatus-involving pronunciation / ' glor-e-gs/; similarly, also LDOCE regards glorious as a trisyllable: glo·ri·ous.) Noteworthy is also vowel deletion as a hiatus resolution strategy (which, according to, e.g., Wetzels (1995: 291), ''is [likewise] a very common phonolog­ ical process''). E.g., stygian is I ' sti-j (e-)gn/ according to the MWO; the syllabic structure of this word thus vacillates between the hiatus-involving trisyllabic / ' st1-d31-gn/ and the hiatus-free disyllabic / ' st1-d3gn/, where the preceding vowel of the hiatus i.a is deleted. Apart from this, it should be added that vowel eli­ sion is in general characteristic in English of sequences of unstressed syllables that involve especially /g/ and /1/ (Cruttenden 2008: 250). E.g., (the hiatus-free) interest is I ' int(g)rist/ (OD), with elision taking place in the unstressed sequence /tgr1st/, which contains the vowels /g/ and /1/. Cases similar to these (i.e., those exhibiting a syllabification variation due to hiatus resolution I vowel elision) can be also found among finally-stressed disyllables (e.g., idea is both II- ' de-g/ and II- ' deg/ in the MWO (and only aI/dI@ in the MRC I i·dea in LDOCE); the word is thus either a penultimately-stressed trisyllable or a finally-stressed disyllable, with the hiatus e.a being resolved via diphthongization), but the proportion of such cases among initially-stressed disyllabic transcriptions in the MRC is higher than that among finally-stressed

90

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

disyllables: /V2.7 3 (273 / 1 0, 1 19) vs. /V0.4 3 (nine / 2 ,270). This difference is statis­ tically significant: x2 (1) 44, p < 0.000001. Accordingly, analyzing the nature of initial stress in, e.g., radiant, we note that this word is not an irregularly-stressed disyllable (in which stress falls upon a segmentally shorter penult) but a regularly-stressed trisyllable: Because the string -ant occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., claimant) and is therefore stress-re­ pellent, stress in radiant should in accordance with the segmental length prin­ ciple be initial in the remaining lefthand disyllabic string ra. di-. Similarly, in interest 1) the ult . rest cannot take stress because the string -est occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., cutest) and 2) the remaining lefthand disyllabic string in. te­ should receive initial stress in accordance with the segmental length principle. Note also that leopard is phonetically only / ' lepgd/ (LDOCE), but because in a number of English words, the orthographic vowel sequence eo is phonetically realized as hiatus (e.g., Be·o·wulf, Cle·o·pat·ra, cre·ole, de·o·do·rant, etc.), we can suggest that underlyingly, leopard is le. o.pard, with stress being (regularly) initial in the lefthand disyllabic string le. o- (i.e., the righthand monosyllabic string -pard cannot take stress because the string -ard occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., drunkard) and is thus stress-repellent). These claims are strongly supported by the fact that of the 273 transcrip­ tions in the MWO such as / 'ra-de-gnt/ (i.e., those that correspond to transcrip­ tions such as rel/dj@nt in the MRC), 228 (/V83.52 3) are transcriptions such as / ' ra-de-gnt/, in which the antepenult is segmentally not shorter than the im­ mediately following penult; the average values are /V2.62 (antepenult) vs. /Vl.97 (penult), which means that the first syllable in a word such as radiant is as a rule segmentally longer than the second syllable. =

4 . 2 . 5 Disylla bles as parts of longer words

Of the 1,499 high- and medium-frequency (in British English either exclusively or preferably) initially-stressed disyllables in LDOCE, 35 (/V2.33 3) also occur in the dictionary as the penult-ult string of at least one high- or medium-frequen­ cy penultimately-stressed trisyllable. E.g., the phonetic transcription / ' tr1bju:t/ of tribute constitutes in LDOCE the penult-ult string of the transcription /kgn' tr1bju:t/ of contribute. By contrast, of the 770 high- and medium-frequency (in British English either exclusively or preferably) finally-stressed disyllables in LDOCE, only two (/V0.26 %)-cement and rely- occur orthographically at the end of the penultimately-stressed trisyllables announcement, replacement, entirely, and severely; the phonetic realization of cement and rely is, however, different when they occur as separate words vs. parts of the trisyllables announcement/ replacement and entirely!severely.

4.2 Disyllables

91

The difference of 35 I 1 ,499 vs. two I 770 achieves statistical significance-x (1) 13.656, p 0.0002-which allows us to say that a disyllable such as trib­ ute, which occurs in English not only separately but also as a righthand part of a trisyllable such as contribute, is more likely to receive initial stress than a disyllable such as, e.g., dispute, which occurs in English only as a separate word. (According to LDOCE, dispute is in Present-day English more frequently stressed Idi ' spju:t/ than I ' dispju:t/.) The explanation for this seems to be as follows. On the one hand, because there is the disyllabic word tribute, the trisyllabic word contribute can be seg­ mented into the prefix con- and the root tribute; this segmentation results in the stress pattern /kgn ' tribju:t/. At the same time, however, because the disyllabic string tribute is root of the trisyllabic word contribute, the former can also be seen as the root of the disyllabic word tribute itself, which is then not segmented into the prefix tri- and the (segmentally longer) root - bute. The stress pattern of tribute is therefore only / ' tribju:t/, whereas dispute is in accordance with the segmental length principle usually stressed /di ' spju:t/. =

=

4 . 2 . 6 Rhythm, em phasis, and semantics

Deviations from the segmental length principle may also have rhythm-, em­ phasis-, or semantics-related causes (which sometimes simultaneously apply to one and the same disyllabic English word). An example is the adjective complex, which, as mentioned in Chapter 1 , is in contemporary English more frequently stressed initially than finally. In fact, the only transcription given for complex in the OD dictionary is the initially-stressed / ' kumpl£ks/ and, similarly, in the OED the negative incomplex is said to be ''/in 'kumpl£ks/ formerly /inkgm ' pl£ks/." Of all the 9,384 occurrences of complex in the BNC, 1,971 ("'21 3) are occur­ rences in the modifier position, with complex being adjacent to a noun (e.g., complex process). Of the 723 nouns immediately preceded by complex in the BNC for which phonetic transcriptions are available in the OD, 485 ("'67.08 3) are either monosyllables or initially-stressed polysyllables. From the point of view of rhythm, stress in complex should therefore be initial rather than final, i.e., e.g., the stress pattern / 'kumpl£ks 'prgus£s/ is better than /kgm ' pl£ks ' prgus£s/, which involves a stress clash. Similarly, unlike to rebel, which is stressed /ri ' bcl/ (OD), preserving the stress of the more frequently used longer noun rebellion (972 vs. 90 occurrences in the BNC ; note also that the meaning of to rebel is defined in the WordNet database as ''take part in a rebellion''), a rebel is stressed I ' r£b(g)1/ (OD) because of all the 1 , 106 occurrences of the string rebel in the BNC, 440 ("'39.78 3) are occurrences such as rebel forces, rebel leader, rebel group, rebel movement, rebel soldiers, rebel

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4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

army, rebel troops, etc., i.e., occurrences of rebel as a modifier of another (usu­ ally, initially-stressed) noun. In combinations such as these, the stress pattern I ' rcb( g)1/ is from the point of view of rhythm better than the stress pattern /r1 ' bell (which, however, is unproblematic when rebel occurs as a verb because to rebel is as a rule immediately followed by the preposition against, in which stress is final). Stress clash avoidance is thus undeniably also a reason why disyllabic in­ stances of different morphosyntactic categories prefer different stress patterns. Thus: disyllabic verbs in English are typically preceded by a stressed and followed by an un­ stressed syllable whereas nouns are typically preceded by an unstressed syllable and followed by a stressed one. Hence, disyllabic verbs are more rhythmical when they have an iambic (i.e. weak-strong) stress pattern while disyllabic nouns are more rhyth­ mical when they have a trochaic (i.e. strong-weak) stress pattern. (Berg 1999: 136)

Recall also the fact, mentioned in Chapter 1, that while in American English adult is more frequently stressed finally, British English speakers prefer the ini­ tially-stressed pronunciation / ' redAlt/. A possible explanation for this fact is that of all the 5,035 occurrences of adult in the BNC, 2,318 ("'46.04 3) are occurrences in combinations such as adult life, adult world, adult women, adult literacy, adult children, etc., in which adult is immediately followed by a noun (which is often either a monosyllable or an initially-stressed polysyllable: Of the 494 nouns modified by adult in the BNC for which phonetic transcriptions are given in the OD, 370 ("'74.9 3) are either monosyllables or initially-stressed polysyllables). By contrast, in the case of the 29,431 total occurrences of adult in COCA, which is a corpus of contemporary American English, the same can be said about only 1 0,257 occurrences: ,..,3 4.85 3. Since this difference is statistically hugely signifi­ cant-f (1) 232, p < 0.00000 1-we can say that combinations such as adult life, adult world, adult women, adult literacy, adult children, etc. (which encourage initial stress in adult, i.e., / ' redAlt 0 lA1f/ rather than /g ' dAlt 0 lA1f/, which involves a stress clash) are more frequent in British than in American English. Notice also that in addition to occurring in the modifier position, adult also often occurs in the head position, in which it itself is modified by other adjec­ tives. The most frequent modifier of adult in the COCA corpus is the monosyl­ labic young, i.e., the combination young adult occurs in the corpus 1, 1 14 times ("'3.79 3). In the BNC, by contrast, the same combination occurs only 60 times (,.., 1 . 1 9 3) and is thus even less frequent than the combination universal adult, which has 84 attestations. The difference of 1 , 1 1 4 / 29,431 vs. 60 I 5,035 is also sta­ tistically hugely significant: i (1) 88, p < 0.00000 1 . We can therefore say that the combination young adult, in which final stress is from the point of view of =

=

4.2 Disyllables

93

rhythm better than initial stress, i.e., / 'jAJJ g ' dAlt/ rather than / 'jAJJ ' redAlt/, which involves a stress clash, is more frequent in American than in British English. For an audio illustration, the reader is referred to the already mentioned YouTube video S5hXrgfwK8o (10. 04. 20 17), in which one and the same British English speaker pronounces the word adult in three different environments. At 00:01: 16.014 00:0 1 : 1 8.063, we hear but it explores some very 'adult themes, where adult, followed by the monosyllabic head themes, is stressed initially. At 00:03:24.610 00:03:26.659, we hear The humor in it is really a'dult, where adult, preceded by the modifier really, / ' r1gli/ (OD), is stressed finally (thus, we can argue that also a one-syllable distance between two primary-stressed sylla­ bles, / ' r1gli ' redAlt/, counts for the speaker in the video as rhythmically unfortu­ nate). Finally, at 00:06:04.526 00:06:06.531, we hear It's one of those 'cartoons for 'adults, where retraction of stress occurs in the preceding noun cartoons: I ' ka:tu:nz fa : ' redAlts/ (which, again, suggests that for the speaker in the video, there should be at least two unstressed syllables between two stressed ones). Also in other videos featuring the voice of the same British English speaker, she seems to be very consistent about pronouncing adult with final stress in environments such as since becoming an a'dult and moving out (9LkG43iZ4u4, 1 0. 04. 2017), It's basically your classic young a'dult high school novel (9wh7wEx­ Tna0, 10. 04. 2017), I think I'm still quite an entitled a'dult (EKhQnnFL6ZM, 1 0. 04. 2017), etc. By contrast, in environments such as It felt more like an 'adult fable (rVaTTzdZOCk, 1 1 . 04. 2017), she pronounces adult with initial stress. As for emphasis, recall that prefixes in English are stress-neutral (e.g., Crut­ tenden 2008: 241), but '' [w]hen there is contrast or when the idea expressed by the prefix is given special prominence, the prefix bears the primary stress and the base a secondary stress [. . .] '' (Poldauf 1 984: 24). For example, to restyle was (in captioned YouTube videos) found to have been pronounced by six na­ tive English speakers with initial stress, i.e., 'restyle, while only five speakers were heard to have used the finally-stressed version re'style. Likewise, to re­ sell is stressed 'resell in the videos oO-AlapjPoO (04. 04. 2017) and szeNiRsjriQ (04. 04. 2017). In His Last Vow (BBC's Sherlock, third episode of Season Three), we hear Probably want to 'restart your morphine at 00:43:22,960 00:43:25,040. Initial stress in these prefixed verbs seems to be of a purely emphatic nature, falling upon the semantically transparent prefix re-, which expresses the mean­ ing ''repetition of an action, doing something again:' A similar case is uphold, for which LDOCE incorrectly gives only the base stress IAp 'hguld/ (for both British and American English). An initially-stressed version of this verb can, however, be heard in, e.g., When a man joins the bureau, he takes an oath to 'uphold certain values, uttered by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by actor Kyle MacLachlan) at 00:02:01 ,609 00:02 :06,6 15 of the -->

-->

-->

-->

-->

94

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

seventh episode of the first season of Twin Peaks. Similarly, at 00:06:43,487 00:06:48,824 of Predestination (2014), we hear Do you solemnly swear to 'uphold -->

the rules and regulations set forth by T B. R. Code 7286? Note also that according to the OD, only the noun download is stressed / ' daunlgud/ whereas the verb download is stressed only /daun 'lgud/. (The same is true of many other disyllabic formations such as uphold and download, which are said to exhibit initial stress only when they occur as nouns and I or adjec­ tives but not as verbs). It is obvious, however, that a claim such as this cannot be true (even if it is made by a lexicographer working for a renowned academic publisher) because the only reason why, e.g., download is stressed I ' daunlgud/ is that its lefthand component down is what distinguishes download from its directional opposite upload. The emphatic potential inherent in the down of download equally applies to a download and to download, which is why also the latter is more frequently pronounced with initial stress. E.g., in the video pmtcFhz22MQ (27. 05. 2017), we can hear British Prime-Minister Theresa May saying at 00:04:06.569 00:04: 10.230 encourage everybody to 'download the single; of six British English speakers who were found to have pronounced to download in captioned YouTube videos, five were heard to have used the ini­ tially-stressed pronunciation / ' daunlgud/ (with one of the speakers, however, vacillating between / ' daun-/ and /- ' lgud/ in the videos lOx2PxNcEPs (27. 05. 2017) and Yu8KpLpkrPs (27. 05. 2017)). (Thus we can say that not only the OD, but also LDOCE, where to download is I , daun' lgud/ in British English vs. I ' daunloud/ in American English, fails to recognize that initial stress is the preferred stress of to download in both British and American English). Finally, observe that according to the OED, to surname is stressed b oth / ' s3 :ne1m/ and /s3: 'ne1m/, but in captioned YouTube videos featuring the spo­ ken occurrences of this verb, only the prefix stress I ' S3 :ne1m/ was heard by the author; in agreement with this finding, also the OD and LDOCE give for the form surname only initially-stressed transcriptions (i.e., it is not stated in these dictionaries that surname is stressed differently when functioning morphosyn­ tactically as a noun vs. verb.) Just as in formations such as uphold and download, the lefthand element sur- modifies the righthand name in an important way irre­ spective of whether surname is a noun or verb. Both a surname and to surname are therefore pronounced with initial stress. As for semantics, consider the (actually occurring) stress difference between /pg ' mit/ of to permit and / 'pg:m1t/ of a permit (OD). What is interesting about this stress difference is that in English, there is also the verb to remit, which, just like to permit, is only finally-stressed as /r1 ' m1t/ (OD), but unlike the derived noun a permit, in which stress is only initial, the derived noun a remit is both in­ itially-stressed as / ' ri:m1t/ and finally-stressed as /r1 ' m1t/ (OD). The reason why -->

4.2 Disyllables

95

the stress variation occurs only in the case of a remit but not of a permit seems to be the fact that the meaning of the derived noun a permit represents a fairly specialized extension of the meaning of the base verb to permit. This is reflected in the fact that in contrast to a remit, which is defined in the MWO dictionary as ''an act of remitting'' and ''something remitted to another person or authority;' a permit cannot be defined either as an act of permitting or as something that was permitted to another person. A permit is ''a written warrant or license granted by one having authority'' (MWO). This noun can often be heard in collocations such as gun permit, residence permit, work permit, etc. Similarly, a variety of things in English can be affixed, collected, combined, compressed, produced, etc., but an affix stands only for a particular thing that undergoes affixing, i.e., ''a linguistic element added to a word to produce an inflected or derived form'' (WordNet); a collect stands only for ''a short prayer generally preceding the lesson in the Church of Rome or the Church of England'' (WordNet); a combine denotes either ''a consortium of independent organizations formed to limit com­ petition by controlling the production and distribution of a product or service'' or ''harvester that heads and threshes and cleans grain while moving across the field'' (WordNet); a compress is defined in WordNet as ''a cloth pad or dressing (with or without medication) applied firmly to some part of the body (to relieve discomfort or reduce fever''; produce as a noun only means ''fresh fruits and vegetable grown for the market'' (WordNet), etc. The adjective minute, which is stressed /mA1 ° nju:t/ (OD), expresses the meaning ''[e] xtremely small'' (OD). The noun minute, which is stressed / ' m1n1t/ (OD), is, by contrast, associated with the sense ''[a] period of time equal to sixty seconds'' (OD), which can be regarded as a particular instance of being minute. What can be seen in the case of these initially-stressed derived nouns is that their meanings represent fairly specialized extensions of what the identical­ ly-spelled words signify as verbs I adjective. We thus argue that stress differ­ ences such as /pg ' m1t/ of to permit vs. / ' pg:m1t/ of a permit are conditioned only semantically, i.e., these stress differences are deliberately employed by English speakers to make the semantically specialized derived noun formally different from the base verb I adjective. When, by contrast, the meaning of the derived form represents a fairly general extension of the meaning of the base form (e.g., a remit an act of remitting), the tendency in contemporary English is to pro­ nounce the derived form with the stress of the base form. This claim is strongly supported by cases such as a control and to control, which are both finally-stressed as /kgn ' trgul/ (OD), a concern and to concern, which are both finally-stressed as /kgn ' sg:n/ (OD), complete as a verb and com­ plete as an adjective, which are both finally-stressed as /kgm 'pli :t/ (OD), etc. In the case of these words, word-class differences do not give rise to stress =

96

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

differences because the derived forms in these pairs mean approximately the same thing as the corresponding base forms: For example, a control is ''power to direct or determine'' (WordNet) and to control is ''exercise authoritative control or power over'' (WordNet). There is thus no need to have different stress pat­ terns for a control and to control, both have therefore regular final stress falling upon the segmentally longer ult . trol. Likewise, a surmise, which is /s3: ' ma1z/ vs. / ' s3:ma1z/ according to the OED, is in contemporary English more frequent­ ly pronounced with final stress because the meaning of a surmise, ''a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence'' (WordNet), represents a fairly general extension of the meaning of to surmise, ''infer from incomplete evidence'' (WordNet). Both the base verb and the derived noun have therefore regular final stress, abiding by the segmental length principle. 4 . 2 . 7 Compounds

Of the 2,477 left-prominent disyllabic compounds in the OD dictionary (which were automatically detected by the author in the manner described in 3.2), 907 ("'36.62 3) have orthographically longer righthand components. E.g., the disyllabic compound boyfriend is pronounced / ' ba1fr£nd/ (OD) even though its righthand component friend is both phonetically and orthographically longer than its lefthand component boy. By contrast, of the 145 right-prominent di­ syllabic compounds, 80 ("'55.17 3) are compounds such as, e.g., himself, whose righthand comp onents contain more orthographic symbols than the corre­ sponding lefthand component. Since the difference of 907 I 2,477 vs. 80 I 145 is statistically highly significant­ i (1) 20, p 0.000007-it is tempting to say that also in disyllabic compounds, the choice between left- and right-prominence is (at least in part) in accordance with the segmental length principle. E.g., himself is stressed /him ' self/ (OD) because its righthand component self is segmentally longer than the lefthand component him. Notice, however, that of the 145 right-prominent disyllabic compounds (which, as observed above, were automatically detected by the author), 42 ("'28.97 3) are verbs such as uphold and download, which are fairly frequently left-prominent even though the OD gives for them only the right-prominent transcriptions /Ap 'hguld/ and /daun' lgud/; a similar case is update, which, ac­ cording to the OD, is IAp ' de1t/ as a verb vs. / ' Apde1t/ as a noun. Just as in the case of uphold and download, the lefthand element up modifies the righthand date in an important way in both an update and to update. Just like the former, the latter is therefore also frequently pronounced / ' Apde1t/. =

=

4.3 Three and more syl lables

97

If items such as update are left out of consideration, the proportion of right-prominent disyllabic compounds that abide by the segmental length prin­ ciple drops from ,.., 55_ 17 3 to ,..,47 .57 3. The difference of 907 I 2,477 vs. 80 I 145 still counts as statistically significant-i (1) 5.089, p 0.024-but as one can see, the new result is not far away from the threshold of p 0.05. Given this fact and given that compounds in English are in general considerably more frequently left- than right-prominent, we can conclude that in the case of disyllabic English compounds, abidance by the segmental length principle is far less pronounced than it is in the case of other disyllabic English words. =

=

=

4 . 2 . 8 Su mmary

Final stress in a disyllabic English word is prototypically either the preserved stress of a longer English word (synchronic back-derivation/shortening) or root stress, falling upon a segmentally longer ult. When these conditions do not hold or when the segmentally longer ult occurs in English as a suffix, stress in a disyllabic English word is as a rule initial.

4.3 Three and m o re syl la bles

As already reported in Section 3.2, syllabified phonetic transcriptions and stress indications are given in the MRC for 19 ,545 items (of any morphological struc­ ture) whose syllabic length is at least three. Of these items, 5,383 are words in which stress can be said to be regularly penultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable is heavy) and 7,741 are words in which stress is regularly antepenulti­ mate (i.e., the penultimate syllable is light). In other words, of the 19 ,545 items of three and more syllables, 1 3, 1 24 (,..,6 7. 1 5 3), i.e., the absolute majority, have stress patterns that respect the Latin Stress Rule. Examples include, for instance, /g ' d3£ndg/ of agenda (OD) and /ei 'a:tg/ of aorta (OD), in which stress falls upon the heavy penults / ' d3£nl and / ' a :/, vs. / ' an1m(g)1/ of animal (OD) and /g ' mer1kg/ of America (OD), where the penultimate syllables /n1/ and /r1/ are light. Related to this finding is the fact that of the 7,741 items in which stress is regularly an­ tepenultimate (i.e., the penultimate syllable is light), 4, 1 14 (,..,5 3_ 15 3) are words such as animal and America, in which stress falls on a light antepenult, i.e., in / ' an1m(g)l/ and /g ' mer1kg/ the antepenults / ' a/ and / ' me/, which bear stress, are light. Since the Latin Stress Rule does not require that the antepenult itself be heavy in order to count as eligible to receive stress (i.e., the only requirement for antepenultimate stress is that the penult be light), stressed antepenultimate syl­ lables are in the English language almost as frequently light as they are heavy.

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4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

Note, however, that just as in the case of disyllabic English words, the stress of an English word of three and more syllables can likewise often be analyzed as the stress of another English word (which challenges the analysis of Present-day English as a Latin-like language). 4 . 3 . 1 S u ffixed a n d back-de rivatives

Of the 4, 794 trisyllables for which the MRC gives the stress pattern 200 (i.e., antepenultimate stress), 1,153 ("'24.05 3) are, according to the tool Morpholog­ ical Analysis, actual suffixed derivatives. Of the 992 bases of these derivatives (according to the tool Morphological Analysis), 936 ("'94.35 3) are, according to the OD, either initially-stressed disyllables (e.g., canon of canonize) or monosyl­ lables (e.g., drink of drinkable). Thus, e.g., canonize is stressed / 'kangnA1zl (OD), preserving the stress of / 'kangn/, and in / ' drIIJkgbl/ (OD), stress falls upon the only syllable constituting the monosyllabic base drink. Similarly, of the 3,685 trisyllables for which the MRC gives the stress pattern 20 (i.e., penultimate stress), 1,340 ("'36.36 3) are, according to the tool Morpho­ logical Analysis, actual suffixed derivatives. Of the 995 bases of these derivatives (according to the tool Morphological Analysis), 727 ("'73.07 3) are, according to the OD, either finally-stressed disyllables (e.g., abuse of abuser) or penultimate­ ly-stressed trisyllables (e.g., dependent of dependence). E.g., abuser (which is con­ siderably less frequent in the BNC than abuse: 43 vs. 3,578) is stressed /g ' bju:zg/, preserving the stress of /g ' bju:z/, and dependence is stressed /d1 °p£nd(g)ns/ (OD), preserving the stress of /d1 ° p£nd(g)nt/ (OD). As for the 2,55 1 tetrasyllables and longer words from the MRC that the tool Morphological Analysis considers to be suffixed derivatives, 1,319 are, according to the MRC, stressed antepenultimately. Of the 1,056 bases of these derivatives (according to the tool Morphological Analysis), no less than 471 ("'44.6 3) are, according to the OD, either finally-stressed disyllables (e.g., adapt of adaptable) or penultimately-stressed trisyllables (e.g., accomplish of accomplishment). That is, e.g., adaptable is pronounced /g ' daptgb( g)1/ (OD), preserving the stress of /g ' dapt/ (OD), and accomplishment is pronounced /g 'kAmpl1Jm(g)nt/ (OD), pre­ serving the stress of /g 'kAmpl1J/ (OD). Apart from derivatives such as adaptable and accomplishment, 893 ("'35.01 3) are derivatives such as presidency and indicator, in which stress falls upon a syllable farther than the antepenult (for which the Latin Stress Rule does not have a provision). That is, presidency is stressed I 'pr£z1d(g)nsi/ (OD), preserving the stress of I ' pr£z1d(g)nt/ (OD), and indicator is stressed I ' 1nd1ke1tg/ (OD), pre­ serving the stress of / ' 1nd1ke1t/ (OD).

4.3 Three and more syl lables

99

Note also that of the 8 1 7 antepenultimately-stressed trisyllables from the MRC that the tool Morphological Analysis considers to be the base of at least one suffixed derivative, 332 ("'40.64 3) have fewer occurrences in the BNC than at least one corresponding suffixed derivative. A case in point is an -ate-verb, which, as mentioned in the previous section, is as a rule ("'62.26 3) less frequent in the BNC than a corresponding - ion-noun. Thus, for instance, 1 ) since in the BNC, the shorter verb educate is consider­ ably less frequent than the longer noun education: 365 vs. 26, 1 1 3, and 2) since in the WordNet semantic database, the meaning of educate is defined as ''give an education to;' it is not surprising that on some occasions, this verb is pro­ nounced by English speakers with final stress, i.e., /cdj u ' ke:t/ is the stress pat­ tern used by Irish English speakers (Hickey 2007: 139) and, similarly, also in other English varieties, ''we hear forms like propagate rather than the expected propagate, presumably influenced by propagation'' (Bauer 2014: no pagination in the online-first version of the article). At the same time, however, because the string -ate, in which educate ends, occurs in English as a suffix and therefore repels stress, the more frequently used stress pattern of educate in both British and American English is not I , edju 'ke1t/ but / ' £djuke1t/ (OD), with the (phonet­ ically not different) secondary stress of the longer base I , edju 'ke1Jgn/ (LDOCE) becoming primary stress in the shorter derivative. A similar example involving an adjective is / ' an1mgt/ of animate (OD), which is the promoted secondary stress of I , reng' me1Jgn/ of animation (LDOCE), which occurs in the BNC 322 times while the shorter animate has only 120 attestations. (Because the adjec­ tive animate is stressed I ' an1mgt/, also the semantically related noun animal is stressed / ' an1m(g)1/, i.e., animals are animate creatures.) The same applies to 34 -ute-words in the MRC, 23 of which ("'67.65 3) are less frequent in the BNC than a corresponding -ion-word. E.g., while execute occurs 402 times, execution has 1 ,353 attestations; the mean of the frequency differences between the 23 -ute- and corresponding - ion-words is "'1,795.91 and the medi­ an is 455. The stress pattern / ' £ks1kju:t/ of the derived form execute (OD) can thus be seen as the promoted secondary stress of the base form I , £ks1 'kju:J(g)n/ (LDOCE), i.e., we assume that English speakers are reluctant to pronounce ex­ ecute I , eksg 'kju:t/ because the string -ute, in which execute ends, is like a suffix and therefore repels stress (but do observe that according to Hickey (2007: 1 39), Irish English speakers stress distribute /d1str1 ' bju:t/, preserving the (primary) stress of the longer base noun distribution, which occurs in the BNC 10,323 times while the shorter verb distribute has only 602 attestations. Similarly, in the Corpus of Global Web-based English (Davies 2013) , using which researches can ''carry out comparisons between different varieties of English;' distribution and education are used by Ireland-based English-speaking Internet users 3,101 and

100

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

28, 938 times respectively, whereas distribute and educate are used by them only 820 and 1 ,350 times. Thus, also from the perspective of an Irish English speaker, the latter can be seen as back-derivatives from the former.) Similarly, of the 25 -ite-words with an - ion-counterpart in the MRC, 15 (60 3) are less frequent in the BNC than a corresponding -ion-word. E.g., while the shorter verb extradite (which, according to the OD, did indeed come into ex­ istence in English (in mid 1 9th century) via back-formation from extradition) occurs in the corpus 54 times, the longer noun extradition has 315 attestations (the latter is thus not only diachronically but also synchronically anterior to the former); the mean of the frequency differences between the 1 5 - ite- and corresponding - ion-words is "'1 ,646.67 and the median is 966. The stress pat­ tern I ' £kstrgdA1t/ of extradite (OD) can thus be seen as the promoted secondary stress of I , ekstrg ' d1Jgn/ of extradition (LDOCE), i.e., the derived verb is not pro­ nounced with final stress because the string - ite occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., Israelite) and is therefore stress-repellent. (As in the above mentioned case of /hju ' man1ti/ vs. /hju ' me1n/, we ignore the fact that the segmental structure of the more frequently used I , ekstrg ' d1Jgn/ is not completely preserved in the less frequently used / ' £kstrgdA1t/.) A slightly different case is the 80 - ify-words with an - iflcation-counterpart in the MRC, 39 of which (48.75 3) have fewer occurrences in the BNC than a cor­ responding - ification-word. E.g., amplify occurs in the corpus 1 08 times, but am­ plification has 299 attestations; the mean of the frequency differences between the 39 - ify- and corresponding - iflcation-words is 1 1 9 and the median is 37. Accordingly, because the longer base amplification is stressed I , ampl1f1 'ke1J( g)n/ (OD), the only stress that can be preserved in its back-derivative amplify is obviously the secondary stress, i.e., amplify is stressed / ' ampl1fA1/ (OD), with the secondary stress of the longer base form thus becoming primary stress in the shorter derived form. Likewise, antepenultimate stress in the back-de­ rivative satisfy-I ' sretgsfa1/ (LDOCE)-is the promoted secondary stress of I , sretgs ' frekJgn/ of satisfaction (LDOCE), which occurs in the BNC 2, 761 times, whereas the shorter verb satisfy has only 1 ,925 attestations. Similarly, of the 1 1 5 -ize-words with an - ization-counterpart in the MRC, 62 ("'53.91 3) have fewer occurrences in the BNC than a corresponding - iza­ tion-word. E.g., while the shorter verb organize occurs in the corpus 8 1 7 times, the longer noun organization has 6,297 attestations; the mean of the frequency differences between the 62 - ize- and corresponding -ization-words is ,.., 1 54. 16 and the median is ,..,2 5.5. Accordingly, because the longer base is stressed / , a :ggna1 ' ze1Jgn/ (LDOCE), the shorter derivative can only be stressed / ' a: g(g)nA1z/ (OD). (Note that the initially-stressed disyllable organ occurs in the BNC 1 ,326 times and is thus also more frequent than organize, which, as just

4.3 Three and more syl lables

101

pointed out, has only 817 attestations. Semantically, however, the derivation of organize from organization is much more intuitive than the suffixation analysis organ + - ize. Thus one of the paraphrases of organize given in WordNet is ''bring order and organization to.") Noteworthy are also tetrasyllabic - ic-words such as diplomatic, which are responsible for antepenultimate stress in trisyllables such as diplomat. Since the longer adjective diplomatic occurs in the BNC 1, 968 times while the shorter noun diplomat has only 360 attestations, the latter should from a synchronic point of view be seen as a back-derivative from the former. (Similarly, from a purely diachronic perspective, hieroglyph, megalith, onomast, photogene, and polygene are, according to the OD, actual back-derivatives from - ic-words hieroglyphic, megalithic, onomastic, photogenic, and polygenic. As for diplomat, the word is, according to the OD, etymologically also a back-derivative, but it was French speakers who back-derived it from the longer diplomatique, ''diplomatic:') As pointed out in 3.2, a tetrasyllabic - ic-word vacillates between penultimate and initial stress, with the latter occurring especially in the modifier position. E.g., diplomatic is, according to LDOCE, I , diplg ' mret1k.,...;, which means that in en­ vironments such as diplomatic incident, the modifier is stressed / ' d1plgmret1k/ rather than I , d1plg ' mret1k/; because of the 1, 968 occurrences of diplomatic in the BNC, 1 ,289 ("'65.5 3) are occurrences in combinations such as diplomatic service, diplomatic mission, diplomatic sources, diplomatic skills, etc., with diplomatic being adjacent to a noun, the stress pattern / ' d1plgmret1k/ should be used more frequently than the stress pattern I , diplg ' mret1k/. Accordingly, because the base form diplomatic is (usually) stressed / ' d1plgmret1k/, the derived form diplomat is also stressed / ' d1plgmret/ (LDOCE). Similarly, in the BNC, acrobat is less fre­ quent than acrobatic (34 vs. 48) , democrat is less frequent than democratic (988 vs. 5,878), patriot is less frequent than patriotic ( 187 vs. 556), pessimism is less frequent than pessimistic (186 vs. 378), vitriol is less frequent than vitriolic (25 vs. 73), etc. Accordingly, because, e.g., the more frequently used democratic is, ac­ cording to LDOCE, stressed / , demg 'krret1k.,../, which means that the actual stress pattern of democratic is often / ' demgkrret1k/, the less frequently used democrat (which is defined in WordNet as ''an advocate of democratic principles'') should also be stressed / ' demgkrret/ (LDOCE). A very similar case is residential, which has 2,9 1 8 attestations in the BNC and is thus more frequent than resident and residence, which occur 2,1 14 and 1 ,709 times respectively. For residential, LDOCE gives the transcription I , rez1 ' denfgl.,...;, which means that the actual stress pattern of this adjective is often / 'rez1denfgl/: Of the 2,9 1 8 attestations of residential in the BNC, 2,280 ("'78.14 3) are attesta­ tions in combinations such as residential care, residential homes, residential area, etc., with residential being adjacent to a noun. The stress pattern / 'rez1denfgl/ of

102

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

the more frequently used longer adjective residential is therefore preserved in the less frequently used shorter nouns resident and residence. As for penultimately-stressed trisyllables, note that of the 3 70 items from the MRC that the tool Morphological Analysis considers to be the base of at least one suffixed derivative, 1 1 5 ("'3 1.08 3) have fewer occurrences in the BNC than at least one corresponding suffixed derivative. (Since the difference of 332 I 817 vs. 1 1 5 / 370 achieves statistical significance-x (1) = 9.904, p = 0.001 6-we can say that back-derivation is more typical in English of ante- rather than of pe­ nultimately-stressed trisyllables.) For example, because the longer noun devel­ opment has considerably more attestations in the BNC than the shorter verb develop (32,078 vs. 8,540), the stress pattern of the latter can be regarded as the preserved stress of the former, i.e., develop is stressed /di 'v£lgp/ (OD) because de­ velopmentis stressed /di 'v£lgpm(g)nt/ (OD). The same can be said about /di ' livg/ of deliver (OD), where stress is penultimate because it is antepenultimate in the more frequently used longer noun delivery. /di ' liv(g)ri/ (OD). The latter occurs in the BNC 3,533 times, while the former is attested in the corpus only 2,072 times. The verb deliver is thus synchronically a back-formation from the noun delivery, i.e., the meaning of deliver is, according to WordNet, ''bring to a des­ tination, make a delivery." Similarly, because the meaning of interpret is ''give an interpretation or explanation to'' (WordNet) and because the shorter form interpret is less frequent in the BNC than the longer form interpretation (1,313 vs. 4,315), penultimate stress in the former-/in ' tg:prit/ (OD)-appears to be the promoted secondary stress of the latter: /in, t3 :pri ' teiJgn/ (LDOCE). The highest proportion of trisyllabic back-derivatives can, quite expectedly, be found among finally-stressed trisyllables (which, according to the tool Mor­ phological Analysis, function as the base of at least one suffixed derivative): 64/ 1 02(=,..,6 2.75 3). Thus, for instance, in the BNC, the shorter word acquiesce is less frequent than the longer word acquiescence (65 vs. 171), appertain is less frequent than appertaining (15 vs. 38), apprehend is less frequent than appre­ hension, apprehensive, and apprehended (92 vs. 507, 278, and 1 28), comprehend is less frequent than comprehensive and comprehension (344 vs. 3,582 and 601), condescend is less frequent than condescending and condescended ( 14 vs. 88 and 1 7), contradict is less frequent than contradiction and contradictory (268 vs. 768 and 691), convalesce is less frequent than convalescent and convalescence (21 vs. 101 and 77), correspond is less frequent than corresponding, correspondent, and correspondence (754 vs. 2,145, 2,004, and 1,522), effervesce is less frequent than effervescent and effervescence (five vs. 40 and 24), evanesce is less frequent than evanescent and evanescence (zero vs. 28 and five), intermit is less frequent than intermittent, intermittently, and intermittency (two vs. 339, 198, and 1 9), intro­ duce is less frequent than introduction (3,456 vs. 6,62 1), etc.

4.3 Three and more syl lables

103

Similarly, interject, interrupt, intervene, introspect, resurrect, and vivisect are less frequent in the BNC than the corresponding - ion-nouns interjection, inter­ ruption, intervention, introspection, resurrection, and vivisection (18 vs. 29, 458 vs. 616, 977 vs. 3,171, five vs. 1 26, 80 vs. 465, zero vs. 28), domineer, engineer, moun­ taineer, orienteer, profiteer, racketeer, and sloganeer are less frequent in the BNC than the corresponding - ing-words domineering, engineering, mountaineering, orienteering, profiteering, racketeering, and sloganeering (zero vs. 8 1 , 2,199 vs. 4,91 0, 79 vs. 2 14, one vs. 36, nine vs. 43, seven vs. 56, one vs. seven), countermand and intercept are less frequent in the corpus than the corresponding - ed-forms countermanded and intercepted (10 vs. 34, 2 1 8 vs. 233), interfere and persevere are less frequent than the corresponding -ence/-ance-nouns interference and perse­ verance (1,019 vs. 1 ,408, 90 vs. 1 39), entertain is less frequent than entertainment (638 vs. 1 ,995), commissar is less frequent than commissariat (25 vs. 48), etc. As in the case of finally-stressed disyllables, the analyses of finally-stressed trisyllables as back-derivatives from longer English words are also often sup­ ported by meaning definitions given in the WordNet semantic database: Conde­ scend = ''behave in a patronizing and condescending manner;' contradict = ''be in contradiction with;' entertain = ''provide entertainment for;' phosphoresce = ''to exhibit phosphorescence;' represent = ''be representative or typical for;' etc. The shorter words condescend, contradict, entertain, phosphoresce, and represent are thus semantically secondary to the longer words condescending, contradiction, entertainment, phosphorescence, and representative. The stress of the former is thus the preserved stress of the latter. Note, however, that in addition to counting as back-derivatives from longer words, some of these finally-stressed trisyllables can also be analyzed as pre­ fixed disyllables. E.g., comprehend is com- + prehend (cf. apprehend, reprehend); stress in the disyllabic base prehend should be final in accordance with the segmental length principle, i.e., the ult . hend, which is segmentally longer than the penult pre., is more like a root and should therefore receive stress. Similarly, because the disyllabic base respond is in accordance with the segmental length principle stressed /r1 ' spnnd/ (0 D), the trisyllabic derivative correspond is stressed /knr1 ' spnnd/ (OD). Another similar case is the tetrasyllabic noun entrepreneur. On the one hand, it can be suggested that entrepreneur is I , nntrgprg 'ng :/ (OD) because entrepre­ neurial is / ,nntrgprg ' ng:r1gl/ (OD). That is, since the longer adjective entrepre­ neurial is more frequent in the BNC than the shorter noun entrepreneur, i.e., the respective numbers are 385 vs. 282, the latter is synchronically a back-derivative from the former and thus merely preserves its stress. Additionally, however, it can be argued that stress in entrepreneur is final simply because its morphologi­ cal structure is entre- + -preneur (cf. similar formations infopreneur, intrapreneur,

104

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

solopreneur, technopreneur, tenderpreneur). Assuming that the syllabification of the bound root -preneur, which is the string eligible to receive primary stress in entrepreneur, is -pre. neur, i.e., the ult is orthographically longer than the penult, we naturally obtain the finally-stressed pronunciation I , untrgprg 'ng :/, with the prefix entre- receiving secondary stress. 4 . 3 . 2 Prefixation

Of 2,479 penultimately-stressed trisyllables extracted by the author from LDOCE, 55 ( 2 22 3) have penult-ult strings such as /- ' rentl/ of parental, which also occur in the dictionary as initially-stressed disyllables (i.e., e.g., / 'rentl/ of rentaO, and, what is particularly important, the latter are, according to LDOCE, more frequent than the former. E.g., rental is, according to the dictionary, a medium-frequency word whereas parental is a lower-frequency one; habit is a high-frequency word but inhabit is a medium-frequency one; version is a high-frequency word but conversion/ diversion are lower-frequency ones. Addi­ tionally, in the case of 34 penultimately-stressed trisyllables, LDOCE gives iden­ tical characteristics as far as frequency of use is concerned. E.g., both remember and member are high-frequency words; both contribute and tribute are medi­ um-frequency words; both contender and tender are lower-frequency words; etc. By contrast, of the 4, 979 antepenultimately-stressed trisyllables, only 36 ("'O. 72 3) have orthographic penult-ult strings such as, e.g., famous of infa­ mous, which, according to LDOCE, also occur in English as a more frequent­ ly used initially-stressed disyllable. (The stress pattern / ' 1nfgmgs/ (LDOCE) is most likely due to emphasis/semantics: Being infamous means being famous in a particular way. Similarly, bicycle is stressed I ' ba1s1kgl/ (LDOCE) rather than ?/ba1 ' sa1kgl/ because apart from bicycles there are also tricycles. Cranberry is stressed / 'krrenbgri/ (LDOCE) because apart from the berry-word cranberry, there are also the berry-words blackberry, gooseberry, raspberry, etc.) The difference of 55 I 2,479 vs. 36 I 4,979 is statistically highly significant-x (1) 31, p < 0.000001 -which allows us to say that penultimately-stressed tri­ syllables are more frequently than antepenultimately-stressed ones represented in English by prefixed disyllables (and, as in the case of prefixed monosyllables (e.g., become), it does not matter whether PREFIX + BASE segmentations are se­ mantically transparent or not. Thus, for instance, although apparent and trans­ parent are from a semantic point of view not segmentable into the prefixes ap-1 trans- and the base parent the way, e.g., dishonest is segmentable into the prefix dis- and the base honest, both apparent/ transparent and dishonest count for an English speaker as prefixed derivatives and are therefore stressed pen-initially: /g 'prergnt/, /trren' sprergnt/, and /dis 'umst/ (OD), with stress in the disyllabic bases "'

=

.

4.3 Three and more syl lables

105

parent and honest being initial because the strings -ent and -est occur in English as suffixes and therefore repel stress). This finding is particularly relevant for a synchronic understanding of why stress is penultimate in the majority of the English - ic-words (which have been extensively discussed in many publications on English stress. For a summary of different approaches, see the article Hill 1974 or more recently, Kettemann 1 988: 73-75). The etymological answer to the question of why, e.g., atomic is stressed /g' tum1k/ (OD) is that this word came into existence in English not via suffixation (atom + - ic) but as a shortening of the Latin word atomicus (OD), in which stress is antepenultimate because the vowel in the penultimate syllable is short and not followed by a coda consonant. Cf. the modern Italian adjective atomico, which is stressed /a ' ta:miko/ (PONS). From a synchronic perspective, however, many English - ic-words can be ana­ lyzed as prefixed disyllables. Of the 4,043 - ic-words in the OD dictionary, 1 ,883 ("'46.57 3) are words such as republic, whose righthand substrings are initial­ ly-stressed disyllabic - ic-words, such as public. The reason why the trisyllabic derivative republic is stressed /r1 °pAbl1k/ (OD) is thus that its disyllabic base public is stressed / 0pAbl1k/ (OD). Indeed, the mean BNC frequency of an - ic­ word such as republic is ,..,44.43, but the median frequency is zero (i.e., of the 1 ,883 - ic-words such as republic, 1,298 ("'68.93 3) lack attestations in the BNC). By contrast, the mean BNC frequency of an -ic-word such as public is ,..,6 40.05 and the median frequency is 1 8.5 (i.e., of the 146 - ic-words such as public, 73 (50 3) occur in the BNC no less than 20 times). A longer word such as republic is thus on average less frequent than a shorter word such as public. Additionally, some authors analyze penultimate stress in an - ic-word as the preserved antepenultimate stress of a corresponding longer - ical-word. E.g., while historic occurs in the BNC 2,300 times, historical has 5,5 1 3 attestations; note also that the meaning of historic is, according to the OD, ''famous or im­ portant in history'' (e.g., historic occasion), but historical is said to mean ''con­ cerning history or historical events'' (e.g., historical evidence). The meaning of historic thus appears to be more specialized than the meaning of historical: When something is historic, it is historical (i.e., concerns history) in a particular way: by being important in history. Similarly, as Bryson ( 1 987: 42 ; italics mine) points out, ''[s]omething that is comic is intended to be funny. Something that is comical is funny whether or not that is the intension'' (cf. Hamawand 20 1 1 : 145, arguing that the suffixes - ic and - ical differ from each other with regard to semantic range: ''The suffix - ic is reserved to emphasize the core feature of the noun expressed in the root. By contrast, the suffix -ical is reserved to merely stress the relationship between the noun and the field of knowledge or subject of study expressed in the root.")

106

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

Do observe, however, that of the 3 79 - ic-words with an -ical-counterpart in the MRC, only 1 32 ("'34.83 3) have fewer occurrences in the BNC than a corre­ sponding - ical-word. Many - ical-words cannot thus be regarded as the base of a corresponding -ic-word. E.g., democratical, which lacks attestations in the BNC, is most certainly not the base of democratic, which occurs in the corpus 5,878 times. In addition to this, even if we analyze, e.g., the more frequently used bio­ logical as the base of the less frequently used biologic-the former has 1,971 at­ testations in the BNC while the latter occurs in the corpus only five times-there still remains the question of why biological is stressed I , ba1g ' lud31kgl/ (LDOCE). The present monograph attributes this stress pattern to the prefixation analysis bio- + logical (which is in accordance with the frequency of use criterion: logical has 2,271 attestations in the BNC and is thus more frequent than biologica�. Similarly, because the disyllable logic has 2,236 attestations, also biologic is easily segmentable into the prefix bio- and the root logic. To obtain penultimate stress in biologic we thus do not need to back-derive it from biological. Likewise, of the 3, 1 36 -ion-words in the OD dictionary, 1,038 ("'33. 1 3) are words such as obsession, whose righthand substrings are words such as session, i.e., initially-stressed - ion-words that contain no less than three orthograph­ ic vowels. The shorter word session is stressed I ' scf(g)n/ (OD) because the string - ion, which occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., action), repels stress. The longer session-word obsession merely preserves this stress pattern: /gb ' scf(g)n/ (OD). Similar pairs include admission and mission, adoption and option, compas­ sion and passion, diffusion and fusion, division and vision, emotion and motion, intension and tension, proportion and portion, reaction and action, refraction and fraction, etc. Stress in the prefixed derivatives admission, adoption, compas­ sion, diffusion, division, emotion, intension, proportion, reaction, refraction, etc. is pen-initial because it is initial in the corresponding bases mission, option, passion, fusion, vision, motion, tension, portion, action, fraction, etc. The mean BNC frequency of an -ion-word such as obsession is ,..,3 75.6, but the median frequency is only two. The mean BNC frequency of an - ion-word such as session is, however, "'2,724.92 and the median frequency is 1 86. A longer - ion­ word such as obsession is thus on average less frequent than a shorter - ion-word such as session. Proceeding from these numbers, we can claim that, e.g., devas­ tation is stressed / , d£vg ' ste1Jn/ (OD) because from a purely formal point of view, there are more reasons to analyze it deva- + station than devastate + - ion: While the shorter verb devastate is less frequent in the BNC than the longer noun dev­ astation (44 vs. 266), the shorter noun station is, by contrast, considerably more frequent than it: 9,929 vs. 266. Note also that the OD has 42 mental-words (excluding the word mental itself) that are pronounced /- ' m£nt(g)1/. E.g., adjustmental, compartmental, departmen-

4.3 Three and more syl lables

107

tal, detrimental, developmental, elemental, environmental, experimental, funda­ mental, governmental, incremental, instrumental, etc. all exhibit this stress pat­ tern. Of these longer mental-words, only environmental has more attestations in the BNC than mental: 8,319 vs. 5,735 (with the third most frequent mental-word fundamental occurring in the BNC only 4,480 times). Thus, we have good rea­ sons to assume that the mental of these words counts morphologically as the root and hence receives stress upon its first syllable. E.g., segmental is stressed /s£g 0 m£nt(g)1/ (OD) because the morphological structure of this derivative is not the ''correct'' (i.e., semantics-based) segment + -al, but the purely formal seg- +

mental. Needless to say, in some English words of three and more syllables, the root, which receives stress, is not free but bound, not existing in the language as a sep­ arate word. Thus, for instance, in contrast to the free root mission of the prefixed derivatives admission, commission, emission, intermission, intromission, omission, permission, remission, submission, and transmission, the bound root -dition of the prefixed derivatives addition, audition, condition, edition, erudition, expedition, extradition, perdition, reddition, rendition, sedition, and tradition does not occur in English as a separate word. Likewise, the string - matic occurs in English only at the end of 155 longer - ic-words such as aromatic, asthmatic, automatic, climat­

ic, dalmatic, diplomatic, emblematic, enigmatic, idiomatic, pragmatic, rheumatic, symptomatic, etc. As for -al-words, consider, for example, the b ound root - ternal of eternal, external, fraternal, internal, maternal, paternal, etc. 4 . 3 . 3 More o n pe n u lti mate stress

In the MRC database, the proportions of penultimately-stressed items among words of three and more syllables are ,..,3 8. 16 3 (trisyllables) or ,..,40. 77 3 if also the stress pattern 220 (e.g., archbishop) is taken into consideration, ,..,3 5_71 3 (tet­ rasyllables), ,..,2 8.41 3 (pentasyllables), ,..,2 0.93 3 (hexasyllables), "'9.26 3 (hepta­ syllables), and 1 0 3 (octasyllables). For three vs. four syllables (3,685 I 9,657 or 3,937 I 9,657 vs. 2,056 I 5,758), x2 (1) 9.279, p 0.0023 or x2 (1) 39, p < 0.00000 1; for four vs. five syllables (2,05 6 / 5,758 vs. 644 / 2,267), x2 (1) 39, p < 0.00000 1 ; for five vs. six syllables (644 / 2,267 vs. 1 1 2 / 535), x2 (1) 1 2.27, p 0.0005; for six vs. seven syllables ( 1 1 2 I 535 vs. 1 0 I 108), x2 (1) 7. 968, p 0.0048. The in­ cidence of penultimate stress in English words can thus be said to decrease with an increase from three to four, four to five, five to six, and six to seven syllables. Note also that of the items that the MRC regards as penultimately-stressed tetrasyllables, 736 have hyphenations in LDOCE in which the boundary sym­ bol (·) occurs three times (e.g., ton·sil·li·tis of tonsillitis). Of these items, 364 =

=

=

=

=

=

=

=

108

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

("'49.46 3) have the vowel sequences io, ia, ie, ue, and eo occurring in these words' orthographic ults; the bulk is constituted by 309 -ion-words, such as, e.g., I , fedg ' re1Jgn/ of federation (LDOCE). The point here is that according to LDOCE, in contemporary English there is at least one word in which the vowel sequences io, ia, ie, ue, and eo are phonetically realized as hiatus. E.g., champion is / ' cham-pe-gn/ (MWO), with the phonetic realization of io being the hiatus /1-g/ (cf. the MRC, where champion is said to be tS&m/pj @n, with the hiatus i. o being resolved via replacing the preceding vowel i through the phonetically similar glide /j/; likewise, accordion is /g- ' kor-de-gn/ in the MWO vs. @/kO/dj@n in the MRC). Given words like champion, where the word-final orthographic string - ion is (at least on some occasions) phonetically realized as hiatus, we might as­ sume that also the word federation is underlyingly not -' ra. tion but -' ra. ti. on, with stress being antepenultimate rather than penultimate. The proportion of penultimately-stressed tetrasyllables in the MRC thus drops dramatically from ,..,2 9.99 3 to ,.., 1 5 . 1 6 3 if items such as federation are left out of consideration. Note also that 35 penultimately-stressed tetrasyllables from the MRC occur in Speake & LaFlaur's (2002) dictionary of foreign terms in English. 15 of these

words-ballerina, campanile, chipolata, dilettante, influenza, macaroni, manifes­ to, maraschino, moderato, ocarina, operetta, pizzicato, propaganda, tarantella, and virtuoso-were borrowed into English from Italian, where stress is predom­ inantly penultimate: Of the 25,925 syllabified Italian transcriptions in PONS' Italian-English dictionary, 20,714 ("'79.9 3) exhibit penultimate stress. Given these facts, penultimate stress in English tetrasyllables such as ballerina, campa­ nile, chipolata, dilettante, etc. may be regarded as an exceptional stress pattern, arising from the fact that these words still count for English speakers as Italian words I Italianisms. Likewise, of the 839 items from the MRC whose hyphenations in LDOCE have four occurrences of the boundary symbol (e.g., ab·bre·vi·a·tion), 289 ("'34.45 3) are, according to the MRC, penultimately-stressed. 1 1 9 ("'41.18 3) of these words are, however, - ion-words such as abbreviation, which, similar to items such as federation, could be regarded as antepenultimately-stressed hexasyllables rather than as penultimately-stressed pentasyllables. Finally, as for hexasyllables and longer words, we can say that genuine pe­ nultimate stress does not exist in English altogether, which follows from the fact that of the 37 items that the MRC considers to be penultimately-stressed, 36 ("'97.3 3) end orthographically in the strings - ion (e.g., identification), - ian (e.g., humanitarian), -ia (e.g., megalomania), -eous (e.g., contemporaneous), and - ial (e.g., extraterritoria�. Stress in these words is, again, not penultimate but ante­ penultimate: -'ca. ti.on, -' ta. ri. an, -' ma. ni. a, -'ra. ne. ous, and -' to. ri. al.

4.3 Three and more syl lables

109

In summary, in tetra- and pentasyllables, penultimate stress is a very rare stress pattern and among hexasyllables and longer English words this stress pattern does not exist at all. Because roots contain more phonetic segments than affixes, the analysis of a disyllabic ult-penult string as the root makes sense mainly in the case of tri­ syllabic English words, among which penultimate stress is almost as frequent as antepenultimate stress. E.g., the analysis of the bound string - hibit as the root of the trisyllabic inhibit is entirely unproblematic not only because apart from occurring in inhibit, this string also occurs in exhibit and prohibit, but also because the disyllabic string - hibit is segmentally longer than the monosyllabic string in-; the stress pattern of this word is therefore /1n' h1b1t/, with the location of stress being the root-prefix boundary location. Similar analyses are not entirely counterintuitive in the case of tetrasyllab­ ic English words, which can often be segmented into a disyllabic prefix and a disyllabic root, with the latter being segmentally at least not shorter than the former. E.g., laryngitis and meningitis share the penult-ult string -gitis, which receives stress upon its first syllable: /- ' d3A1t1s/ (OD). The analysis of this righthand string as the root of laryngitis and meningitis makes sense be­ cause the remaining lefthand strings laryn- and menin- are segmentally not longer than it. (Whenever possible, a tetrasyllable is, however, segmented into a monosyllabic prefix and a (segmentally longer) trisyllabic root. E.g., analy­ sis, catalysis, dialysis, neutralysis, and paralysis share the trisyllabic righthand string -alysis and are therefore all stressed /- ' (-)al1s1s/ (OD). The same is true of the stress pattern /- ' (-)abgl1z( g)m/ (OD) of anabolism, catabolism, diabo­ lism, and metabolism, which share the (orthographically) trisyllabic righthand string -abolism.) Beginning, however, with pentasyllabic English words, the disyllabic ult-pe­ nult string is segmentally too short to count morphologically as the root. Thus, for example, given the stress pattern I , an9rg 'pulgd3i/ of anthropology (OD), a question can be raised as to why stress in this word does not fall upon the combining form -logy, which denotes ''a subject of study or interest'' (OD). Al­ though formally combining forms are more like affixes in that they as a rule do not occur as separate words, semantically they are more like roots in that the meanings they express are fairly concrete. E.g., the formation dramaturgy is stressed / ' dramg , tg:d3i/ (OD), with the combining form -urgy, which means ''technique or art of dealing or working with (such) a product, matter, or tool'' (MWO), receiving secondary stress. What accounts for antepenultimate stress in anthropology is that of the 542 -logy-words in the OD dictionary, 523 ("'96.49 3) are -ology-words, i.e., an English word that ends in - logy thus almost always ends in -ology, i.e., e.g.,

110

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

astrology, cardiology, dialectology, ethnology, futurology, geology, etc. Given this fact and given that a - logy-word in the OD dictionary contains on average ,..,5 _5 orthographic vowels (which means that many of these words are pentasylla­ bles), we can argue that it is the trisyllabic righthand string -ology (rather than the disyllabic -logy) that in a word such as anthropology counts morphologically as the root and hence receives stress upon its first syllable. Likewise, since 1 ) the 3,136 - ion-words in the OD dictionary contain on av­ erage ,..,5 _44 orthographic vowels and 2 ) of the 3, 1 36 - ion-words in the OD dic­ tionary, 1 ,965 ("'62.66 3) are -ation-words, there are good reasons to regard this recurrent righthand trisyllabic string (occurring at the end of the majority of the English - ion-words) as the root. E.g., situation is stressed / , s1tfu ' e1Jgn/ (LDOCE) because its morphological structure is not situate + - ion (which cannot be the case because situate is considerably less frequent in the BNC than situation: 48 vs. 1 5,708; situate is thus a back-derivative from situation) but situ- + -ation, of which the righthand bound string -ation, which contains three orthographic vowels, is more like a root, whereas the lefthand bound string situ-, which con­ tains only two orthographic vowels, is more like a prefix. Note also that the 1 ,220 - ity-words in the OD dictionary, which contain on average ,..,5 _34 orthographic vowels, fall into 286 - ility-words (ability), 224 -al­ ity-words (sexuality), 1 26 - icity-words ( heroicity), 93 - ivity-words (activity), 64 -osity-words (curiosity), 49 - arity-words (familiarity), 27 - inity-words ( affin­ ity), 25 -anity-words (Christianity), 22 - idity-words (fluidity), 22 -acity-words (loquacity), 1 7 -erity-words (austerity), 1 6 -neity-words (spontaneity), etc. The bulk ("'80 3) of -ity-words in English is thus constituted by words ending in the twelve righthand trisyllabic strings - ility, - ality, - icity, - ivity, -osity, - arity, - ini­ ty, -anity, -idity, -acity, -erity, and - neity. Given that the average syllabic length of an - ity-word in English is (close to) five, these twelve recurrent righthand strings can be regarded as the roots of the corresponding longer -ity-words. Stress in these -ity-words should therefore be antepenultimate. Among the 1,274 - ian-words in the OD, which contain on average ,..,4 _53 or­ thographic vowels, are 154 -arian-words (libertarian), 90 -onian-words (Amazo­ nian), 77 - ician-words (electrician), 57 -erian-words ( Oliverian), 42 - inian-words (Carolinian), 34 - anian-words (Lithuanian), etc. Stress in words such as these should likewise be antepenultimate. To reiterate: In the majority of non-initially-stressed polysyllabic English words, the righthand string that receives stress (in addition to occurring as a separate word /bound string of at least one other English word) is also seg­ mentally longer than the remaining lefthand string, which is not stressed or secondary-stressed. Because of this fact, penultimate stress is a frequent stress pattern only among trisyllabic English words. Among tetra- and pentasyllables,

4.3 Three and more syl lables

111

this stress pattern is very rare and among words of six and more syllables, this stress pattern does not exist altogether. 4 . 3 . 4 Stress non- preservation

In Section 3.2 (as well as in 4.3. 1) it was reported that stress preservation repre­ sents the default outcome of English suffixation: 70 3. At the same time, how­ ever, as observed in 3.2, it is not always clear whether the stress pattern of a derivative is due to the stress pattern of its base or due to abidance by the Latin Stress Rule. Is, for example, prioritize stressed /prAI 'urgtA1z/ because priority is stressed /prAI 'ur1ti/ or because the penult /rg/ is light? A different case is, however, derivatives such as presidency and indicator, in which stress falls upon a syllable farther than the antepenult. Since the Latin Stress Rule only has provisions for penultimate and antepenultimate stress, we can be sure that the stress patterns / ' pr£z1d(g)nsi/ and / ' 1nd1ke1tg/ are due to the stress patterns I ' pr£z1d(g)nt/ and I ' 1nd1ke1t/. Therefore, derivatives such as presidency and indicator (i.e., these derivatives are initially-stressed tetrasyllables and longer words whose bases are also in­ itially-stressed or monosyllables) will in the following be contrasted with de­ rivatives such as, e.g., maniacal, which similar to presidency and indicator was derived from an initially-stressed trisyllabic base (maniac), but in spite of this fact, is stressed non-initially: /mg 'na1gkgl/ (LDOCE). Why does the derived form maniacal not preserve the stress of the base / ' me1nirek/ (LDOCE)? Relying upon morphological segmentations returned by the tool Morpholog­ ical Analysis, phonetic transcriptions/hyphenations in LDOCE, and frequency numbers from the BNC, English suffixes were classified by the author into the following two groups: 1) -able (e.g., actionable), -ary (e.g., budgetary), -ate (e.g., oxygenate), -cy (e.g., advocacy), -ed (e.g., concentrated), -er (e.g., advertiser), -ery (e.g., imagery), - ing (e.g., elevating), - ism (e.g., structuralism), -ist (e.g., para­ chutist), - ite (e.g., meteorite), - ive (e.g., educative), - ize (e.g., actualize), -ly (e.g., adequately), -ness (e.g., seriousness), -or (e.g., operator), -ry (e.g., citizenry), -ship (e.g., citizenship), - ty (e.g., admiralty), -ure (e.g., candidature), -y (e.g., orthodoxy) vs. 2) -al (e.g., accidenta�, -an (e.g., diocesan), -ant (e.g., luxuriant), - ar (e.g., molecular), -arian (e.g., disciplinarian), -at (e.g., secretariat), -ent (e.g., benefi­ cent), -etic (e.g., sympathetic), -ia (e.g., suburbia), - ible (e.g., accessible), -ic (e.g., alcoholic), -ical (e.g., liturgica�, -icity (e.g., multiplicity), - iferous (e.g., carbonifer­ ous), - ific (e.g., scientific), - ify (e.g., humidify), - ion/-ation (e.g., deforestation), -is­ tic (e.g., euphemistic), -ity (e.g., ability), -ography (e.g., iconography), -ology (e.g., methodology), -ory (e.g., supervisory). (Note that these are not all English suffix­ es but only those that according to the tool Morphological Analysis, occur in

112

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

tetrasyllabic and longer suffixed derivatives whose bases are initially-stressed or monosyllabic. For an encyclopedic survey of the stress behavior of different English suffixes, see the monograph Trevian 2015.) The 2 1 suffixes in the first group are either exclusively or more frequent­ ly stress-neutral. For instance, although the suffix - ist does sometimes act as a stress-shifting suffix-e.g., saxophonist is /srek ' sufgn1st/ in British English (LDOCE), non-preserving the stress of the base / ' sreksgfgun/ (LDOCE)-the usual outcome of an - ist-derivation is stress preservation. Thus aerialist, capi­

talist, caricaturist, generalist, manicurist, miniaturist, nationalist, naturalist, par­ achutist, rationalist, sensualist, and separatist are all stressed initially, preserving the stress of the corresponding base forms aerial, capital, caricature, general, manicure, miniature, national, natural, parachute, rational, sensual, and separate; note also that in American English saxophonist is, in contrast to British English, stressed / ' sreksgfoun1st/ (LDOCE), preserving the stress of the base saxophone. The 23 suffixes in the second group are, by contrast, either exclusively or more frequently stress-shifting. Thus the examples given above- accidental,

diocesan, luxuriant, molecular, disciplinarian, secretariat, beneficent, sympathet­ ic, suburbia, accessible, alcoholic, liturgical, multiplicity, carboniferous, scientific, humidify, deforestation, euphemistic, ability, iconography, methodology, supervi­ sory-are all stressed non-initially even though the bases of these derivatives are, according to the tool Morphological Analysis, the initially-stressed accident, diocese, luxury, molecule, discipline, secretary, benefit, sympathy, suburb, access, alcohol, liturgy, multiple, carbon, science, humid, forest, euphemism, able, icon, method, and supervise. The 789 suffixed derivatives in LDOCE that end in these 23 suffixes con­ tain on average ,..,4_43 orthographic vowels. Of these words, 501 ("'63.5 3) are, according to LDOCE, words of four and more syllables. By contrast, the 3,505 suffixed derivatives that end in the 2 1 suffixes from the first group contain on average only "'3.24 orthographic vowels. Of these words, only 844 ("'24.08 3) are, according to LDOCE, words of four and more syllables. The difference of 501 I 789 vs. 844 I 3,505 is statistically hugely significant-)( (1) 465, p < 0.000001-which allows us to say that stress-shifting suffixes occur in longer words than stress-neutral suffixes. Given this finding, we reiterate that deviations from stress preservation occur in English when a word that ends in a suffix is (from a purely formal point of view) analyzed by English speakers as a word that begins with a prefix. E.g., the morphological structure of suburbia that results in the stress pattern /sg ' b3:big/ (LDOCE) is not suburb + - ia (which is the segmentation returned by the tool Morphological Analysis) but sub- + -urbia (cf. the stress pattern /ck ' sg:b1g/ of exurbia (OD), with stress in this prefixed derivative likewise falling upon the =

4.3 Three and more syl lables

113

bound root - urbia); labyrinthian is /lab(g) ' r1n81gn/ (OD) because its morpho­ logical structure is not labyrinth + - ian but laby- + -rinthian (cf. /kg' r1n81gn/ of Corinthian (OD), with stress in this prefixed derivative likewise falling upon the bound root - rinthian); artificial, beneficial, maleficial, official, orificial, pontificial, sacrificial, superficial, and surficial (some of which can from a semantic point of view be seen as suffixed derivatives; e.g., sacrificial � sacrifice + - ia� share the bound root -ficial and are therefore all stressed /- ' f1J(g)1/ (OD); advantageous is not advantage + -ous but advant- + -ageous and is therefore stressed /- ' -e1d3gs/ (LDOCE), which is also the stress pattern of courageous, outrageous, and rampa­ geous; although accidental is from a semantic point of view not segmentable into acci- and dental the way, e.g., interdental is segmentable into inter- and dental, the reason why accidental is stressed /aks1 ' dent(g)1/ (OD) is identical to that why interdental is stressed /1ntg' dent( g)1/ (OD). Because the string dental occurs in English as a separate word, there are good reasons to regard this string as the root of both accidental and interdental (even though, as just said, it is only the latter where this analysis makes sense also from a semantic point of view). Cases such as these usually take place when the syllabic length of a suffixed derivative is no less than four because, as explained in 4.3.3, tetrasyllabic words in English are often segmentable into a monosyllabic prefix and a trisyllabic root (e.g., sub- + - urbia of suburbia) or into a disyllabic prefix and a disyllabic root (e.g., acci- + dental of accidenta�. Similarly, pentasyllables in English are usually segmentable into a disyllabic prefix and a trisyllabic root (e.g., bene-/ male- + -ficial of beneficial/ maleficial, which is in part semantically transparent). These claims are also strongly supported by variably-stressed derivatives such as, e.g., the -ly-derivatives ordinarily! extraordinarily, momentarily, nec­ essarily, primarily, and voluntarily, which all share the trisyllabic righthand string -arily. E.g., voluntarily is / 'vulgntgrgli/ vs. I , vulgn' tergli/ in British English and only / , va:lgn' tergli/ in American English (LDOCE) because in addition to being ''correctly'' segmented into the initially-stressed base voluntary and the suffix -ly, the very same word voluntarily can also be ''incorrectly'' segmented into the disyllabic prefix volun- and the trisyllabic root - tarily. Condemnatory is /kgn' demngtgri/ vs. / ,kundem' ne1tgri/ in British English and only /kgn' demngta :ri/ in American English (LDOCE). On the one hand, the stress pattern /- 'ne1tgri/ is the preserved stress of /kundgm' ne1Jgn/ of condemnation (LDOCE), which has considerably more attestations in the BNC than condem­ natory: 442 vs. 1 3. On the other hand, it is most likely not a coincidence that similar deviations from stress preservation are also exhibited (in British English) by compensatory, participatory, regulatory, circulatory, and celebratory, which all share the trisyllabic righthand string -atory. Accordingly, to account for antepenultimate stress in these words, not only back-derivation but also prefix-

114

4 Stress assignment in Engl ish

ation analyses can be invoked. A similar case is I , sretgs ' frektgri..,.; of satisfactory (LDOCE), which means that stronger stress in the word under consideration can occur not only antepenultimately but also initially. On the one hand, both these stress patterns can be attributed to the stress pattern I , sretgs' frekfgn/ of the more frequently used word satisfaction, which, as pointed out in 4.3.1, occurs in the BNC 2,761 times whereas satisfactory has only 2,160 attestations. Note, however, that the initially-stressed trisyllabic word factory occurs in the BNC 4,475 times and is thus even more frequent than satisfaction. The prefixation analysis satis- + factory, which results in the stress pattern I , sretgs ' frektgri/, should thus make more sense than the back-derivation from satisfaction. The same is true of manufactory and ratifactory, which also end in factory and are therefore stressed /- ' fakt(g)ri/ (OD). Finally, it seems that in some cases, deviations from stress preservation have purely diachronic causes. E.g., while the base contemplate has abandoned the historical stress pattern /kgn ' t£mple1t/ in favor of antepenultimate stress, the derivative contemplative is still stressed not only / 'kuntgmple1t1v/ but also /kgn ' templgt1v/ (LDOCE). Similarly, demonstrate is no longer /d1 ' munstre1t/, but demonstrable is still /d1 ' munstrgbgl/ alongside / ' demgnstrgbgl/ (LDOCE). A pos­ sible explanation for these facts is that because tetrasyllables in English are usually made up of a monosyllabic prefix and a trisyllabic root, the antepenul­ timately-stressed pronunciations /kgn ' templgt1v/ and Idi ' munstrgbgl/ are not perceived by contemporary English speakers as ''wrong'' pronunciations, even though they are as a matter of fact ''wrong." The suffixes -able and -ive are, as pointed out above, stress-neutral suffixes. E.g., educative is only / ' edjukgt1v/ in British English and only / ' ed3gke1t1v/ in American English (LDOCE), preserving the stress (and in the case of the American pronunciation, also the segmental structure) of the base educate. Likewise, educable is stressed only / ' edjukgbgl/ (LDOCE), preserving the stress of the base educate. (Note also that apart from the pseudo-derivative demonstrable, which was imported into English from Latin, the OD also has the genuine -able-derivative demonstratable, which is stressed only / ' d£mgnstre1tgbl/, preserving not only the stress but also the segmental structure of the base demonstrate. Likewise, the pronunciations / ' eksgkju:tgbgl/ and / ' ekstrgda1tgbgl/ (LDOCE) of the genuine -able-derivatives executable and extraditable also exemplify agglutinative suffixation.) Accordingly, also con­ templative and demonstrable are supposed to be stressed / 'kuntgmple1t1v/ and / ' demgnstrgbgl/ rather than /kgn ' templgt1v/ and /d1 ' munstrgbgl/.

4.3 Three and more syl lables

115

4 . 3 . 5 Stress s h ifts

For 929 solidly-spelled trisyllables and longer words, LDOCE gives phonet­ ic transcriptions that contain the stress shift symbol (

-->

5 . 1 . 6 H iatu s reso l ution

Finally, there are words in which hiatus resolution is responsible for a change in the location of stress. To be more precise, in both / ' lauJgn/ and /la: ' gufgn/ of Laotian (OED), stress is penultimate, but while in the disyllabic pronunciation / ' laufgn/ the stressed penultimate syllable is / ' lau/, it is / ' gu/ in the trisyllabic pronunciation /la: ' gufgn/. Similarly, in both /d31 ' ugrgfi/ and / ' d3ugrgfi/ of geog­ raphy (OED; only British English), stress is antepenultimate, but while in the tetrasyllabic pronunciation /d31 'ugrgfi/ the stressed antepenultimate syllable is / ' u/, in the trisyllabic alternative / ' d3ugrgfi/ the stressed antepenult is / ' d3u/. As one can notice, in / ' d3ugrgfi/, the hiatus /1 ' u/ of /d31 'ugrgfi/ is resolved via deleting the preceding vowel /1/, whereas / ' laufgn/ involves both vowel deletion and diphthongization as hiatus-resolution strategies, i.e., to resolve the hiatus in /la: ' guJgn/, we first need to delete the following vowel / ' g/ and then to diph­ thongize the remaining vowel sequence /a: ' u/. Cases of hiatus resolution such as these raise the question of when a hi­ atus sequence in an English word is likely to be resolved vs. to be retained. (Note that in this section, we are only concerned with hiatus sequences such as /1- 'u/ of geography, which involve an unstressed vowel being immediately

168

5 Case studies

followed by a stressed one. Other cases of hiatus resolution-e.g, /di- ' men(t)-shg/ vs. /di- ' men(t)-she-g/ of dementia (MWO), with hiatus being made up of two unstressed vowels-go beyond the scope of the present monograph and are therefore not taken into consideration.) In a fairly recent study of how hiatus sequences of rising sonority such as, e.g., i.a of Maria are dealt with in different Romance languages, it is suggested that one of the answers to this question is the location of a hiatus sequence in a word: It is known that diphthongs and hiatus sequences differ in terms of duration [ . . .] . In principle, we expect that heterosyllabic sequences will tend to be recategorised as diphthongs in those positions where they tend to be realised with shorter duration. Conversely, we hypothesise that the initiality and stress conditions that have been identified for the preservation of hiatus in Spanish may relate to the fact that in those positions sequences are realised with greater duration, reducing the likelihood of their recategorisation as diphthongs. (Chitoran & Hualde 2007: 48)

In other words: the reason for historical reduction to diphthong sometimes being blocked in word-in­ itial position is because [hiatus] sequences in this position tend to be longer than in other positions . . . Word-initial sequences are separated from the left word boundary by one consonant (Chitoran & Hualde 2007: 48-49)

Proceeding from this, it was established by the author that in the MWO diction­ ary, syllabified phonetic transcriptions containing at least one hiatus sequence such as /1- 'u/ of geography are provided for 1 ,046 solidly-spelled polysyllabic English words. In the case of 973 of these words, a hiatus-containing transcrip­ tion is either the sole transcription (e.g., fiasco is only /re- ' as-( , )ko/, with the orthographic hiatus sequence i.a being also phonetically realized as hiatus) or a hiatus-involving pronunciation is given before a hiatus-free alternative (e.g., Laotian is /la- ' 6-shgn/ vs. I ' lau-shgn/). As for the other 73 words, a hiatus-free transcription is, by contrast, placed in the dictionary before a hiatus-con­ taining one. E.g., in the case of extraordinary, the hiatus-free transcription /ik- stror-dg- ,ner-e/ is given before the hiatus-involving I ek-strg- or- dg- ,ner-e/ (proceeding from which we assume that extraordinary is more frequently pro­ nounced /ck' stra: d1ngr1/ than /£kstrg ' a :d1ngr1/, with the hiatus /g ' a :/ of the latter being resolved in the former via deleting the preceding vowel /g/). (The fact that of the 1 ,046 words that contain hiatus sequences such as /1- ' u/ of geography, only 73 ("'6. 98 3) are more frequently pronounced in a hiatus-resolving manner strongly suggests that hiatus sequences such as /1- ' u/ of geography are as a rule retained in contemporary English.) I

I

I

5.1 Stress variation in the OED

169

What is important is that of the 973 words such as fiasco and Laotian, 368 (,..,3 7.82 3) are words such as fiasco and Laotian, in which hiatus occurs initially (i.e., at the first-second syllable boundary). By contrast, in the case of the 73 words such as extraordinary, initial hiatus occurs in no more than eight words: 1 0. 96 3. E.g., koala is /kg- 'wa-lg/ vs. /ko- a- lg/, with the former pronunciation resolving the initial hiatus o. a by means of so-called intrusive w, whereas pya is /pya/ vs. /pe- ' a/, with the initial hiatus y. a being resolved in the former via replacing the preceding vowel y through the phonetically similar glide /j/. (The OD gives for pya, ''[a] monetary unit of Burma;' only the monosyllabic tran­ scription /pja:/.) Since the difference of 368 I 973 vs. eight I 73 is statistically very significant-f (1) 2 1.281, p 0.000004-we are justified in concluding that (also in the English language) initiality inhibits hiatus resolution. E.g., Laotian is more frequently /la: ' gufgn/ than / ' laufgn/ because the hiatus sequence a. o occurs in the word initially; its resolution is therefore inhibited by the initiality effect. In extraordi­ nary, by contrast, the very same hiatus sequence occurs post-initially; the word is therefore more frequently pronounced /- ' stra : -/ than /-g ' a : -/. Likewise, it is only British English speakers who frequently pronounce geography / ' d3ugrgfi/, whereas in American English, the only pronunciation used is still the hiatus-in­ volving /d3i ' agrgfi/ (OED). As in the case of Laotian, we can argue that since hiatus in geography is initial, its resolution should be inhibited by the very same initiality effect. Note also that many variably-stressed English words have hiatus resolu­ tion only accompanying a stress variation, without, however, being directly responsible for it. E.g., octoate is / 'uktgue1t/ vs. /uk ' tgue1t/ in British English and / ' aktg ,we1t/ or / ' akdg ,we1t/ vs. I , ak ' tougt/ in American English (OED). As one can see, when stress in octoate in American English is antepenultimate, the hiatus /u-g/ of the penultimately-stressed version I , ak- ' tou-gt/ is resolved via replacing the preceding vowel /u/ through the phonetically similar glide /w/. This, however, is clearly not the cause of the stress variation in octoate, which is strongly supported by the fact that the British English transcriptions / ' uktgue1t/ and /uk ' tgue1t/ differ from each other only with regard to the location of the stress symbol. What accounts for the stress variation in octoate is that on the one hand, the segmental length principle requires initial stress in its lefthand di­ syllabic string oc. to-, whereas the segmentation oc- + - toate (cf. pantoate, whose meaning is ''[a] salt or ester, or the anion, of pantoic acid'' (OD), whereas octoate likewise has a chemistry-related meaning ''[a] salt or ester of an octoic acid'') results in penultimate stress, with the location of stress being the root-prefix boundary location. ,..,

I

=

=

170

5 Case studies

Note also that laryngeal is, according to the MWO, /lg- ' rin-jgl also -je-gl; , la-rgn- 'je-gl/, with the hiatus e.a being resolved only when laryngeal is stressed la' ryngeal. Likewise, fantasia is /fan- ' ta-zhg, -z(h)e-g; , fan-tg- ' ze-g/ (MWO), with the hiatus i. a being, again, resolved only when stress in fantasia is antepenul­ timate. The explanation for these facts is that under both the hiatus-free tri­ syllabic syllabifications la. ryn.geal/fan. ta.sia and the hiatus-involving tetrasyl­ labic syllabifications la. ryn.ge. allfan. ta.si. a, the analysis of the strings -ryngeal and - tasia as the roots of laryngeal and fantasia is in accordance with the seg­ mental length principle (i.e., these strings are longer than the lefthand strings la-/fan-). The monosyllabic strings -geal and -sia cannot, by contrast, be the roots of the trisyllabic la. ryn.geal and fan. ta.sia. To count morphologically as the root, these strings should be syllabified -ge. al and -si. a; the tetrasyllabic la. ryn. ge. al/fan. ta. si. a will then be made up of the disyllabic prefixes la. ryn-/fan. ta- and the disyllabic roots -ge. al/-si. a (cf. laryn- + -gitis of the above mentioned tetra­ syllabic laryngitis, whose root is also disyllabic). Cf. Caribbean/pharyngeal and Aristotelean, of which the former are still more frequently stressed /- ' bi:gn/ and /- ' d3i: gl/ than /- 'r1b1gn/ and /- ' r1n(d)31gl/, whereas the latter is more frequently stressed /- ' ti :l1gn/ than /- ' li:gn/. Because the 2,373 -ean/-ian/-eal/- ial-words in the OD dictionary contain on average ,..,4 _54 orthographic vowels, with 1 ,089 ("'45.89 3) words containing no less than five orthographic vowels, stress in such words should naturally be antepenultimate rather than penultimate, i.e., the latter can be a stress pattern in a tetrasyllabic word such as Caribbean and phar­ yngeal, but a hexasyllabic word such as Aristotelean should not be pronounced / , rer1stut1 ' li:gn/ (preserving the stress of the Latin base Aristoteleus (OED), in which stress is penultimate because the vowel in the penult is long): The disyl­ labic string -le.an is segmentally too short to count morphologically as its root.

5.2 Stress va riation i n YouTube

Finally, using YouTube data, the chapter will attempt to answer the question of why in the case of English words with stress doublets (in the OED), one stress pattern is as a rule more frequently used by contemporary English speakers than an alternative stress pattern. To avoid repetitions, the focus of this section will be on those words whose preferred stress patterns run counter to the ten­ dencies that were established in Chapter 4. E.g., because trisyllables that end or­ thographically in a/ ii o in general prefer penultimate to antepenultimate stress, the finding that paprika is more frequently stressed /pg 'pri:kg/ than / 'prepr1kg/ is not particularly interesting. Why is, however, enema-in spite of its orthograph­ ic ending-in Present-day English no longer stressed 1£ 'ni:mg/?

5.2 Stress variation in YouTube

171

Since the focus of the monograph is on location-of-stress variation, cases such as /mg' ,nIIJgou-/ of meningococcic and / ' , red3gdgnt-/ of adjutant general, which exemplify degree-of-stress variation (i.e., when components of a mor­ phologically complex word/ combination of words occur with varying degrees of stress) will in the following be left out of consideration. Likewise, cases such as / ' srebgta:3/ vs. /sabata3/ of sabotage, when a pronunciation involving stress co-exists with a stressless alternative, imitating how a word is pronounced in a foreign language, are of relatively little theoretical interest and will therefore not be discussed. As mentioned in 1.2, words with stress doublets are sometimes represented by low frequency words. E.g., the spoken occurrences of the word Achillean, which is /g 'k1l1gn/ vs. /gk1 ' lign/ in British English and /g 'k1lign/ vs. / , rekg ' lign/ in American English (OED), were attested only twice in the YouTube videos OWHOAXMRGq4 (04. 09. 2016) and OX-aBJ3StUs (04. 09. 2016), in both of which it is pronounced by American English speakers with antepenultimate stress, i.e., /g- ' k1-li-gn/. Cf. Euclidean, which was found to have been pronounced by 14 (predominantly American) native English speakers /ju:- 'kl1-d1-gn/; the penulti­ mately-stressed alternative /ju:-kl1- ' di:-gn/, which is also given for Euclidean in the OED, was not attested. Needless to say, it is Euclidean rather than Achillean in the case of which we are more justified in claiming that antepenultimate stress represents the word's default (or perhaps even sole) stress pattern in con­ temporary English (even though also in Achillean, stress was found to have been exclusively antepenultimate). To deal with the problem of low frequency words, Kunter (201 1 : 177), who studied variably-accented Noun + Noun compounds, restricts the data to only those types for which at least seven tokens are available. For within-speaker variability this means that there are seven or more tokens of the same type from a given speaker; for across-speaker variability seven or more tokens have to be available in identical contextual environments from different speakers. (Kunter 201 1 : 177)

In a similar vein, the present monograph will regard only those results as (com­ pletely) reliable that were obtained for words pronounced by at least 10 different native English speakers. Another problem is posed by words in the case of which different stress pat­ terns were used by near-identical numbers of (different) speakers. E.g., in the case of the word alveolus, pronunciations with stress falling upon the antepe­ nult vs. the penult were used by 13 vs. 1 1 (mainly) American English speak­ ers, i.e., the numbers of speakers stressing alveolus /- 'vi-g-lgs/ vs. I- ' ou-lgs/ were found to be only insignificantly different from each other. Cf. nucleolus, which, according to the OED, is / , nju:kl1 ' gulgs/ vs. /nju: 'kl1glgs/ in British English and

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only /n(j)u'kliglgs/ in American English. In disagreement with this, however, the numbers of American English speakers pronouncing nucleolus I- 'kli-g-lgs/ vs. I- ' o u -lgs/ were found to be eight vs. 19, i.e., penultimate stress in nucleolus (which, according to the OED, should occur only in British English) thus appears to be more frequent in contemporary American English than antepenultimate stress. To distinguish between cases such as alveolus vs. nucleolus, we can count the percentage difference between the numbers of speakers using different stress patterns. The percentage difference between two numbers is the absolute value of the difference between them divided by their arithmetic mean. E.g., the per­ centage difference between 13 and 1 1 is (13-1 1)/((13+ 1 1)/2)=,.., 1 6.67 3 and that between eight and 1 9 is ,..,8 1.48 3. (Note, however, that the percentage difference should be counted only when the two values under comparison are above zero, i.e., when one of the values is zero (which in our case means that one of the stress patterns could not be attested in captioned YouTube videos), the result is always 200 3, irrespective of the other value, which is non-zero. E.g., if the two values are 1 0 and zero, the percentage difference is (10-0)/((10+0)/2)=200 3; likewise, if the two values are 200 and zero, the result is also (200-0)/((200+0)/2)=200 3.) As a threshold, we can (somewhat arbitrarily) choose the percentage differ­ ence of 25 3 (cf. Balteiro 2007: 128), below which all frequency differences are to be regarded as doubtful. The case of alveolus, with the percentage difference between the numbers of speakers pronouncing it with penultimate vs. antepe­ nultimate stress being only ,.., 1 6.6 7 3, counts therefore as doubtful. On the basis of the finding reported above, we cannot then say that antepenultimate stress is the preferred stress pattern of alveolus in contemporary English. Finally, it is observed that the results presented below are biased towards American English because in general, the voices of American English speakers were attested far more often than the voices of speakers featuring other native English accents. Thus, the number of British English speakers pronouncing a particular word with stress doublets was as a rule less than 10 and with regard to other varieties, only the voices of Australian English speakers could fairly often be heard in a comparable number of videos. The fact that the findings of this section take mainly American English into account can be seen as a limitation of this study, but note that this section does not aim to be a lexicographic doc­ umentation of how different English varieties stress particular English words. The task of this section is, as declared above, to find out why in the case of many English words with stress doublets, one stress pattern is more frequently used by contemporary English speakers than an alternative stress pattern, and since the stress system of American English is not different from that of British Eng­ lish I any other native English variety, it does not make much difference which Present-day English variety serves as the object of the study.

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5 . 2 . 1 Overa l l res u lts : Yo uTu be vs. OED

As already mentioned in 3.3, for 1 ,232 items with stress doublets in the OED, at least one spoken occurrence could be attested in captioned YouTube videos, i.e., at least one native English speaker was found to have pronounced these words. Only 644 ("'52.27 3) of these items were non-identically-stressed (by either dif­ ferent or identical native English speakers, i.e., across- vs. within-speaker vari­ ation), but observe that if we consider only those words that were pronounced by at least 10 different speakers, the proportion of non-identically-stressed items from the OED rises from ,..,5 2.27 3 to (390 I 583=),..,6 6.9 3. Thus we can conclude that words with stress doublets in the OED are indeed as a rule variably-stressed by contemporary English speakers. If individual variation categories are taken into consideration, the results are as follows. The variation type ''p/a'' is represented by 131 genuine instanc­ es of pla-instability that were found to have been pronounced by at least 1 0 different native English speakers. (These words do not include cases such as 'adulthood vs. a' dulthood, which can be seen as the inherited variation 'adult vs. a'dult; notice also that (very) similar cases of pfa-instability, such as, e.g., 'affiuence vs. affluence and 'affiuent vs. afflu ent, are counted by the author only once.) 75 ("'57.25 3) of these words were either exclusively or more frequently pronounced with antepenultimate stress (e.g., just like the majority of trisyl­ labic English words that end orthographically in y, anchovy is more frequently stresse d / ' rentfgv1/ than /ren ' tfguv1/), whereas the other 56 ("'42.75 3) words were, by contrast, found to prefer penultimate stress. E.g., just like the majority of tri­ syllabic English words that end orthographically in a, angina is more frequently stressed /ren' d3a1ng/ than / ' rend31ng/. Of 203 instances of u/p-instability that were pronounced by no less than 1 0 different native English speakers (with similar words such as, e.g., detail and detailed counting as the same word), 149 ("'73.4 3) were either exclusively or more frequently pronounced with initial I penultimate stress, i.e., the category ''u/p'' is composed not only of disyllables, such as detail, in which initial stress is as a rule considerably more frequent than final stress, but also of several trisyl­ lables such as, e.g., aikido, which, according to the OED, is in American English interchangeably stressed /a1 'kidou/ vs. I , a1ki ' dou/, but of these, only the former stress pattern was heard by the author (i.e., just like the majority of trisyllabic English words that end orthographically in o, aikido prefers penultimate stress). Similar to disyllables that constitute the bulk of the variation type ''u/p;' also trisyllabic instances of the variation category ''u/a'' were extremely rarely ("'9.23 3) found to prefer final to antepenultimate stress (e.g., in the case of mis­ diagnose, the stress pattern -' nose was more frequently used than mis' di-); this

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finding also ''point[s] towards a peripheral status of final stress in contemporary English phonology'' (Fournier 2007: 232). The variation categories ''a/4;' ''p/4;' ''a/s;' ''4;5;' ''4/6;' ''p/a/4;' ''p;s;' ''a/6;' ''5/6;' ''a/4/5;' and ''p/6'' are represented by 57 items that were pronounced by at least 10 different native English speakers. (Once again, it is reiterated that similar items such as, e.g., interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary are counted only once). Of these 57 words, 26 ("'45.61 3) were either exclusively or more frequently stressed closer to the left word edge. E.g., the already mentioned oxygenate was exclusively stressed / ' uks1d3gne1t/ and participle was more fre­ quently stressed / ' pa:tisipl/ (OED) than /pa: ' t1s1pl/ (OED). In the other 3 1 words ("'54.39 3), stress usually fell closer to the right word edge. E.g., the already mentioned hydrogenate was more frequently stressed /ha1 ' dmd3gne1t/ than / ' hA1drgd3gne1t/ and evocative was exclusively stressed /i: 'vukgt1v/ (OED) and never / ' £vguke1t1v/ (OED). It should be added, however, that instances of these variation categories were often heard to exhibit across-varietal stress differences. E.g., metallur­ gy is / ' mcdl , grd3i/ in American English, preserving the stress of the disyllabic noun metal, but British English speakers prefer the stress pattern /mi ' talgd3i/ (OED), deriving metallurgy from the penultimately-stressed trisyllabic combin­ ing form metallo-, which ends orthographically in o, i.e., metallurgy � metallo­ + - urgy, with the hiatus o. u being resolved via deleting the preceding vowel o. Ancillary, corollary, medullary, and pupillary are in American English usually stressed / ' rens1lgr1/, / ' kurglgr1/, / ' m£dgl£ri/, and / ' pjupgl£ri/ (OED), but British English speakers prefer an' cillary, co' rollary, me' dullary, and pu'pillary. Given these systematic stress differences, it is clear that American English ''incor­ rectly'' analyses the -ary of these words as a suffix, i.e., whereas in the case of pupillary, the segmentation into pupil and -ary seems no less correct than into pupilla and -ry, corollary and medullary can only be corolla + - ry and medulla + - ry. The British English stress patterns /kn ' mlgr1/ and Im£ ' dAl( g)ri/ (OED) thus preserve the stress of /kg ' mlg/ and /m£ 0 dAlg/ (OD), which end orthographically in a and are therefore stressed penultimately. The same is true of /ren' s1lg/ of ancilla (OED), which is why also ancillary is supposed to be stressed /ren' s1lgr1/ (OED). For Americans, ancillary, corollary, and medullary are, however, ancil-1 corol-1 medul- + -ary, with the latter repelling stress and the former receiving it upon their penults (i.e., e.g., even if we proceed from the syllabification co. rol-, the segmentally longer ult still does not achieve the segmental length of four segments, which is typically exhibited in English by finally-stressed disyllables. Stress in the string co. rol- is therefore initial). Related to these are cases such as / 'k1lgmi: tg(r)/ vs. /k1 ' lum1tg(r)/ of kilometer, which also involve placing stress closer to the beginning vs. end of a word,

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respecting vs. non-respecting its compound-like morphological structure. Unfortunately, attestations from at least 10 different speakers were available for only a handful of such words-aristocrat, carcinogen, cuneiform, kilometer, melanocyte, oligomer, orangutan, physiatrist, prothonotary, and spectroscopy­ which is not particularly surprising given that formations such as these are as a rule low frequency words. E.g., heresiarch was pronounced only four times in three captioned YouTube videos. The antepenultimately-stressed pronunci­ ation /h1 ' ri: s1a:k/ occurred in the video xBK561RyOUE (25. 01. 2015), whereas in the videos il20N4hbyT8 (25. 01. 2015) and kh0bey5LMl4 (25. 01. 2015), the initially-stressed pronunciation / 0 h£r1s1 , a:k/ (OED) could be heard. Similarly, for idempotence, only nine spoken occurrences could be attested in the videos 6dVNdFwqeKs (09. 02. 2015) and o3TuRs9ANhs (09. 02. 2015), in both of which we hear the ''correct'' right-prominent pronunciation I , a1d£m 0poutns/ (OED). As for the items that were pronounced by at least 1 0 different speakers, the results are as follows. A' ristocrat was more frequent than 'aristocrat, carcinogen was more frequent than 'carcinogen, cu' neiform was more frequent than 'cunei­ form, ki'lometerwas more frequent than 'kilometer, melanocytewas only me'lanocyte, o' ligomerwas more frequent than 'oligomer, orangutan was only o'rangutan, physiatristwas more frequent than physi'atrist, pro' thonotarywas more frequent than protho' notary, and spectroscopy was only spec troscopy. As suggested in 5. 1.4, (preferred) stress patterns such as these are due to 1) ''incorrect'' prefixation analyses or I and 2) the vowel effect. E.g., physiatrist is morphologically physi- + -atrist (cf. paediatrist, psychiatrist) and should there­ fore be stressed I , f1z1 ' atr1st/ (OED; both British and American English). How­ ever, because the common string shared by physiatrist, paediatrist, and psy­ chiatrist is not -atrist but - iatrist (and because the pronunciation I , f1z1 ' atr1st/ contains a hiatus sequence and is thus phonetically unfortunate), the stress pat­ tern /fi ' ZA1gtr1st/ (OED; both varieties) is more frequent than the stress pattern I , f1z1 ' atr1st/ and, similarly, paediatrist is, according to the OD, more frequently stressed /- ' dA1gtr1st/ than I ,pi:d1 ' atr1st/ and psychiatrist is exclusively stressed I- 'kA1gtr1st/, with the (non-initial) hiatus i.a being resolved via diphthongization. The vowel effect is especially obvious in the case of prothonotary, which is the only -onotary-word in the BNC ; the stress pattern /prg(u) eungt( g)ri/ (OED) is thus hardly attributable to the prefixation analysis pro- + - thonotary. Assuming, however, that in addition to segmenting prothonotary into protho- and notary, which leads to the ''correct'' stress pattern / , prgu9g ' ngutgri/ (OED), contempo­ rary English speakers usually segment it into prothono- and - tary (of which the former is segmentally longer than the latter and, in addition to this, ends orthographically in o), it immediately becomes clear why prothonotary is usually stressed /prg(u) ' 9ungt( g)ri/. I

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Now, we can have a closer look at individual stress-assignment factors ac­ counting for stress-assignment preferences in individual variably-stressed Eng­ lish words. 5 . 2 . 2 Adjacent words

Because ''adjacent stressed syllables make speech sound jerky'' (Kingdon 1949: 149), the stress pattern of one English word might affect the placement of stress in another (immediately preceding I following) English word. An example is the video koqWmL4uWsl (05. 07. 2015), in which in to serious birth defects including cleft lip, cleft palate, and serious cardiac 'defects, stress in defects is final in the combination birth de'fects, but it is initial in the combination cardiac 'defects, in which, in contrast to the birth of birth defects, the immediately preceding modifier cardiac is not finally-stressed; there being no stress clash when defect is stressed / ' di: f£kt/ (OD) (which seems to have a purely semantic justification: To defect, which in accordance with the segmental length principle I synchronic back-derivation from the more frequently used longer nouns defection/ defector is stressed /d1 ° f£kt/ (OD), means ''[a]bandon one's country or cause in favor of an opposing one'' (OD); a defect means, by contrast, ''[a] shortcoming, imper­ fection, or lack'' (OD). Since the connection between these senses is far from being obvious, stress differences are deliberately employed by English speakers to make a defect formally different from the semantically unrelated to defect). In general, the spoken occurrences of the combination birth defect/ birth de­ fects were attested in captioned YouTube videos 473 times. With initial stress, the head nouns defect and defects are pronounced in these combinations only 168 times ("'35.52 3), which means that, in disagreement with Hayes (1995: 370), arguing that stress movement in English is only leftward ( thirteen ,.., ' thirteen men), stress in the head noun defect does move rightward under the influence of the immediately preceding monosyllabic modifier birth. That is, the preferred stress pattern of the noun defect in the combinations birth defect and birth de­ fects is Idi ' f£kt/ while in other environments a defect is usually stressed I ' di: f£kt/ (which, as suggested above, is mainly a matter of semantics). A similar example is the adjective compact, which in addition to modify­ ing other English words (especially the monosyllabic noun disc), is itself often modified by the monosyllable more. The spoken occurrences of more compact were attested in captioned YouTube videos (featuring the voices of native Eng­ lish speakers pronouncing more compact) 42 times. With initial stress, compact is pronounced in these attestations of more compact only 1 3 times ("'30.95 3), whereas in the other 29 attestations (,.., 69.05 3), stress in compact of more compact is final; an example of within-speaker variability is the video 7hvOGDeqmTQ

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177

(09. 04. 2016), in which in a more com'pact interface, stress in compact is final, while it is initial in a more ' compact and intuitive interface. Once again, it can be seen that while in general the adjective compact prefers initial stress, because it often occurs as modifier of monosyllabic I initially-stressed polysyllabic nouns (e.g., compact disc), stress in compact is more frequently final in the combination more compact, in which the immediately preceding modifier more is monosyl­ labic. Recall also the YouTube video -AnsohxXnQU (17. 09. 2016), in which one and the same American English speaker stresses applicable / ' re-/ in This name change will be more functionally 'applicable vs. /- 'pl1-/ in we've made the name change to make it more ap'plicable. Of the 1 6 spoken occurrences of more applicable in captioned YouTube videos, only four (25 3) were heard to exemplify the initial­ ly-stressed pronunciation / ' replgkgb( g)1/. The usual pronunciation of applicable in more applicable is thus the pen-initially-stressed /g ' pl1kgbl/, which is better from the point of view of rhythm. (Note also that according to Scherer & Woll­ mann (1972: 195), one of the factors accounting for the stress pattern /1 ° l£v(g)n/ of eleven (OD) is the counting-context, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, with the trisyllabic eleven being immediately preceded by the monosyllabic ten. Pen-in­ itial stress in the former is thus from the point of view of rhythm better than initial stress.) Consider, however, the preferred stress patterns of the nouns incline and de­ crease in the combinations steep incline, per cent decrease, and slight decrease, in which, just like in the combinations birth defect(s) and more compact, final stress in the nouns incline and decrease would from the point of view of rhythm be better than initial stress, i.e., steep incline should be I ' sti:p in' kla1n/ rather than / ' sti:p ' 1nkla1n/, where one stressed syllable occurs immediately after another stressed syllable. Contrary to these expectations, however, in 5 1 spoken occur­ rences of steep incline, the pronunciation /1n'kla1n/ was heard by the author no more than two times ('"" 3 .92 3). Similarly, in 62 occurrences of decrease in per cent decrease, the pronunciation /d1 ' kri: s/ was likewise heard by the author only two times ('"" 3 .23 3) and in 70 occurrences of slight decrease, this pronunciation of decrease was heard by the author only six times ('"" 8 .57 3). The reason for this difference seems to be the (by and large) emphatic nature of initial stress in both incline and decrease, which due to obvious reasons is completely missing in compact and defect. That is, in the COCA corpus, steep is not only the most frequent modifier of the noun incline but also the seventh most frequent modifier of the noun decline, and per cent is not only the second most frequent modifier of the noun decrease but also the most frequent modifier of the noun increase (and, similarly, slight is not only the fourth most frequent modifier of decrease but also the fifth most frequent modifier of increase). By

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contrast, compact is the only pact-word that in COCA is modified by more, and defect is the only -feet-word that in COCA is immediately preceded by the mod­ ifier birth. (As for -fects, there are only two occurrences of birth effects alongside 692 occurrences of birth defects.) Thus, since steep can be frequently found adjacent to both incline and decline, which express related senses, and since per cent and slight collocate both with decrease and increase, which are semantically opposite, it is quite natural that stress in incline of steep incline and in decrease of per cent decrease and slight decrease be emphatically initial, while in the combinations more compact and birth defect(s), where compact and defect do not contrast with other words end­ ing in pact/-fect, English speakers readily move stress from the penult to the ult, making thereby the pronunciations of the respective phrases more rhythmic. Cf. the combination tax increase, whose spoken occurrences were attested in captioned YouTube videos 178 times. The initially-stressed pronunciation / ' 1nkri: s/ was heard by the author only 50 times ("'28.09 3); the considerably more frequently ("'7 1.91 3) used stress pattern of increase in tax increase is thus the finally-stressed /1n 'kri:s/, which is better from the point of view of rhythm, i.e., / ' taks 1n' kri : s/ rather than / ' taks ' 1nkri: s/, which involves a stress clash. Because governments across the globe virtually never decrease taxes but only increase them (which is reflected in the fact that in COCA, the combination tax decrease has only 14 attestations (and, similarly, in captioned YouTube videos it occurs only nine times) whereas the combination tax increase occurs 1 ,808 times!), the increase of the combination tax increase does not contrast semanti­ cally with decrease; the emphatic potential inherent in its prefix in- is thus very low. The usual stress pattern of increase in this combination is therefore the fi­ nally-stressed /1n 'kri:s/. By contrast, of the five American English speakers who were found to have pronounced the combination tax decrease, only one speak­ er used the finally-stressed version /di ' kri: s/. As just pointed out, because the phenomenon of a government decreasing taxes is extremely rare, the emphatic potential inherent in the prefix de- of the noun decrease in the combination tax decrease is very high; this prefix is thus predestined to be emphasized via stress. Recall also the fact, mentioned in 1.2, that according to Halle & Vergnaud (1987:271, f. 29), ''the word-internal application of the Rhythm Rule [. . .] is re­ stricted to lexical compounds;' i.e., ''retraction is (almost) obligatory in Marcel Proust, but almost impossible in Marcel left." Indeed, in YouTube videos that were found to contain the spoken occurrences of Marcel, initial stress in this word was heard by the author only in combinations such as Marcel Proust, but not in genitive phrases such as Marcel's book or syntactic clauses such as Mar­ cel left. The attested combinations in which Marcel is stressed initially include Marcel Proust (1HT7IWd9JRc, 08. 06. 2015), Marcel Daniels (N4Yc6ZPGDqA,

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30. 03. 2016), Marcel Kittel (9oKqcy-dnoE, 07. 06. 2015), Marcel Kiss (h57TsezhYI8, 07. 06. 2015), and Marcel Mettelsiefen (nxVeYVGrTaI, 07. 06. 2015). In each of these combinations, the immediately following heads Proust, Daniels, Kittel, Kiss, and Mettelsiefen are either monosyllables or initially-stressed polysyllables; hence in the immediately preceding Marcel, stress occurs initially. At the same time, the expected retraction was not observed in the combina­ tions Marcel 'Salathe (5rWKlN_nz5Y, 07. 06. 2015), Marcel 'Neergaard (3X4LeU­ jOU74, 07. 06. 2015), Marcel 'Jrnie (57YKVeuOals, 07. 06. 2015), and Marcel 'Dijkers (V8Pyf91 ZsgM, 07. 06. 2015). Likewise, the expected retraction also did not occur in the combinations Marcel iron (pZ3wqLv14dE, 07. 06. 2015) and Marcel wave (2d9QUSMGXo8, 07. 06. 2015), which Halle & Vergnaud (1 987) would most likely also regard as lexical compounds rather than as constructions that are ''farmed in the syntax." As for the combination Marcel Proust, where retraction is said to be near-obligatory, it did occur in the aforementioned video 1HT7IWd9JRc (08. 06. 2015), but it did not occur in the videos DriHMSxaz7A (07. 06. 2015) and R2P9-JPAHN4 (07. 06. 2015). Summarizing, the Rhythm Rule applied in only five ("'45.45 3) distinct types of Noun + Noun combinations in which the modifier Marcel is immediately followed by initially-stressed heads: Marcel Proust, Marcel Daniels, Marcel Kittel, Marcel Kiss, and Marcel Mettelsiefen. In the other six types ("'54.55 %)-Marcel Salathe, Marcel Neergaard, Marcel Irnie, Marcel Dijkers, Marcel iron, and Marcel wave-the rule did not apply. The conclusion drawn by Halle & Vergnaud (1987: 270-271, f.29) that in the case of lexical compounds such as Marcel Proust, the retraction of stress in the modifier Marcel is ''(almost) obligatory'' is thus clearly wrong (even with reference to the combination Marcel Proust itself, which was pronounced with final stress in two of the three videos in which it is used by native English speakers). Similarly, the video WiOgtM25g6o (07. 06. 2015) is the only video in which the variation between /d3g'ka:d/ and / ' d3rekgd/ of Jacquard (OED) is in accordance with the Rhythm Rule, i.e., an identical American English speaker uses the final­ ly-stressed pronunciation /d3g'ka:d/ in Look at the inside Jacquard (i.e., because inside is stressed /1n° sA1d/ (OD), final stress in Jacquard in Look at the inside Jacquard is from the point of view of rhythm better than initial stress) whereas in the Jacquard print, stress in Jacquard is initial (i.e., because the following head is a monosyllable, initial stress in the modifier Jacquard in this combination is from the point of view of rhythm better than final stress). In the majority of the attributive uses of Jacquard (e.g., Jacquard loom, Jacquard jacket, Jacquard de­ sign, Jacquard bottle, etc.), stress in the modifier remains, however, final. Further similar examples include Bantu, bastille, and batik, which were finally-stressed in the combinations Bantu knot, bastille day, bastille fortress, bastille prisoner,

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batik memories, batik cloth, batik costume, etc., in which the immediately fol­ lowing head noun is either a monosyllable or an initially-stressed polysyllable. Since, as already mentioned on several occasions, final stress represents a stress pattern foreign to English, items such as Marcel, Jacquard, Bantu, bastille, batik, etc., which are still perceived by English speakers as foreign words I de­ note things that are inherently foreign, are predominantly pronounced with final stress irrespective of the morphosyntactic environments in which they occur, i.e., it does not matter at all whether Marcel occurs in a combination such as Marcel Proust or in combinations such as Marcel's book or Marcel left; in each of these environments Marcel is as a rule stressed /ma: ' s£1/ (OD), violating the segmental length principle (cf. cancel, which in accordance with this prin­ ciple is stressed I ' kans(g)1/), simply because the first name Marcel is a French name. Notice also that the aforementioned videos in which Marcel was found to have been pronounced with final stress all feature the voices of American English speakers, whereas of the five videos in which Marcel is pronounced with initial stress, three videos (those where Marcel occurs in the combina­ tions Marcel Kittel, Marcel Kiss, and Marcel Mettelsiefen) feature the voices of British English speakers. This finding is in accordance with the oft-mentioned tendency of words borrowed into English from French being more frequently finally-stressed in American than in British English. E.g., ballet is / 'bale1/ in British English vs. /bre ' le1/ in American English (OED) and, similarly, galanterie is /gg ' la: nt(g)ri:/ in British English vs. /gg , lan(t)g ' ri/ in American English (OED). Recognizing a word as Modern French, an American speaker as a rule considers it nec­ essary for reasons of social prestige to signalize this, and it is obvious that final stress is the most suitable way of doing so. On the other hand, he meets these French words mostly in print and hence easily slips to 'orthographic pronunciation', as in [pri'mrJ] for premiere [. . ] On the other hand, a British speaker who has a nodding acquaintance .

with French tends to adapt his neighbors' words accentually, while avoiding gross phonetic distortion in a language with which he has some acquaintance. Both these tendencies probably arise from the marked stratification of British society, although this has been greatly reduced in recent decades, and from the relatively great value attached to being thought 'educated'. (Poldauf 1984: 76-77)

Another deviation from the Rhythm Rule is the combination hotel room, in the case of which retraction of stress in the finally-stressed modifier hotel was heard by the author only 2 1 times (e.g., in 1ENvL-tlY3o ( 1 1 . 04. 2016), in every 'hotel room and the common areas of the ho' tel the first hotel is stressed initially where­ as in the second one stress is final); these constitute, however, only ,.., 1 5.91 3 of the 132 total spoken occurrences of hotel room in 70 captioned YouTube videos.

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Likewise, final stress in the modifiers adult, innate, overt, and pristine oc­ curred even in combinations such as adult system, adult court, adult living, adult

learning, adult friends, adult horses, adult brains, innate cruelty, innate freedom, innate goodness, innate passion, overt act, overt bribe, overt racism, overt rationing, pristine beaches, pristine state, pristine wilderness, etc., in which the immediately following head is either initially-stressed or monosyllabic. Cases such as these come as no big surprise because, as has been argued throughout this monograph, stress assignment in English is conditioned not phonetically and phonologically but morphologically, i.e., the location of stress in an English word is primarily a reflection of how its morphological structure has been analyzed by a particular English speaker. Thus, if, e.g., overt is morpho­ logically o- + -vert rather than over + - t (and if the speaker does not wish to em­ phasize that the thing referred to is overt rather than covert), stress in overt will stay final even in a combination such as overt racism, in which initial stress in the modifier would from the point of view of rhythm be better than final stress. 5 . 2 . 3 Vowel effect

In contrast to the words I combining forms aceto-, angina, ANOVA, Attila, bas­

mati, cathedra, hibachi, immuno-, incognita/ incognito, kanaka, manuka, paprika, patchouli, pavlova, Satsuma, sriracha, and urea, which end orthographically in a/ ii o and are therefore exclusively I more frequently pronounced with penulti­ mate stress (e.g., urea is /ju: ' ri:g/ and / 'jugr1g/ according to the OED, but in 1 1 8 captioned YouTube videos in which urea was found to have been pronounced by native English speakers, only the stress pattern /ju: ' ri:g/ was heard by the author), the -a/-o-words buddleia, enema, gingiva, rodeo, trachea, and vertigo were, by contrast, more frequently stressed antepenultimately. (Note, however, that in British English, /trg ' ki : g/ is, according to LDOCE, the only stress pattern of trachea (which in American English is usually stressed / ' tre1ki: g/), and in the case of rodeo, penultimate stress was heard by the author only in names such as Rodeo Drive and California Rodeo Salinas whereas in all other environments, stress in rodeo was exclusively antepenultimate. The variation / 'rgud1gu/ vs. /rg(u) ' de1gu/ (OED; both in British and American English) thus seems to be a matter of semantics.) As for buddleia, which is more frequently / ' bAdli: g/ than lbAd ' li : g/ (OED), the likeliest explanation is the suffixation analysis Buddle + - ia. This analysis may be arrived at even if a contemporary English speaker does not remember that buddleia was ''named in honor of the English botanist Adam Buddle'' (OD). Cf. / ' de1l1g/ of dahlia, which was ''named in honor of Andreas Dahl (1751 -89), Swedish botanist'' (OD) or, similarly, / ' fju:Jg/ of fuchsia, which was ''named in

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honor of Leonhard Fuchs (1501 -66), German botanist." Simply because the - ia­ word buddleia is not the only botany-related - ia-formation in English, the suf­ fixation analysis Buddle + - ia, which requires the pronunciation / 'bAdli : g/, im­ mediately suggests itself. As for enema, which in contemporary English is stressed only / ' £n1mg/, the explanation seems to be its formal similarity to the more frequently used enemy, which ends orthographically in y and is therefore stressed / ' engmi/ (LDOCE). Thus, as pointed out in 4.3. 7, of the 801 trisyllables in LDOCE that end or­ thographically in y, 709 ("'88.51 3) have antepenultimate stress. In trisyllables such as agony, apathy, enemy, energy, irony, etc., stress in English is almost exclusively initial. Finally, it is difficult to explain why antepenultimate stress is the preferred stress pattern of gingiva and vertigo (for which the OED also gives the penulti­ mately-stressed pronunciations /- ' d3A1vg/ and /- ' ta1ggu/ or /- ' ti:ggu/, but these did not occur in 43 I 135 spoken occurrences of these words in captioned You­ Tube videos). As for vertigo, a possible explanation might be the fact that its etymon is the Latin verb vertere, ''to turn'' (Dictionary.com), which is also the etymon of the English words verse and versus. Because the semantics of turning is present not only in vertigo but also in (the more frequently used, initial­ ly-stressed) versus, ''turned so as to face (something), opposite, over against'' (Dictionary.com), stress in vertigo should also occur initially. As for gingiva, the word is ''the technical name for the gum'' (Dictionary.com), i.e., the gums of the mouth. Given that in the monosyllabic gum, stress falls upon the word's first and only syllable, also the semantically identical trisyllabic gingiva should be stressed / ' d31n-/ rather than /- ' d3A1vg/. Recall also that, as suggested in 5. 1.3.1 and 5. 1.4, the very same vowel effect, which accounts for penultimate stress in trisyllables such as angina, also accounts for the stress patterns of morphologically complex words such as, e.g., aristocrat (cf. democrat). Because its lefthand component aristo- ends orthographically in o, the preferred stress pattern of aristocrat is not I ' rer1stgu , krret/ but /g ' r1stgkrret/ (which cannot be attributed to the prefixation analysis a- + -ristocrat: Aristo­ crat is the only - istocrat-word in the BNC). Likewise, because apart from cuneiform and oligomer, no other English word (in the BNC) contains the trisyllabic righthand strings -eiform/- igomer, the stress patterns cu'neiform and o'ligomer are to be regarded as penultimate stress in the trisyllabic lefthand components cunei- and oligo-, which end orthographically in ii o. The already mentioned umbilicus is more frequently stressed /- ' b1l1kgs/ than I- ' la1kgs/. Because the BNC has only one attestation of cochilicus, it would be counterintuitive to attribute the stress pattern /- 'b1l1kgs/ to the prefixation analysis um- + -bilicus. Assuming, however, the morphological structure umbi-

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-cus (cf. Copernicus), we do have an explanation for why umbilicus is usu­ ally stressed /- 'b1l1kgs/. (The alternative morphological analysis umbi- + -lieus li-

+

results, by contrast, in the other, less frequently used stress pattern /- ' la1kgs/.) A similar case is equilibrate, which in contemporary English is usually stressed /i: ' kw1l1bre1t/ (OED), not respecting the ''correct'' segmentation into equi- and -librate, which should lead to the stress pattern I , i:kw1 ' 11bre1t/. Cf. equipotent, for which the OD gives the transcriptions I , i:kw1 'pgut(g)nt/ and I , £kw1 ' pgut(g)nt/; the segmentation equi- + potent is thus abided by. Given that equilibrate is more frequently /i: 'kw1l1bre1t/ than / , i : kw1 ' l1bre1t/ and given that the OD dictionary gives the line break equili brate, in which the only division point is the ult-penult boundary, we assume that for the majority of contem­ porary English speakers, equilibrate is not equi- + - librate but equili- + -brate, of which the latter is stress-repellent (because the string -ate occurs in English as a suffix) and the former ends orthographically in i and should therefore receive stress upon its middle syllable. (Similarly, even if emancipate, which occurs in the BNC 1 8 times, were not a back-derivative from emancipation, which has 463 attestations, the former would nonetheless be stressed /1 ' mans1pe1t/ (OD) simply because the lefthand trisyllabic string emanci- ends orthographically in i and the righthand monosyllabic string -pate is stress-repellent.) Similarly, for equivalent the OD gives the line break equivallent, which strongly suggests that morphologically, equivalent is equiva- + -lent rather than equi- + valent. The stress pattern of equivalent is therefore /1 'kw1v(g)1(g)nt/ (OD), with stress being penultimate in the segmentally longer lefthand trisyllabic string equiva-, which ends orthographically in a. Finally, observe that in contrast to the OD, the OED gives for equipotent the transcriptions /i: 'kw1pgtgnt/ and /i :kwi 'pgutgnt/, which means that the morphological structure of this adjective may also be equipo­ + - tent rather than only equi- + potent. In contrast to American English speakers, British English speakers usually pronounce artificer la: ' tifisg/ and mercantilist /mg: 'kantil1st/ (OED), non-pre­ serving the stress of the corresponding base forms artifice and mercantile. Because the righthand monosyllabic strings -cer and -list cannot take stress, the remaining lefthand trisyllabic strings artifi- and mercanti-, which end or­ thographically in i, receive penultimate stress. Catholicism is in the OED both /kg ' 9ul1s1zgm/ and / 'kre8gl1s1zgm/, but in 256 spoken occurrences of this derived noun in captioned YouTube videos, the stress pattern / 'kre8gl1s1zgm/ was not heard by the author at least once. To account for the fact that Catholicism does not preserve the stress of the more frequently used catholic (which has 3, 936 attestations in the BNC while Catholicism occurs only 333 times), we can again invoke the vowel effect. Because the righthand

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monosyllabic string -cism is stress-repellent, the lefthand trisyllabic string Catholi-, which ends orthographically in i, receives stress upon its penult. 5 . 2 . 4 More o n stress non- preservation

Since stress preservation is the default outcome of English suffixation, the focus of the fallowing will be on those suffixed derivatives whose preferred stress patterns are not the stress patterns of their respective bases, i.e., e.g., the find­ ings that palatal and skeletal are more frequently stressed 'palatal and 'skeletal (than pa' fatal and ske' Zeta�, preserving the stress of (the more frequently used) base forms 'palate and 'skeleton, are not particularly interesting because, as just pointed out, the stress of the base form is usually preserved in English in the derived form. Notice also that of the stress patterns / ' si:krgt1v/ vs. /s1 ' kri:t1v/ of secretive (OED), only the former could be attested by the author in 1 88 captioned You­ Tube videos in which secretive was found to have been pronounced by native English speakers 2 1 9 times; in agreement with this, the OD gives for secretive only the initially-stressed transcription / ' si :kr1t1v/ (OD). This finding is also not particularly interesting because the only conclusion it justifies is that the derived adjective secretive is for a Present-day English speaker morphologically only secret + -ive but not secrete + - ive, i.e., in addition to the initially-stressed noun secret, / ' si:kr1t/ (OD), there is also the semantically related finally-stressed verb secrete, /s1 'kri :t/ (OD), which means ''conceal, hide:' The stress of the de­ rived adjective secretive is thus either the preserved stress of / ' si:kr1t/ of a secret or the preserved stress of /s1 ' kri:t/ of to secrete. Note, however, that while secret occurs in the BNC 5,528 times, secrete has only 78 attestations in the corpus (the corresponding numbers from the COCA corpus are 38,920 vs. 294). The former has therefore more chances of counting for an English speaker as the base of the derived adjective secretive than the latter. The only stress pattern of secretive in contemporary English is therefore the initially-stressed I ' si :kr1t1v/. Similarly, the finding that infiltrate is more frequently stressed / ' 1nf1ltre1t/ than /1n' f1ltre1t/ only means that back-derivation from infiltration is for a con­ temporary English speaker a more plausible morphological analysis of infiltrate than the prefixation analysis in- + filtrate (� filter + -ate). The reason for this might be the fact that in contemporary English, this verb is usually used to express the meaning ''[i]ntroduce (someone) into an organization, place, etc. surreptitiously, in order for them to acquire secret information'' (OD) rather than ''(Of a liquid) permeate something by filtration'' (OD). This weakens the impression of infiltrate being in- + filtrate, and because the shorter verb infil­ trate occurs in the BNC and COCA only 1 1 7 and 722 times whereas the longer

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noun infiltration has 198 I 854 attestations, the usual stress pattern of the former is / ' 1nf1ltre1t/ (OED), with the secondary stress of the latter, i.e., / , 1nf1l ' tre1Jgn/ (LDOCE), being promoted to primary stress. In addition to the above mentioned vowel effect, all deviations from stress preservation attested by the author in captioned YouTube videos can be attrib­ uted to the following three factors (which sometimes simultaneously apply to one and the same suffixed derivative): 1) emphasis, 2) segmental length prin­ ciple, and 3) prefixation analysis (which makes more sense than the ''correct'' suffixation analysis). As for emphasis, consider, e.g., dinette, which is more frequently stressed /da1 ° n£t/ (OED) than / ' da1n£t/ (OED). Because diminutiveness is an important aspect of the meaning of dinette, '' [a] small room or part of a room used for eating meals'' (OD; boldface mine), and since it is the suffix -ette that expresses this meaning in dinette, stress in this derivative is more frequently final than initial. Similarly, as for the finally-stressed pronunciation I ,kastg' n£tl of castanet (OED), which is more frequent than / ' ka:stgn1t/ (OED), note that the Spanish ety­ mon castaiieta is diminutive of castaiia, ''chestnut'' (OED). Although in the target language English, castanet is not segmentable into castan and -et the way, e.g., toucanet, ''[a] small tropical American toucan with mainly green plumage'' (OD), can be segmented into the base toucan and the diminutive suffix -et, diminu­ tiveness nonetheless remains an aspect of the meaning of castanets, which are ''[s]mall concave pieces of wood, ivory, or plastic, j oined in pairs by a cord and clicked together by the fingers as a rhythmic accompaniment to Spanish dancing'' (OD). Pronouncing castanet / , kastg 'nct/ can thus be seen as a means of emphasizing the diminutiveness of castanets. By contrast, millionaire, for which LDOCE incorrectly gives only the final­ ly-stressed transcriptions I , m1lj g ' neg/ (British English) and /- 'ner/ (American English), was considerably more frequently pronounced in captioned YouTube videos with initial stress: / ' mil-/ (OED). Apart from the French origin of the word millionaire (OED), there are no reasons to stress it / , m1lj g ' neg/: The suf­ fix -aire does not have a strong emphatic potential and should therefore, just like other English suffixes, be stress-repellent. The same is true of hotelier, in the case of which the OED correctly places the pronunciation /ho u ' t£ljgr/, which preserves the stress of the base hotel, before the finally-stressed pronunciation / , at£l 0je1/ (OED). As in the case of millionaire, there are no reasons why stress in the derivative hotelier should fall upon the suffix - ier. Note finally that even employee was more frequently stressed em'ployee than employee even though the suffix -ee does have a strong emphatic potential (cf. employee and employer). Because the derivative employee does not always occur

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in contexts that involve a contrast with the derivative employer, the usual stress pattern of the former is the base stress /£m0pla1i:/ (OED). As for the segmental length principle, consider the derivative trapezoid, whose base is the finally-stressed trapeze: /trg ' pi:z/ (OD). The preferred stress pattern of trapezoid is, however, not /trg ' pi:za1d/ (OED) but / ' trrep1za1d/ (OED), with stress in the derivative regularly occurring in the beginning of its lefthand disyllabic string tra.pe-. As for prefixation analyses, consider the line breaks archlival, horlmo:nal, may or:al, and neurl on:al (OD), in which the only or the preferred division point, indicated by (I), is the penult-antepenult boundary. To begin with, ob­ serve that line breaks in the OD often deviate from traditional syllabification strategies, such as the Maximal Onset Principle. E.g., the above mentioned trap­ ezoid is tr&/pl/zold in the MRC vs. trap:ez oid in the OD; similarly, exquisite is eks/kwl/zlt in the MRC I ex·qui·site in LDOCE vs. ex:quislite in the OD: Whereas the former are phonetic divisions into syllables, the latter seems to represent a morphological segmentation of exquisite into the prefix ex-, the root quis (cf. acquis, croquis, maquis, marquis) and the suffix -ite; likewise, the line break trap:ez oid seems to be in accordance with the suffixation analysis trapeze + -oid. Noteworthy are also the following numbers. Excluding 1) compounds, 2) words that the tool Morphological Analysis considers to be suffixed deriva­ tives, and 3) words such as Canadian, which can be regarded as trisyllables due to hiatus resolution in them (e.g., /kg- ' ne1-d1-gn/ /kg- ' ne1-dj gn/), we are left with 750 line breaks given in the OD for penultimately-stressed trisyllables (according to the MRC database). Of these, 457 ("'60.93 3) are line breaks such as proglno:sis and de velop, in which the only or the preferred division point, indicated by (I), is the penult-antepenult boundary, i.e., e.g., the only possible division of develop is, according to the OD, de- + -velop and in the case of prog­ nosis, the division prog- + -nosis is to be preferred to the division progno- + -sis. By contrast, in the case of 2,267 line breaks given in the OD for antepenulti­ mately-stressed trisyllables from the MRC database, the same can be said about only 628 line breaks: ,..,2 7. 7 3. E.g., con se:quent, ball cony. (Much more typical of antepenultimately-stressed trisyllables are, by contrast, line breaks such as benelfit, cal:cu late, or con sum mate, where the only or the preferred division point is the ult-penult boundary or it does not matter whether, e.g., consummate is orthographically divided into con- and -summate or into consum- and - mate.) The difference of 457 I 750 vs. 628 I 2,267 is statistically hugely significant: )f (1) 270, p < 0.00000 1. Assuming that the line breaks given in the OD reflect how contemporary English speakers morphologically analyze English words (cf. Hammond 2006: 413, arguing that ''[m] orphology plays a role in that hyphens are preferentially >

=

5.2 Stress variation in YouTube

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placed at [. . .] morpheme boundaries, e.g. unable [. . .] is better hyphenated as un-able, rather than u-nable''), we argue that the trisyllables archival, hormonal, mayoral, and neuronal prefer penultimate to antepenultimate stress because for the majority of Present-day English speakers, these items count morpho­ logically as prefixed disyllables (which is reflected in the line breaks arch ival, hor mo:nal, may or: al, and neurlon:al, in which the only or the preferred divi­ sion point occurs at the penult-antepenult boundary). E.g., the fact that the stress pattern /me1 ' ar( g)1/ is in American English considerably more frequent than the stress pattern / ' me1gr( g)1/, preserving the stress of the disyllabic base / ' me1gr/ (LDOCE), means that for American English speakers, the morphological structure of mayoral is not the ''correct'' mayor + -al, but may + oral. (Cf. British English, where the base mayor is monosyllabic: Im£ :! (OD); the disyllabic de­ rivative mayoral is therefore pronounced only / ' m£:rgl/ (OD), with stress in the word regularly occurring upon the only syllable constituting the monosyllabic base Im£ :!.) Similarly, the line breaks hor mo:nal and neur on:al strongly suggest that the shared string -onal is analyzed by English speakers as the root of these -al-de­ rivatives. Therefore, the stress pattern / ' ha:mgungl/ (OED), which preserves the stress of the base / ' ha :mgun/ (OD), could not be attested in any of the 152 captioned YouTube videos in which hormonal was found to have been pro­ nounced by native English speakers 250 times; the only stress pattern heard by the author was /ha : ' mgungl/ (OED), which is also the only stress pattern given for hormonal in the OD. Likewise, neuronal is both in British and American English interchangeably stressed / ' nj ugrgnl/ and /- 'rgunl/ (OED), but of these, only the latter was heard by the author in 1 02 captioned YouTube videos in which neuronal was found to have been pronounced by native English speakers 145 times; in agreement with this finding, the OD gives for neuronal only the transcription /nj ug 'rgun( g)1/, which does not preserve the stress of the base neuron: / ' njugmn/ (OD). Another ''incorrectly'' -stressed -al-derivative is archival. Its usual (and, ac­ cording to the OD, sole) stress pattern in contemporary English is /a: ' kA1v(g)l/ even though the base form archive is stressed / ' a:kA1v/ (OD). Given the line break archlival and given that also the - ival-word adjectival is stressed /ad31k' tA1v(g)1/ (OD), the analysis of the string -ival as the root of both archival and adjectival immediately suggests itself. (A good guess would be that this stress pattern has also something to do with the existence of the -ival-words arrival and survival, which occur in the BNC 3,340 and 3, 1 17 times respectively, while archival/ ad­ jectival have only 152 I 77 attestations.) Finally, we also discuss deviations from stress preservation among back-de­ rivatives, in the case of which the stress of a shorter output form is also as a

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rule the stress of its longer input form. For example, in contrast to the verse-ad­ jectives adverse, inverse, and transverse, which are usually pronounced with initial stress, the verse-adjective diverse is usually pronounced with final stress, preserving the antepenultimate stress of the more frequently used noun diver­ sity, i.e., not only in the BNC but also in the COCA corpus, the shorter word diverse has fewer attestations than the longer word diversity: 16,685 vs. 1 8,591. The verse-adjectives adverse, inverse, and transverse are, by contrast, the most frequent words in the COCA corpus that begin with the strings advers-, invers-, and transvers-. Accordingly, because each of these adjectives often occurs in the modifier position (e.g., inverse function), initial stress in them is from the point of view of rhythm better than final stress. The verse-adjective diverse, which is a back-derivative from diversity, is, however, pronounced with final stress even in combinations such as diverse learners and diverse set, in which the immediately following head word is either initially-stressed or monosyllabic. The synchronic back-derivation from the longer word diversity thus blocks the application of the Rhythm Rule in the shorter word diverse. A similar case is Abdul, which in the COCA corpus has fewer attestations than Abdullah (to which it etymologically goes back): 1 ,769 vs. 2,2 1 1. In the BNC, by contrast, the shorter Abdul has more attestations than the longer Ab­ dullah: 239 vs. 193. Thus, because 2 1 8 ("'9 1.21 3) occurrences of Abdul in the BNC are occurrences in combinations such as Abdul Rahman, in which the proper noun Abdul modifies another proper noun, initial stress in Abdul in a combination such as Abdul Rahman is from the point of view of rhythm better than final stress: / , abdul ' ra:mgn/ (OD). In the British variety, Abdul is therefore exclusively stressed / ' abdul/, whereas in American English, final stress in Abdul is considerably more frequent than initial stress even in combinations such as

Ab'dul 'Rahman. Counterexamples include 1) ally, which in COCA is less frequent than alliance (5, 9 1 1 vs. 14,3 10), 2) nocturne, which in COCA is less frequent than nocturnal (81 vs. 1,157), and 3) recess, which in COCA is less frequent than recession (2,884 vs. 1 2,074). In spite of these facts, stress in the shorter words ally, nocturne, and recess was either exclusively or more frequently initial, non-preserving the stress of the semantically related, more frequently used longer words alliance, nocturnal, and recession. In the case of ally, the reluctance to pronounce it /g ' lA1/ (OD) , preserving the stress of the base /g 0 lA1gns/ (OD) , is due to the orthographic form ally. Since the line break given in the OD for alliance is al:li ance, we can assume that also the shorter ally is orthographically syllabified by English speakers al.ly (cf. Ham­ mond 2006: 413, arguing that ''double letters are better split by a hyphen than not, e.g. at- test [. ] is much better than att-est or a- ttest''), i.e., the ult has the .

.

5.2 Stress variation in YouTube

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same segmental length as the penult; stress in ally is therefore supposed to be initial: / ' alA1/ (OD). A similar case is inform, which occurs in the BNC 1 ,465 times and is thus considerably less frequent than information, which has 38,488 attes­ tations. The stress pattern of the latter-/ , 1nfg ' me1Jgn/ (LDOCE)-is, however, not preserved in the former because in the case of inform, also the prefixation analysis is more than obvious: The segmentally longer ult form, which occurs in English as a separate word, has 33,8 17 attestations in the BNC. Stress in inform is therefore final. Similarly, fine has 12, 724 attestations in the BNC and is thus more frequent than definition, which occurs in the corpus only 4, 791 times. Ac­ cordingly, the prefixation analysis de- + fine should in the case of the disyllabic verb define make more sense than back-derivation from definition. Note also that of the 237 -ation-tetrasyllables in LDOCE, 9 1 ("'38.4 3) have a trisyllab­ ic -ate-counterpart. E.g., compensation-compensate. Given this association, we argue that if contemporary English had the verbs * accusate and * declarate, they would be stressed antepenultimately, preserving the (secondary) stress of the base nouns accusation and declaration. The existing disyllabic verbs accuse and declare are, by contrast, not perceived as back-derivatives from accusation and declaration and receive therefore final stress, abiding by the segmental length principle. As for nocturne, note that the meaning of the more frequently used nocturnal is ''[d]one, occurring, or active at night'' (OD). The less frequently used nocturne means, however, ''[a] short composition of a romantic nature, typically for pi­ ano'' (OD) or '' [a] picture of a night scene'' (OD). The meanings of the derivative nocturne thus represent fairly specialized extensions of the meaning of the base nocturnal. The stress difference /nuk ' tg:n(g)l/ vs. / ' nuktg:n/ (OD) is therefore deliberately employed by English speakers to make the derived noun formally different from the base adjective. Finally, recess is usually stressed I ' ri: s£s/ (irrespective of whether it functions morphosyntactically as a noun or verb) because semantically, recess, ''a small concavity;' ''an enclosure that is set back or indented;' ''a pause from doing something (as work);' ''close at the end of a session;' etc. (WordNet), does not have much to do with recession, which is mainly associated with the meaning ''the state of the economy declines'' (WordNet). The pair recess- recession is thus different from the formally similar pair process-procession, in which to process, one of whose meanings is ''march in a procession'' (WordNet), is semantical­ ly easily analyzable as a back-derivative from procession. To process meaning ''march in a procession'' is thus stressed /prg ' scs/ (OD), preserving the stress of procession, but the semantically unrelated a process, '' [a] series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end'' (OD), and the converted verb to process meaning '' [p] erform a series of mechanical or chemical operations on

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(something) in order to change or preserve it'' (OD) are stressed only / ' prgus£s/ (OD). Note also that when recess expresses the meaning ''interruption of an activity;' it is semantically the opposite of process of be in the process of doing something; initial stress in recess thus also seems to be a matter of emphasis. 5 . 2 . 5 More o n disy l l a b les

One of the central claims of this monograph is that a disyllabic English word should have initial stress if its ult contains a string of letters that occurs in English as a suffix. Why is then cement, whose righthand string - ment occurs in English as a suffix, still more frequently stressed /s1 ° m£nt/ (OED) than / ' s£mgnt/ (OED), preserving the penultimate stress of its Latin etymon caementum, while, e.g., comment and segment are no longer stressed /kg ' m£nt/ and /s£g 0 m£nt/ (OED) even when functioning morphosyntactically as verbs (i.e., the OD still gives for to segment the finally-stressed transcription /s£g 0 m£nt/, but the only stress pat­ tern heard by the author (in occurrences of segment as a verb) was initial stress)? A possible answer to this question is that disyllables from the OED that were found to prefer final stress contain on average ,..,3 _37 phonetic segments in the ult vs. "'2.03 phonetic segments in the penult; the average length difference is thus "'1.34. By contrast, in the case of disyllables that were found to prefer initial stress, the corresponding numbers are "'3.56 (ult) vs. "'2.5 1 (penult); the average length difference is thus only "'1 .05. Accordingly, because the penult of a disyllable such as segment contains on average more phonetic segments than the penult of a disyllable such as cement (2.5 vs. 2), the contrast between the segmental length of the ult vs. the penult is more pronounced in the case of disyllables such as cement than segment. That is, proceeding from the syllabifi­ cations sl/ment and seg/m@nt (MRC), we note that the former word should have final stress because the ult in cement contains two more phonetic segments than the penult; due to the same reason, foment and lament, whose hyphenations in LDOCE are fo·ment and la·ment, are stressed /fgu ' ment/ and /lg ' ment/ (LDOCE). The word segment should, by contrast, have initial stress because the ult in it contains only one more phonetic segment than the penult. Similarly, proceeding from the orthographic syllabification com·ment (LDOCE), we note that stress in comment should be initial rather than final. (Cf. augment, which is stressed /a :g ' ment/ (LDOCE) even though the ult in this word contains only one more orthographic segment than the penult: aug·ment (LDOCE). A possible explana­ tion for this fact is that of the 292 polysyllabic words in LDOCE that contain the orthographic sequence au, only two ("'0.68 3) are the words Menelaus and Nauru, in which this sequence is phonetically realized as hiatus, i.e., Men·e·la·us

5.2 Stress variation in YouTube

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and Na·u·ru (LDOCE). Given this fact, we might assume that the word augment is treated by English speakers in the same way as the words cement, foment, and lament rather than as comment and segment.) These claims are strongly supported by the fact that while /1 'ne1t/ (OD), which is the etymological penultimate stress of the Latin innatus (OED), still remains the preferred stress pattern of the English adjective innate (even in environments such as innate cruelty, innate freedom, innate goodness, innate passion, etc., in which initial stress would from the point of view of rhythm be better than final stress), the adjectives connate, pennate, and pinnate, which also etymologically go back to the penultimately-stressed Latin - natus-words connatus, pennatus, and pinnatus (OD), are in Present-day English stressed only / 'kuneit/, / ' p£ngt/, and / 'p1ne1t/ (OD), with their final syllables repelling stress. What distinguishes innate from connate, pennate, and pinnate is that in the former, the ult . nate contains two more orthographic symbols than the penult in., while in the latter case, the difference between the orthographic length of the ult . nate and that of the penults con., pen., and pin. is only one. Stress is therefore as a rule final in innate while it is initial in connate, pennate, and pinnate. Note also that to contact is in the OED both I ' kuntrekt/ and /kgn ' trekt/, but of these, only the former stress pattern was heard by the author in 72 captioned YouTube videos containing the spoken occurrences of to contact. On the one hand, it can be argued that initial stress in to contact, ''be in direct physical con­ tact with; make contact'' (WordNet), is simply the preserved initial stress of the base a contact. (Since the meaning of to contact represents a fairly general exten­ sion of the meaning of a contact, there is clearly no need to have different stress patterns for these words.) Why is, however, the base a contact in violation of the segmental length principle stressed / 'kuntrekt/ (LDOCE)? Cf. the adjective intact, which in accordance with the segmental length principle is stressed /in' trekt/ (LDOCE). What distinguishes the initially stressed tact-word contact from the finally-stressed tact-word intact is that it is only the latter in which the differ­ ence between the segmental length of the ult . tact and that of the penult in. is two, which is prototypically exhibited in English by a finally-stressed disyllable. As for allele, which is /g ' li : l/ vs. / ' ali: l/ in British English and only /g ' lil/ in American English (OED), note that according to the OD, English has the suffix - le, which, among other things, forms ''names of animals and plants: bee­ tle." Notice, however, that of the 3,361 words in the OD dictionary that end orthographically in -le, not a single one counts, according to the tool Morpho­ logical Analysis, as a product of -le-derivation. This string is thus not easily discernible as a suffix, hence Present-day English speakers more frequently stress the shorter output form allele /g ' li:l/ than / ' ali:l/, preserving thereby the stress of the longer input form allelomorph, i.e., /g ' li:lguma : f/ (OD), in which the

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trisyllabic combining form allelo-, which ends orthographically in o, is stressed upon its middle syllable. A slightly different case is bastile. Its more frequently used spelling vari­ ant bastille (which occurs in COCA 259 times, whereas bastile does not have attestations in the corpus) ends in the string -ille, which, in contrast to the string -ile of bastile (cf. percentile), does not occur in English as a suffix (i.e., of the 102 words in the OD that end orthographically in - ille, not a single one was analyzed by the tool Morphological Analysis as an -ille-derivative). Bastille is therefore in accordance with the segmental length principle usually stressed Iba: ' sti :l/ (OED). A fairly similar case is duress and largess, for which the OED gives the or­ thographic alternatives duresse and largesse and, what is particularly important, the variant largesse has more attestations in the COCA corpus than largess: 475 vs. 227. Thus, because in contrast to the string -ess, the string -esse does not occur in English as a suffix, duresse and largesse are in accordance with the seg­ mental length principle usually stressed /dju ' res/ and /la: ' d3£s/ (OED). The case of largess vs. largesse cannot but remind of the orthographic differ­ ence between the initially-stressed moral, with the string -al repelling stress, and the finally-stressed morale, which etymologically goes back to the French moral, ''respelled to preserve the final stress in pronunciation'' (OD). Because the string -al occurs in English as a suffix and therefore repels stress, the spelling variant moral can only be associated with the initially-stressed pronunciation I ' mur(g)l/; the spelling variant morale can, by contrast, be associated with the finally-stressed pronunciation /mg ' ra: 1/ (OD) because the string -ale does not occur in English as a suffix (i.e., of the 1 08 words in the OD that end orthograph­ ically in -ale, not a single one is, according to the tool Morphological Analysis, an -ale-derivative). Among the factors accounting for different stress patterns in formally similar words is most likely also a semantic similarity to genuine suffixed derivatives that came into existence with the help of a particular suffix. For example, com­ paring the stress patterns /1 ' vent/ and / ' sa1lgnt/ (LDOCE), we note that etymo­ logically, the English words event and silent are due to the Latin words e 'ventus and si'lentium (Dictionary.com). Cf. the modern Italian words evento and silen­ zio, which are stressed /e. 0v£n.to/ and /si. 0 l£n.tsio/ (PONS). What distinguishes the finally-stressed English word event from the initially-stressed English word silent is, however, the fact that the latter is semantically more similar to gen­ uine -ent-derivatives, such as, e.g., urgent. The -ent of silent is therefore more stress-repellent than the -ent of event. A similar case seems to be the stress difference between I ' fg :m£nt/ of ferment as a noun vs. /fg ' m£nt/ offerment as a verb (OD). Since the genuine suffix - ment

5.2 Stress variation in YouTube

193

forms only nouns ''expressing the means or result of an action: curtailment, excitement' (OD), it is undeniably the - ment of the noun ferment, meaning ''[a]gitation and excitement among a group of people, typically concerning major change and leading to trouble or violence'' (OD), that is more similar to the genuine suffix - ment of the derivative excitement than the - ment of to ferment. The noun ferment is therefore stressed / ' fg:m£nt/, with the suffix-like string - ment repelling stress, while the verb ferment is in accordance with the segmental length principle stressed /fg 0 m£nt/. Note also that apart from the disyllabic words address, amine, chagrin, divan, Koran, mirage, offense, and pecan, there are also the monosyllabic words dress, mine, grin, van, ran, rage, fence, and can. The existence of, e.g., the monosyllab­ ic word dress, which occurs in COCA 31, 745 times, intensifies the impression of address being made up of the prefix ad- and the root dress; the usual stress pattern of address is therefore the finally-stressed /g ' dr£s/ (which, as pointed out in 1 . 1 , is the only stress pattern of address when it expresses the meaning ''public speech''). Similarly, mine is in COCA considerably more frequent than amine (32,654 vs. 5 1), grin is considerably more frequent than chagrin (6,974 vs. 780), van is considerably more frequent than divan (31,846 vs. 309), ran is considerably more frequent than Koran (53,070 vs. 1 ,351), rage is considerably more frequent than mirage (8,813 vs. 1 ,288), with the phonetic realization of rage occurring as a separate word being, however, different from that of the righthand component -rage of the disyllabic word mirage, fence is considerably more frequent than offence and almost as frequent as offense (13, 1 12 vs. 289 and 1 3,634), and, finally, can is considerably more frequent than pecan (1,149,928 vs. 1 ,571). Thus, we have good reasons to regard the monosyllabic words mine, grin, van, ran, rage, fence, and can as the roots of the disyllabic words amine, chagrin, divan, Koran, mirage, offense, and pecan. Stress in the latter should therefore be final, falling upon the only syllables constituting the former. E.g., divan and pe­ can should be stressed /di ' van/ and /p1 'kan/ (OD), with stress in these disyllabic prefixed derivatives regularly falling upon the only syllables constituting their monosyllabic bases van and can. 5 . 2 . 6 F i na l stress i n trisy l l a b les

Only six instances of the variation category ''u/a'' ("'9.23 3) were found to have been either exclusively or more frequently pronounced by native English speak­ ers with final rather than with antepenultimate stress: bioengineer, castanet, Meniere, misdiagnose, namaste, and obsolete. As for bioengineer and misdiagnose, it is obvious that the stress patterns I , ba1ou£nd3g 'n1( g)r/ and I , m1sdA1gg 'nguz/ are from the point of view of rhythm

194

5 Case studies

better than the stress patterns I , ba1ou ' £nd3gn1( g)r/ and I , mis ' dA1ggnguz/ (0 ED), which involve the fallowing stressed syllables I ' £nl and I ' dA1/ being separated from the preceding stressed syllables I , ba1/ and I , mis/ by only one unstressed syllable I no unstressed syllables, i.e., the prefixes bio- and mis-, which modify the meanings of the bases engineer and diagnose in an important way, receive secondary stress; the stress patterns I , ba1ou ' £n-/ and I , mis ' dA1-/ are therefore rhythmically unfortunate. Cf. the base diagnose, which is only / ' da1ggnguz/ ac­ cording to LDOCE, and similarly, in the OD, the initially-stressed pronunciation / ' dA1ggnguz/ is given before the finally-stressed /dA1gg 'nguz/. The case of castanet was already discussed above. Pronouncing castanet I , kastg 'net/ is a means of emphasizing the diminutiveness of castanets. A somewhat similar case is namaste, '' [a] respectful greeting said when giving a namaskar'' (OD), which is / ' namgste1/ vs. /namg ' ste1/ in British English and / , namg ' ste1/ vs. / ' namg , ste1/ in American English (OED). Even without knowing that the morphological structure of namaste in the source language Hindi is namas, ''bowing;' + te, ''to you'' (OD), a contemporary English speaker can nev­ ertheless arrive at the segmentation namas- + - te because apart from namaste, English has also imported from Hindi the semantically-related word namaskar, which means '' [a] traditional Indian greeting or gesture of respect, made by bringing the palms together before the face or chest and bowing'' (OD). (It can be assumed that the mental lexica of those English speakers who have an entry for the Hindi loanword namaste also have an entry for the related Hindi word namaskar.) Pronouncing namaste I , namg ' ste1/ and namaskar I , llAIDAS ' ka:/ (OD) thus means placing stress on the syllables that make these two semantically-re­ lated Hindi loanwords formally different from each other. As for Meniere, final stress in it can be regarded as a foreignness marker (which, of course, is also true of final stress in namaste and namaskar), i.e., Meniere' s disease was named after the French physician Prosper Meniere (OED), and in the case of obsolete, it is difficult to explain why in contrast to British English speakers, who stress obsolete /'ubsgli:t/ (the only stress pattern in LDOCE I OD), American English speakers still prefer the finally-stressed version I , absg ' lit/ (OED). As argued in 4.6, American English is with regard to stress a more archaic variety than British English, i.e., as observed in 5. 1.3.3, final stress in the English word obsolete is the preserved penultimate stress of the Latin etymon word obsoletus.

5.2 Stress variation in YouTube

195

5 . 2 . 7 H iatu s reso l ution

As observed in 5.1 .6, cases of hiatus resolution among English words with stress doublets fall into two types: those only accompanying a change in the location of stress in a word, without, however, being responsible for it, and those that do indeed condition the emergence of an alternative stress pattern. Of the latter, al Qaeda, extraordinary, guano, Ophiuchus, and Seato were either exclusively or more frequently pronounced in a hiatus-resolving manner, i.e., /- 'kA1-/ instead of /-ka: ' i:-/ (al Qaeda), /- ' str() : -/ instead of /-strg ' () : -/ (extraordinary), / ' gwre-/ instead of Igju: ' re-/ (guano), I- ' fju:-/ instead of /-f1 ' u-/ (Ophiuchus), and I ' si:-/ instead of /s1 ' e1-/ (Seato). (Recall also the above mentioned fact that physiatrist is more frequently /fi ' ZA1gtr1st/ than I , f1z1 ' atr1st/.) By contrast, in the words ge­ ographer, geography, geometry, gouache, and Laotian hiatus was as a rule unre­ solved, but do observe that in videos featuring British English accents, geogra­ pher, geography, and geometry were more frequently pronounced / ' d3u-/ than /d31 'u-/, with the latter being, however, the preferred pronunciation among American English speakers. Gouache was more frequently pronounced Igu: ' a:f/ than /gwaf/ and Laotian was more frequently /la: ' gu-Jgn/ than / ' lau-Jgn/. These findings lend additional support to the claim that initiality inhibits hi­ atus-resolution in English. Thus in the words geographer, geography, geometry, gouache, and Laotian, in which hiatus is still as a rule unresolved in contem­ porary English, hiatus sequences are separated from the left word boundary only by a consonant. By contrast, in the words extraordinary, Ophiuchus, and physiatrist, the hiatus sequences a.o, i. u, and i.a are separated from the left word boundary both by a consonant and a vowel. 5 . 2 . 8 With i n-speaker variation

1 85 items for which stress doublets are given in the OED were found to have been non-identically-stressed by identical native English speakers. These con­ stitute ,..,2 8.73 3 of the total number of the 644 items with stress doublets in the OED that were found to have been non-identically-stressed in captioned YouTube videos. Situations in which identical English speakers non-identically stress identical English words are thus not infrequent in comparison with cas­ es of across-speaker variation, which involves non-identical English speakers non-identically stressing identical English words. If individual variation categories are taken into consideration, it is u/p-in­ stances in the case of which identical English speakers were most frequently heard to have used more than one stress pattern: Of the 233 u/p-instances in the case of which stress doublets were attested not only in the OED but also in

196

5 Case studies

captioned YouTube videos, 105 items ("'45.06 3) were pronounced by identical native English speakers with more than one stress pattern. The second most frequent category is ''u/a'': 22 I 68=,..,3 2.35 3. This finding strongly suggests that within-speaker variation is as a rule trig­ gered either rhythmically (e.g., cardiac ' defect vs. birth defects) or emphatically (e.g., the suffixes -ee, -or, -ess sometimes attract stress because they distinguish words such as employee, lessor, princess, etc. from the formally and semantically related formations employer, lessee, and prince). In addition to the causes of stress variation common to both within- and across-speaker variation, the former may also be due to a discovery that other native English speakers use a different stress pattern in a particular English word. Thus according to a colleague (an American English speaker who has been working in Australia since 2010), I think all of those competing stress patterns are regional variation. The only reason a speaker would switch between them would be if they'd been exposed to two dia­ lects -- so that now, for example, I sometimes use my original a'dult and sometimes the Australian (maybe also east

US

and British) 'adult. (personal communication via

email in February 2014)

The awareness of the fact that other English speakers prefer a different stress pattern in a particular English word may also lead to meta-linguistic comments, in which the existence of multiple stress patterns is either simply acknowledged or condemned in a prescriptive manner. An example of the former is the video b9tLd06LCXA (27. 01. 2015), in which chalcedony (also spelled calcedony) is pro­ nounced /krel ' s£dgn1/, but it is pointed out, without expressing any evaluative judgments, that some people use the pronunciation / 'krels1dgn1/; similarly, in the videos Rao8TTcviSO (01. 02. 2015) and Z7-62EMn_hl (01. 02. 2015), it is stated by an identical American English speaker that ANOVA can be pronounced both I ' rengva/ and Ig ' nouvg/. An example of the latter is the video TkRPvqbEdjE (08. 01. 2015), in which a chemistry professor at the University of California at Berkeley says that ''[he] get[s] upset with people who say /bg 'ki:l1gm/'' instead of / ' b3:kl1gm/, i.e., be­ cause Berkelium was synthesized at Berkeley, the stress pattern of the latter, I ' b3 :kli/, should be preserved in the former. A similar case is the video Z]Y3sXxku-M (09. 01. 2015), in which one American English speaker criticizes another American English speaker for using the an­ tepenultimately-stressed pronunciation /kg ' r1bign/ in the context of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie title. According to the former, the only correct pronun­ ciation of Caribbean is the penultimately-stressed I , k£rg ' bi:gn/.

5.2 Stress variation in YouTube

197

Noteworthy is also the video HKMzt8bPeuU (23. 12. 2014), which in part is devoted to a meta-linguistic discussion of whether the correct stress pattern of carillon is / ' krer1ljun/ or /kg' r1ljgn/, with most speakers in the video enthusiasti­ cally arguing for the former and against the latter. 5 . 2 . 9 S u m m a ry

English words with stress doublets are those in the case of which more than one morphological analysis makes sense. Usually, one of the morphological analyses makes, however, more sense than the alternative analysis, which is why one stress pattern is as a rule more frequently used than the alternative stress pattern. E.g., archetypal is /a: 0k£t1pgl/ vs. / ' a:k1ta1pgl/ according to the OED, but of these stress patterns, only the latter was heard by the author in 131 captioned YouTube videos in which archetypal was pronounced by native English speakers 1 63 times. Indeed, apart from the - typal-word archetypal, there are also the - typal-words schizotypal and prototypal (and similarly, apart from the type-word archetype, there are also the numerous type-formations genotype, logotype, monotype, prototype, stereotype, etc.); archetypal counts therefore mor­ phologically as a compound and should therefore be accented / ' a:k1ta1pgl/, with stronger stress regularly occurring in the beginning of its lefthand disyllabic string ar. che- (with the e, in which this string ends, being merely a connecting vowel (interfix) and thus repelling stress). At the same time, however, in both the OD and the BNC, archetypal is the only word that ends in the string -etypal (and in COCA, there is only one attestation of antetypa�. The analysis of this string as the root of archetypal makes therefore relatively little sense. Note also that because the lefthand trisyllabic string antety- ends orthographically in y, the vowel effect that results in, e.g., the stress shift / 'p1rgm1d/ � /pi ' ram1d(g)1/ (OD), i.e., the lefthand string pyrami- of the -al-derivative pyramidal ends or­ thographically in i and receives therefore penultimate stress, does not apply to the -al-derivative archetypal, which is therefore pronounced with the stress of its base archetype. In some cases, however, there does not seem to be a reason why one morpho­ logical analysis should be preferred to an alternative analysis. E.g., extant was almost as frequently / ' ckstgnt/ as it was /ck' strent/ (with the latter-as pointed out in 5. 1.3.2-occurring even in environments such as extant species, extant creature, extant mammals, etc., in which initial stress would from the point of view of rhythm be better than final stress). On the one hand, because ex­ tant is semantically the opposite of extinct (cf. extinct species, extinct creature, extinct mammals, etc.), stress in extant is supposed to be final even when this would result in a stress clash. On the other hand, of the 73 -ant-disyllables in

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5 Case studies

LDOCE, 64 ("'87.67 3) have initial stress even though the ult in them has as a rule (53 I 73=,..,7 2.6 3) more orthographic segments than the penult. E.g., constant, distant, and instant are stressed initially even though their segmentally longer final string -stant is clearly more like a root whereas the segmentally shorter initial strings con-, di-, and in- are more like prefixes. The likeliest explanation for this fact is that the string -ant occurs in English as a suffix (e.g., claimant) and therefore repels stress.

6 Concluding remarks

6 . 1 E n g l ish as a Germ a n i c language According to Wenszky (2004: 12), a serious methodological problem with many influential publications on English stress is that ''the stress rules in them were developed on the basis of the analysis of some typical words, but not whole classes of words." The present monograph differs from the publications criti­ cized by Wenszky (2004: 12) in that all stress assignment tendencies identified in it are based on the analyses of all polysyllabic English words (contained in rep­ resentative lexicographic collections such as Longman Dictionary of Contem­ porary English, the MRC Psycholinguistic Database, Oxford Dictionaries, etc.). Proceeding from the findings reported in the previous chapters, we can con­ clude that English still remains a (very!) Germanic language as far as its stress system is concerned, i.e., since the location of stress in a polysyllabic English word is as a rule its root-prefix boundary location and since Germanic stress is ''prevalently a delimitative stress, marking as it does through the position of the primary peak the beginning of a word or, after certain prefixes, of the word stem'' (Poldauf 1 984: 1 9), English stress can without a doubt be still regarded as an instance of Germanic stress; contemporary English thus turns out to be different from other modern Germanic languages, of which, in the view of van der Hulst (20 10a: 442), only Icelandic and Faroese can still be referred to as Ger­ manic languages if only the stress systems (of the modern Germanic languages) are taken into consideration: In accordance with the Germanic principle of fixed initial stress, primary stress in Icelandic and Faroese stills falls upon the first syllable (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 801, 804). In disagreement with van der Hulst (20 10a: 442) and especially Domahs et al. (2014: 80), who conclude that ''German, Dutch, and English must be considered quantity-sensitive languages, with the three languages showing very similar patterns overall;' the present monograph argues that from the point of view of stress, contemporary English is actually more similar to the genuine Germanic languages Icelandic and Faroese than it is to other modern Germanic languages, such as, e.g., German. Thus, as has been noticed by many authors, if only the most frequently used English words are taken into consideration, their stress patterns ''may very well be interpreted exclusively in terms of a Germanic type of logic'' (Fournier 2007: 236), i.e., ''[t]he higher-frequency words, i.e., the ones most often heard in real speech, are shorter and more likely to have just a single

200

6 Concluding remarks

stressed syllable that is either the word-initial syllable (garbage, borrow, num­ bers) or the only syllable ( trash, take, math)'' (Cutler 2015: 1 1 O; cf. LDOCE, in which of the 1 ,542 high-frequency (solidly-spelled) polysyllables, 1 ,007 (�65.3 3) have initial stress. By contrast, in the case of medium- and lower-frequency pol­ ysyllables, the proportions of initially-stressed words are 1 , 158 I 2,042(=�56. 71 3) and 1 ,043 I 2,153(=�48.44 3). For high- vs. medium-frequency words, i (1) = 27, p < 0.00000 1 ; for medium- vs. lower-frequency words, i (1) = 29, p < 0.00000 1 ; for high- vs. lower-frequency words, i (1) = 1 03, p < 0.000001. A decrease in the frequency of use (of a polysyllabic English word) thus correlates statistically with a decrease in the incidence of initial stress.) Similarly, according to Turk et al. (1995: 144), ''[t]here is considerable evidence that the word-initial stress pattern is salient for English users." In addition to this, it has often been observed that in words of non-Germanic origin (which were extensively borrowed by both German and English speak­ ers), primary stress in English often falls upon a different syllable than it does in German (Arnold & Hansen 1 975: 173- 1 74). E.g., Aktivitiit in German, which, similar to activity in English, is both semantically and formally segmentable into the base aktiv and the suffix - itiit (cf. Stabilitiit � stabil + -itiit), has final stress: /aktivi ' t£:t/ (Duden online). Similarly, whereas in English, fundament and fundamental are stressed / ' fAn-1 and /- 0 m£nt(g)l/ (OD), both the base noun and the derived adjective are stressed on the ult in German. Note also that both the initially-stressed English word nature and the finally-stressed German word Natur etymologically go back to the same Latin word natura (Duden online), in which stress is penultimate because the vowel in the penultimate syllable is long; the penultimate syllable counts therefore as heavy and stressable. What accounts for these stress differences between English and German is that the morphological principle of not placing stress upon a string that occurs in the language as a suffix (even when that string, just like, e.g., the string -ure of nature, is not an actual suffix!) applies only to English but not to German. Thus, whereas final stress represents ''a stress pattern foreign to English'' (Poldauf 1 984: 77), because final strings, in which polysyllabic English words end, often occur in the language as suffixes, stress patterns such as Aktivi'tiit, Akti'vist, ak'­ tiv, Funda' ment, fundamen'tal, Mu'sik, Na' tur, etc. are completely unproblematic in German, i.e., German speakers readily place stress in a polysyllabic word upon its ult even if it occurs in the language as a suffix. (It is thus very much pos­ sible that in German, stress assignment is indeed conditioned phonologically: ''Primary stress is final if the vowel is long or there are two closing consonants'' (van der Hulst et al. 2010: 803). E.g., Aktivitiit is stressed /aktivi 0 t£:t/ because the ult contains a long vowel and in, e.g., Aktivist and Fundament stress is final because the vowel in the nucleus is followed by no less than two coda conso-

6.1 English as a Germanic language

201

nants.) A very similar conclusion that English is a more Germanic language than German is also arrived at by Arnold & Hansen (1975: 1 73), who in the case of words of non-Germanic origin in English, speak of ''eine starke Tendenz zur Angleichung der Betonung an die germanische Druckverteilung'' (i.e., a strong tendency to adjust the stress of such words to Germanic stress). Since (in contrast to German) the location of stress in a polysyllabic English word crucially depends upon its morphological structure, a central question of the theory of English stress is how this structure is determined by English speakers. To begin with, recall that the majority of non-initially-stressed Eng­ lish words share the following two characteristics: 1) the righthand string that receives primary stress (e.g., - hibit of inhibit) occurs in at least one other English word (cf. prohibit) and 2) the righthand string that receives primary stress is segmentally longer (i.e., contains more phonetic segments) than the remain­ ing lefthand string that is unstressed/ stressed secondary (e.g., the righthand string - hibit of inhibit is segmentally longer than the lefthand string in-). The latter is responsible for the fact that penultimate stress is a frequent stress pat­ tern in English only among trisyllabic words, which can often be segmented into a monosyllabic prefix and a disyllabic root. In tetra- and pentasyllables, penultimate stress is, by contrast, a very rare stress pattern and among hex­ asyllables and longer English words, this stress pattern does not exist alto­ gether. What intensifies the prefixation analysis is also a (segmentally longer) righthand string that occurs in English as a separate word. Thus, for instance, simply because the segmentally longer righthand string oral of mayoral oc­ curs in English as a separate word (which is considerably more frequent in the COCA corpus than the longer word mayoral: 1 1,305 vs. 1,178), the morphologi­ cal structure of mayoral is for the majority of contemporary American English speakers not the ''correct'' semantics-based mayor + -al but may + oral, of which the segmentally longer righthand string oral counts morphologically as the root and hence attracts stress on to its first syllable. The more frequently used stress pattern of mayoral in contemporary American English is therefore not I ' me1gr(g)1/ but /me1 ' ar( g)1/. Note also that according to a recent introduction to morphology (Lieber 2010: 5 1 ) , ''[a] ffixation, compounding, and conversion are the most common ways of forming new words [. . .] in English [ . . .] In addition, there are a number of less common ways in which new lexemes may be formed." Among these minor mor­ phological processes is back-formation, to a discussion of which Lieber (2010: Section 3.6) dedicates less than a page. The view that back-formation is a minor morphological process is also implicitly expressed in other recent introductions to (English) morphology (Tokar 2012; Schmid 201 1 ; Hamawand 20 1 1 ; Plag 2003),

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6 Concluding remarks

of which Tokar (2012: 1 68- 1 70) dedicates three pages to a section on back-for­ mation, Schmid (20 1 1 : 2 1 2)-only one, and Hamawand (20 1 1) and Plag (2003) do not have such sections altogether; the latter does, however, provide a discussion of the theoretical nature of this morphological process (Plag 2003: 1 87). Noteworthy is also Mel' cuk' s (five volumes of) Cours de morphologie generale, in which the existence of subtractive word-formation (exemplified by back-der­ ivation) is denied on logical grounds (Mel' cuk 200 1 : 48, 388; for a summary of different views on back-formation, see, e.g., Stekauer 1 998: 4.4). According to the author, back-formation is a purely diachronic phenomenon, which means that, for example, the noun editor was at some point in the past mistakenly analyzed by English speakers as a product of suffixation of the verb edit by means of the agentive suffix - or (cf. actor and act). As soon as, however, a shorter word such as edit comes into existence via back-derivation, it immediately becomes the base of the longer word from which it was back-derived, i.e., e.g., editor is, according to Mel' cuk (2001: 388), synchronically one who edits. In disagreement with the views expressed by Mel'cuk (200 1 : 48, 388), the present monograph has argued, however, that in many cases, back-derivation is (also) a matter of language synchrony (rather than of (only) diachrony). For example, the previously mentioned verb exist is, according to the OD dictionary, ''probably a back-formation from existence'' (whereas Dictionary.com regards it as a shortening of the Latin ex(s)istere). Because 1) the shorter verb exist occurs in the BNC 5,356 times whereas the longer noun existence has 6,472 attestations and 2) the meaning of exist is, according to the WordNet semantic database, ''have an existence;' we have good reasons to assume that the shorter exist still remains a back-derivative from the longer existence. A more obvious case is the shorter verb enthuse, which occurs in the BNC only 39 times and is thus considerably less frequent than the longer noun en­ thusiasm, which has 2,868 attestations. Whereas in the case of existence, the paraphrase ''when somebody or something exists'' is no less plausible than the paraphrase of exist as ''have an existence;' the paraphrase of enthusiasm as, e.g., ''the state of being enthused by somebody or something'' is far less intuitive than the paraphrases ''cause to feel enthusiasm''/''utter with enthusiasm;' given for enthuse in the WordNet semantic database. The recognition of the fact that a shorter English word may even synchron­ ically be secondary to a longer one is key to understanding why the stress of the former is sometimes not preserved in the latter. For example, while the shorter Carib has 14 attestations in the BNC, the longer Caribbean occurs in the corpus 1,126 times. For the more frequently used Caribbean, LDOCE gives the transcription I , krerg ' bi:gn.,../, which contains the stress shift symbol. The actual stress pattern of Caribbean is thus (given occurrences in the modifier position)

6.1 English as a Germanic language

203

often / 'krergbi: gn/. The less frequently used disyllabic Carib preserves this stress pattern: / ' kar1b/ (OD). Similarly, in contrast to the German word Eu' ropa, the English word Europe is stressed / 'jugrgp/ (LDOCE) because the more frequently used word European (which occurs in the BNC 20,314 times while Europe has only 1 7,543 attestations) is, as pointed out in 4.3.5, usually stressed I 'jugrgpi: gn/ rather than I ,jugrg 'pi: gn/. Note also that thus far, it has been suggested in this monograph that antepe­ nultimate stress in an -ate-trisyllable (e.g., imitate) is the promoted secondary stress of a more frequently used - ion-tetrasyllable (e.g., imitation). Recall, how­ ever, that, as observed in 5 . 1 . 1 , primary stress in an - ion-tetrasyllable sometimes occurs not pre-finally but initially. That is, imitation is at least on some occa­ sions stressed I ' 1m1te1Jgn/ rather than I , 1m1 ' te1Jgn/. Accordingly, the stress pat­ tern / ' 1m1te1t/ (LDOCE) of the less frequently used back-derived verb imitate can be directly obtained from the stress pattern / ' 1m1te1Jgn/ of the more frequently used base noun imitation. The only non-Germanic aspect in the contemporary English stress system seems to be penultimate stress in words I components of morphologically com­ plex words that end orthographically in a/o/i. E.g., Obama is /gu ' ba:mg/ (OD) because the last orthographic vowel in which Obama ends is a. Likewise, the fact that, e.g., extravagant is /1k ' strrevgggnt/ strongly suggests that morpho­ logically, extravagant is not extra + -vagant but extrava- + -gant, of which the segmentally longer lefthand trisyllabic string extrava- ends orthographically in a and therefore receives stress upon its middle syllable. As suggested in 4.3. 9, stress patterns such as these are due to the influence of Italian and Spanish, in which 1) stress is predominantly penultimate and 2) words often end or­ thographically in a/ o/ i (cf. Burzio 1994: 30, arguing in a different context that ''English is significantly more like Italian than like Latin''). Note, however, that in a not insignificant number of cases, penultimate stress in an English - a/ o/ i-word does not contradict the Germanic root-prefix b ound­ ary logic. E.g., analyzing the stress pattern /s1ndg ' r£lg/ of Cinderella (OD), we note that penultimate stress in this word is in accordance with the fact that Cinderella is the only English -erella-word (in the OD dictionary), but it is one of the many - rella-words: chlorella, mozzarella, umbrella, etc. The morphological analysis Cinde- + -rella makes therefore more sense than Cin- + -derella. Like­ wise, the stress pattern I , s1ns1 ' nati/ of Cincinnati (OD) is in accordance with the fact that apart from the - nati-word Cincinnati, there is also the - nati-word illu­ minati (which is stressed /1 , l(j)u:m1 'na:ti/ (OD), preserving the stress pattern of the more frequently used illumination: /1 , l(j)u:m1 ' ne1J(g)n/ (OD), which occurs in the BNC 327 times while illuminati has only five attestations.) Cf. trattoria, which in accordance with the Italian Stress Rule is supposed to be stressed

204

6 Concluding remarks

/trato ' rial (OED). At the same time, however, because apart from the - toria-word trattoria, there are also the - toria-words Astoria, Oscillatoria, Pretoria, Rotatoria, septoria, Victoria, and Vitoria, trattoria has also come to be associated with the antepenultimately-stressed pronunciation /trre ' ta:ri:g/ (OED). Since stress assignment in Present-day English is by and large conditioned morphologically, variably-stressed English words are as a rule those whose mor­ phological structure can be analyzed in more than one way, i.e., more than one morphological analysis makes sense in the case of one and the same English word. The five main scenarios, which have been discovered in the previous two chapters, include 1) back-derivation and suffixation (e.g., pulsatance-7 pulsate vs. pulse + -ate), 2) back-derivation and prefixation (e.g., contribution -7 contribute vs. con- + tribute), 3) suffixation and prefixation (e.g., over + - t vs. o- + -vert), 4) compounding and prefixation (e.g., methyl + amine vs. me- + - thylamine), 5) prefixation and morphological simplicity (e.g., pen- + ult vs. pen ult, which occurs in antepenult).

6.2 Future work

Although the present monograph could answer the research questions put forth in Chapter 1 (the causes of stress variation and the general stress assignment principles), there still remains room for further investigations of English stress. Compare, e.g., the pairs evict- eviction and contort- contortion, in both of which the shorter verb has fewer occurrences in the BNC than the correspond­ ing longer - ion-noun: 80 vs. 2 1 5 and 1 1 vs. 1 2 respectively. It is fairly obvious, though, that the case of evict vs. eviction, of which the longer noun has 135 more attestations in the BNC than the shorter verb, is different from the case of contort vs. contortion, in which the frequency difference is only one. Can we nonetheless regard contort as a back-derivative from contortion (given that the latter has at least one more attestation in the corpus than the former)? According to Balteiro (2007: 128) , who discusses the frequency of use crite­ rion in connection with pairs such as a call vs. to call (i.e., whether the former was converted from the latter or vice versa), frequency differences that are ''equal or lower than 25 3 of the average'' should be regarded as doubtful. Thus, for instance, in the case of 7,943 solidly-spelled words from LDOCE that the tool Morphological Analysis considers to be suffixed derivatives, the median frequency difference is 814 (i.e., 3.971 ("'49.99 3) more frequently used forms have no less than 8 1 5 more occurrences in the BNC than the corresponding less frequently used form. E.g., corrupt occurs in the corpus 605 times, whereas cor­ ruption has 1 ,422 attestations; the frequency difference is thus 8 17). The median

6.2 Future work

205

percentage difference is 150 3, which, proceeding from Balteiro's (2007: 128) threshold of 25 3 of the average, means that doubtful frequency differences are those when the percentage difference does not exceed 37.5 3. E.g., the case of evict vs. eviction is not doubtful because the percentage difference between 80 and 2 1 5 is ,..,9 1.53 3. The percentage difference between 1 1 and 12 is, however, only "'8.7 3, which makes the analysis of contort as a back-derivative from con­ tortion doubtful. Likewise, because the percentage difference between 5,356 and 6,472 is only ,.., 1 8.87 3, the above mentioned case of exist vs. existence should also be regarded as doubtful. A possible solution for doubtful cases such as contort vs. contortion and exist vs. existence is to allow bi-directionality in them. Thus, the shorter verbs contort and exist are back-derivatives from the longer nouns contortion and existence, which, in turn, are, however, suffixed derivatives from the shorter verbs contort and exist. This analysis is strongly supported by the fact that in natural lan­ guages, all meanings can be classified into what Mel'cuk (2012: 193) calls two semantic ''parts of speech'': predicates and (semantic) names (of which only the former are of interest at the moment). A (semantic) predicate is a meaning that denotes a situation: an action, an activity, an event, a process, a state, a property, a relation, etc. A situation necessarily im­ plies participants; therefore a semantic predicate prototypically has open slots for the meanings denoting such participants. (Mel'cuk 2012: 194-195)

It is clear that both the verb exist and the noun existence are predicates that share the same participant: an entity that exists. The meaning of the longer noun ex­ istence is thus identical to that of the shorter verb exist, so that it does not really matter whether the former is derived from the latter or vice versa. (Similarly, as pointed out in 4.2. 1 , WordNet defines begin as ''have a beginning." At the same time, however, beginning is defined in WordNet as ''the time at which something is supposed to begin." The analysis of begin as a back-derivative from beginning is thus no less plausible than the suffixation analysis begin + - ing for begin.) A somewhat similar case is nature vs. natural, which occur in the BNC 17 ,800 vs. 14,223 times respectively. The percentage difference is only ,..,2 2.34 3, which is why it is again not entirely clear whether natural is nature + -al or nature is a back-derivative from natural. On the one hand, natural is defined in the Word­ Net database as ''in accordance with nature; relating to or concerning nature;' ''existing in or produced by nature;' ''existing in or in conformity with nature or the observable world;' etc. These paraphrases point to the secondariness of the longer word natural relative to the shorter word nature. At the same time, however, one of the meanings of nature is ''the natural physical world including plants and animals and landscapes etc." (WordNet). Given this meaning defini-

206

6 Concluding remarks

tion and given that the percentage difference between the frequencies of nature and natural is lower than 37 .5 3, we can argue that the analysis of nature as a back-derivative from natural- nature that which is natural or characterized by naturalness-is for a contemporary English speaker as natural as the analysis of natural as nature + -al. A very similar case is mature vs. maturity, which occur in the BNC 1 ,873 vs. 1,370 times respectively; the percentage difference is only ,..,3 1.02 3. On the one hand, maturity is, according to WordNet, ''state of being mature;' which supports the suffixation analysis mature + - ity. At the same time, however, the adjective mature is defined in WordNet as ''characteristic of maturity'' and for to mature, the database gives the definition ''develop and reach maturity." Accordingly, what distinguishes the initially-stressed disyllabic - ure-word nature from the finally-stressed disyllabic - ure-word mature is that the former can synchronically be seen as a back-derivative from natural, which is stressed / ' nretfgrgl/ (LDOCE), whereas the latter is a back-derivative from maturity, which is stressed /mg ' tfugrgti/ (LDOCE). Nature is therefore stressed / ' ne1tJg/ (LDOCE) while mature is stressed /mg ' tfug/ (LDOCE). Content with, which is defined in WordNet as ''the state of being contented with your situation in life;' occurs in the BNC 393 times, but contented, which WordNet defines as ''made content;' has 344 attestations. The percentage dif­ ference between these numbers is only ,.., 1 3.3 3, which allows us to regard final stress in the adjective content as the preserved penultimate stress of contented, /kgn ' tent1d/ (LDOCE), which, however, can be regarded as the preserved final stress of the adjective content. (As for the question of why the noun content has over the course of time abandoned its original stress pattern /kgn ' t£nt/, the explanation seems to be semantics. Content meaning ''[t]hat which is contained in anything'' (OED) does not have much to do with content meaning ''satisfied, happy.") Success is, according to WordNet, ''an attainment that is successful;' but the frequency of use criterion suggests that the longer successful is secondary to the shorter success: 10,695 vs. 1 3,245. Given that the percentage difference be­ tween these frequency numbers from the BNC is only ,..,2 1 .3 3, we argue that the shorter derivative success is stressed /sgk ' ses/ (LDOCE) because the longer base successful is stressed /sgk' sesfgl/ (LDOCE), but the longer derivative successful is stressed /sgk' sesfgl/ because the shorter base success is stressed /sgk' ses/. From a semantic point of view, the shorter word universe seems to be the base of the longer word universal ( that which applies to I is characteristic of the universe). The frequency of use criterion suggests, by contrast, that the longer word universal, which occurs in the BNC 2,570 times, is primary to the shorter word universe, which has only 2,506 attestations in the corpus. To be =

=

6.2 Future work

207

more precise, because the percentage difference between the corresponding frequency numbers is only "'2.52 3, we can say that the back-derivation analysis is in the case under consideration no less plausible than the suffixation analysis. Accordingly, because the longer word universal is / ,ju:ng 'v3 : sgl.,.../ according to LDOCE (the actual stress pattern of universal is thus given occurrences in the modifier position usually / 'ju:ngv3 : sgl/), also the shorter word universe is supposed to be stressed / 'ju:ngv3 : s/ (LDOCE). (The shorter verse-word diverse is, by contrast, as pointed out above, a back-derivative from the longer word diversity and receives therefore final stress. To be more precise, because the shorter diverse occurs in the BNC 1,31 1 times whereas the longer diversity has 1 ,394 attestations-the percentage difference is thus only "'6. 14 3-we can argue that diverse is a back-derivative from diversity, which, in turn, is, however, a suffixed derivative from diverse.) A similar trisyllabic example is anecdote, which occurs in the BNC 1 86 times and is thus only marginally more frequent than anecdotal, which has 164 attes­ tations; the percentage difference between these numbers is ,.., 12.57 3. Cf. COCA, where anecdotal occurs 1 ,856 times whereas anecdote has only 1 ,027 attestations; the percentage difference is ,..,5 7_51 3. Thus, because the shorter word anecdote can be regarded as a back-derivative from the longer word anecdotal, for which LDOCE gives the stress pattern / , ren1k ' dgutl.,... / (the actual stress pattern of an­ ecdotal is thus often / ' ren1kdgutl/), also the derived word anecdote is supposed to be stressed / ' ren1kdgut/ (LDOCE), even though in its lefthand disyllabic string a. nee-, the ult is segmentally longer than the penult; stress in this string should thus be final rather than initial. Cases such as these strongly suggest that to better understand the stress patterns of contemporary English words, we need a much better understanding of contemporary English morphology. The standard additive approach, which states that longer English words are made up of shorter ones, is unacceptable. Apart from this, note that the present monograph cannot explain why, e.g., swastika is stressed only / ' swust1kg/ (OD) whereas the variably-stressed papri­ ka prefers penultimate to antepenultimate stress, i.e., /pg ' pri:kg/ rather than / ' prepr1kg/. Is it because by virtue of its association with Nazi Germany, the word swastika is for a contemporary English speaker a more Germanic word than paprika? Recall also that when an -ee-derivative contrasts semantically with an -or­ one (e.g., mortgagee- mortgagor), both the former and the latter often have em­ phatic final stress. E.g., just like mortgagee, also mortgagor is stressed not only / ' ma :g1d3g/, preserving the stress of the base mortgage, but also / , ma:g1'd3a:/, with stress being emphatically placed upon the formally important suffix -or. At the same time, however, when the opposite of an -ee-derivative is an -er-one,

208

6 Concluding remarks

final stress is as a rule exhibited only by the former but not the latter. E.g., while employee is not only /- 'pla1-/ but also /- ' i :/, the only stress pattern of employer is the base stress /- ' pla1-/ (OD). Why are the - ate-verbs frustrate, gyrate, locate, migrate, reincarnate, stagnate, truncate, and vibrate as a rule initially-stressed by American English speakers vs. finally-stressed by British English speakers? (For gyrate, locate, and vibrate the OD gives only the finally-stressed transcriptions /d3A1 'rg1t/, /lg(u) 'ke1t/, and IvAI ' bre1t/ and in the case of frustrate, migrate, stagnate, and truncate, the final­ ly-stressed transcriptions /frA ' stre1t/, lmAI ' gre1t/, /stag 'ne1t/, and /trAJJ ' ke1t/ are given before the initially-stressed alternatives / ' frAstre1t/, / 0 mA1gre1t/, / ' stagne1t/, and I ' trA1Jke1t/.) Not only in the BNC but also in the COCA corpus, the longer words frus­ tration, gyrating, location, migration, reincarnation, stagnation, truncation, and vibration have more attestations than the corresponding shorter words frus­ trate, gyrate, locate, migrate, reincarnate, stagnate, truncate, and vibrate, with the corresponding percentage differences being ,.., 1 77.77 3, ,..,9 5.58 3, ,.., 1 22.93 3, ,.., 1 29.86 3, ,.., 1 71 .98 3, ,.., 1 45.74 3, ,..,44_25 3, and ,.., 1 01 .45 3. The mean of these val­ ues is ,.., 1 23.69 3 and the median is 1 26.39 3. Given these numbers, there is little doubt that also for an American English speaker, the -ate-verbs frustrate, gyrate, locate, migrate, reincarnate, stagnate, truncate, and vibrate should count syn­ chronically as back-derivatives from the corresponding longer - ion/-ing-word. Why should laboratory be /lg ' burgtri/ in British English vs. / ' lrebrgta :ri/ in American English (LDOCE)? As for the American pronunciation, it was already observed that stress in laboratory should be initial because both the string -or and the string -atory occur in English as suffixes (e.g., actor, accusatory) and are therefore stress-repellent. The British pronunciation /lg ' burgtri/ suggests, by contrast, that for a British English speaker, laboratory is morphologically not la­ bor + -atory but labora- + - tory, with the segmentally longer lefthand trisyllabic string labora-, which ends orthographically in a, receiving penultimate stress. Why is, however, the morphological structure of laboratory different for British and American English speakers? The present monograph is inclined to regard stress differences such as these as idiosyncrasies (i.e., there is no particular reason why an -ate-dissyllable such as migrate should necessarily be initially-stressed by American English speakers vs. finally-stressed by British English speakers), but it is of course possible that a future study of English stress will arrive at an entirely different conclusion. Recall also the fact that at 00:06:04.526 00:06:06.531 of the YouTube video S5hXrgfwK8o, a British English speaker can be heard saying It's one of those 'cartoons for 'adults, with retraction of stress occurring in the preceding word cartoons. Is there a special reason why instead of pronouncing the following -->

6.2 Future work

209

adult with final stress (which the speaker does in many other environments, e.g., since becoming an a' dult and moving out at 00:04:42.047 00:04:45.307 of the video 9LkG43iZ4u4), the speaker retracts stress in the preceding cartoons? Is It's one of those 'cartoons for 'adults from the point of view of rhythm better than It's one of those car toons for a'dults? -->

From a purely methodological point of view, a limitation of this monograph is that only those words were searched for on YouTube in the case of which stress doublets are given in the OED. Since, however, even the most comprehensive dictionaries do not as a rule include all actually occurring stress patterns, You­ Tube searches similar to those reported by the author in this monograph should in the ideal case be run with regard to all (or at least, the most frequently used) polysyllabic English words. Only then will we have a more objective picture of which English words do indeed have stress doublets and which stress pattern in the case of a particular English word with stress doublets is more frequently used in contemporary English. Noteworthy is also the fact that in the study reported in this monograph, only the stress patterns of existing English words (i.e., established English vo­ cabulary, which can be found in dictionaries) were taken into consideration. An objection that can be raised in connection with such words is that their stress patterns are simply stored in English speakers' mental lexica (e.g., Kettemann 1 988: 329), but note that the phenomenon of (especially within-speaker) stress variation is a powerful argument against the listedness-model of English stress; additionally, even if the location of stress in a word is listed in the lexicon, it may nevertheless be in accordance with some rule (e.g., Hayes 1995: 1 12, arguing that ''since English stress is lexically listed, the stress rules serve essentially as re­ dundancy rules, describing the set of possible (as well as unmarked) patterns''). Note also that a recent study by Domahs et al. (2014) has already compared the stress patterns of nonsense words such as serdanuls, huzaldomp, folmad­ oth, fekomof, etc. and those of existing German, English, and Dutch trisyllabic words (cf. Walch 1 972, Baker & Smith 1 976, Baptista 1 984, Guion et al. 2003, and Turcsan & Herment 2015, who also all conducted stress experiments with potential English words). The conclusion reported by Domahs et al. (2014: 84) is that ''in all three languages, the lexical data and the experimental data largely show the same types of effect;' i.e., the stress patterns of nonsense words are in these three Germanic languages by and large similar to those of existing words. Additionally, it was mentioned in 2.4 that not only in existing but also in poten­ tial disyllabic English words, an increase in the number of onset consonants in the penultimate syllable correlates statistically with an increase in the incidence of initial stress, i.e., as Kelly (2004: 238) reports, a disyllabic nonsense word such as brontoon is more likely to be stressed initially than a disyllabic nonsense

210

6 Concluding remarks

word such as bontoon. Thus, although some of the conclusions drawn in this monograph with regard to existing English words have already been verified by studies of the stress patterns of potential words, an additional study, which will be specifically concerned with, e.g., the segmental length principle as a stress assignment factor in nonsense words, will most certainly not be superfluous. The reason why such an investigation has not been carried out as part of the present monograph is a very practical one. Studies involving potential words obviously require (a not insignificant number of) test persons, whose participa­ tion in such studies requires remuneration on the part of the author. Since the research reported in this monograph has not been supported by any university or research institution, the author had neither financial nor even organization­ al resources (office) for running tests with human subjects. The only research data that was accessible to the author was thus dictionary and corpus data (i.e., YouTube); using this data, the author could only analyze the stress patterns of existing English words. To conclude: Although not each and every aspect of the topic of English stress could be covered in this monograph, it is nonetheless hoped that the monograph has succeeded in answering both 1) the more general question of why (existing) polysyllabic English words are stressed the way they are stressed and 2) the more specialized question of why some polysyllabic English words have more than one stress pattern.

7 References

7 .1 Dictionaries I databases a n d corpora British National Corpus. http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/2554. (12 July, 2016.) Cambridge Dictionaries Online. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/. ( 1 1 June, 2015.) Corpus of Contemporary American English. http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/. (21 June, 2015.) Corpus of Global Web-Based English. http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/. (24 November, 2016.) Dictionary.com. http://www.dictionary.com/. (15 April, 20 17.) Duden Online. http://www.duden.de/woerterbuch. (09 July, 2017.) Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. http://www.ldoceonline.com/. (12 De­ cember, 2016.) Merriam-Webster Online. http://www.merriam-webster.com/. ( 1 1 June, 20 15.) MRC Psycholinguistic Database. http://ota.ox.ac.uk/headers/1054.xml. (07 February, 2016.) Oxford Dictionaries. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/. ( 1 1 June, 20 15.) Oxford English Dictionary. http://www.oed.com/. (20 December, 20 13.) Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English. (Speake & LaFlaur 2002). http://tinyurl.com/ycsrlgsb. (12 September, 2017.) PONS Online-Worterbuch. http://de.pons.com/. (12 July, 2016.) Russian Orthographic Dictionary. http://tinyurl.com/q6x5jj6. (08 August, 2015.) StressTyp2. http://st2.ullet.net/? (21 June, 20 15.) TIME Magazine Corpus. http://corpus.byu.edu/time/. (12 July, 2016.) Word Spy. http://www.wordspy.com. (21 June, 2015.) WordNet. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn. (21 June, 2015.)

7 2 Software and o n l i n e tools .

jfplay (Version N-68663-g3a2bedl). GNU Grep (Version 2.5.4). Microsoft Excel 2007. Minitab (Version 15. 1. 30.0). Morphological Analysis. http://tinyurl.com/ohnw7no. (18 July, 2017.) Praat (Version 5.4). TextCrawler (Version 2.5.0.0). You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/. (18 July, 2017.) Youtube-dl. (Versions July 2014-July 2017).

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7 References

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7 .3 Literature

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Chitoran, I. & ]. I. Hualde. 2007. From hiatus to diphthong: the evolution of vowel sequences in Romance. Phonology 24(1). 37-75. Cho, T., ]. M. McQueenb & E. A. Cox. 2007. Prosodically driven phonetic detail in speech processing: The case of domain-initial strengthening in English. Journal of Phonetics 35(2). 210-243. Chomsky, N. & M. Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row. Chrabaszcz A, M. Winn, C. Y. Lin & W.J. Idsardi. 2014. Acoustic cues to perception of word stress by English, Mandarin, and Russian speakers. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research 57(4). 1468- 1479. Colina, S. 2012. Syllable structure. In Hualde, ]. I., A. Olarrea & E. O'Rourke (eds.), The handbook of Hispanic linguistics, 133- 151. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Cruttenden, A. 2008. Gimson 's pronunciation of English. 7th edn. London: Hodder Education. Cutler, A. 20 15. Lexical stress in English pronunciation. In Reed, M. & ]. M. Levis (eds.), The handbook of English pronunciation, 106- 124. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Davis, S. 1988. Syllable onsets as a factor in stress rules. Phonology 5(1). 1 - 19. de Haas, W. G. 1988. Phonological implications of skeleton and feature underspecifica­ tion in Kasem. Phonology 5(2). 237-254. Dehaene-Lambertz, G. & D. Houston. 1998. Faster orientation latencies toward native language in two-month-old infants. Language and Speech 41(1), 2 1 -43. Domahs, U., E. Klein, W. Huber & F. Domahs. 2013. Good, bad and ugly word stress fMRI evidence for foot structure driven processing of prosodic violations. Brain & Language 125. 272-282. Domahs, U., I. Plag & R. Carroll. 2014. Word stress assignment in German, English and Dutch: quantity-sensitivity and extrametricality revisited. The Journal of Compara­ tive Germanic Linguistics. l 7. 59-96. Farnetani, E., C. T. Torsello & P. Cosi. 1988. English compound versus non-compound noun phrases in discourse: an acoustic and perceptual study. Language and Speech 3 1(2). 157- 180. Field, ]. 2003. Promoting perception: lexical segmentation in L2 listening. BLT Journal 57(4). 325-334. Foulkes, P. & G. Docherty. 2007. Phonological variation in England. In Britain, D. (ed.), Language in the British Isles, 52-74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fournier, J.-M. 2007. From a Latin syllable-driven stress system to a Romance versus Germanic morphology-driven dynamics: in honour of Lionel Guierre. Language Sciences 29(2-3). 2 1 8-236. Friederich, W. 1967. Englische Aussprachelehre. Das Verhaltnis von Aussprache und Schreibung. 2nd rev. edn. Munich: Max Hueber Verlag. Fry, D. B. 1955. Duration intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 32. 765-769. Fry, D. B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech 1(2). 126- 152.

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8 Ap pendix

The following is the more frequently heard stress patterns of the words that were pronounced in captioned YouTube videos by at least one native English speaker. Across-varietal stress differences are taken into consideration (e.g., a'dultvs. 'adult in Br.E.), but remember that, as pointed out in 5.2, General Amer­ ican was attested far more often than other native English accents (i.e., Received Pronunciation, General Australian, etc.). The stress patterns given below are thus biased towards American English. E.g., 'abdomen means that it was mainly American English speakers who were heard by the author to have pronounced abdomen with antepenultimate stress.

a