Stress Variation in English (eBook)

Alexander Tokar (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2017 | 1. Auflage
251 Seiten
Narr Francke Attempto (Verlag)
978-3-8233-9180-7 (ISBN)

Infos

This monograph is concerned with the question of why some English words have more than one stress pattern. E.g., 'overt vs. o'vert, 'pulsate vs. pul'sate, etc. It is argued that cases such as these are due to the fact that the morphological structure of one and the same English word can sometimes be analyzed in more than one way. Thus, 'overt is the stress pattern of the suffixation analysis over + -t, whereas o'vert is due to the prefixation analysis o- + -vert (cf. covert). Similarly, pulsate is simultaneously pulse + -ate (i.e., a suffixed derivative) and a back-derivative from pul'satance.
'Tokar's approach in the use of both dictionary (OED) and corpus data (YouTube) holds promise of a scholarly breakthrough on the vital linguistic prosodic topic of English stress assignment of doublets and of stress assignment in general.' (Irmengard Rauch, Professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley)

Dr. Alexander Tokar lehrte anglistische Sprachwissenschaft an der Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf, der Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen und der Universität Siegen. Außerdem war er Gastwissenschaftler an der University of California at Berkeley (Department of Linguistics).

Inhalt

Acknowledgements 11
1 Introduction 13
1.1 Scope of the study 13
1.2 Previous studies 20
1.3 Structure of the book 34
2 Theoretical preliminaries 35
2.1 Stress vs. accent 35
2.2 Primary stress vs. secondary stress 38
2.3 Stress?/?accent vs. no stress 41
2.4 Stress placement across the globe 47
3 Methodology 54
3.1 Dictionary-based study: OED 54
3.2 Other resources and tools 57
3.3 YouTube-based study 68
4 Stress assignment in English 78
4.1 Monosyllables 79
4.2 Disyllables 80
4.2.1 Stress preservation 81
4.2.2 Segmental length 90
4.2.3 Suffix-like endings 97
4.2.4 Hiatus resolution and?/?or vowel elision 99
4.2.5 Disyllables as parts of longer words 100
4.2.6 Rhythm, emphasis, and semantics 101
4.2.7 Compounds 106
4.2.8 Summary 107
4.3 Three and more syllables 107
4.3.1 Suffixed and back-derivatives 108
4.3.2 Prefixation 114
4.3.3 More on penultimate stress 117
4.3.4 Stress non-preservation 121
4.3.5 Stress shifts 125
4.3.6 Segmental length in trisyllables 127
4.3.7 Suffix-like endings 130
4.3.8 Heavy ults in trisyllables 132
4.3.9 Foreignness 133
4.?3.?10 Summary 135
4.4 Secondary stress 136
4.5 Concatenations of words 138
4.6 Across-varietal differences? 143
5 Case studies 144
5.1 Stress variation in the OED 144
5.1.1 Overall results 144
5.1.2 Degree-of-stress variation 149
5.1.3 Location-of-stress variation 155
5.1.3.1 Penultimate vs. antepenultimate stress 155
5.1.3.2 Final vs. penultimate stress 162
5.1.3.3 Final stress vs. other stresses 168
5.1.3.4 Other categories 170
5.1.4 Left-/right-prominence vs. word stress 173
5.1.5 Stresslessness 176
5.1.6 Hiatus resolution 177
5.2 Stress variation in YouTube 180
5.2.1 Overall results: YouTube vs. OED 183
5.2.2 Adjacent words 186
5.2.3 Vowel effect 191
5.2.4 More on stress non-preservation 194
5.2.5 More on disyllables 200
5.2.6 Final stress in trisyllables 203
5.2.7 Hiatus resolution 205
5.2.8 Within-speaker variation 205
5.2.9 Summary 207
6 Concluding remarks 209
6.1 English as a Germanic language 209
6.2 Future work 214
7 References 221
7.1 Dictionaries?/?databases and corpora 221
7.2 Software and online tools 221
7.3 Literature 222
8 Appendix 229
9 Index 245

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.11.2017
• Reihe/Serie: Language in Performance (LIP)
• Verlagsort: Tübingen
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Schlagworte: Morphology • phonetics • Phonology • Stress • Variation
• ISBN-10: 3-8233-9180-1 / 3823391801
• ISBN-13: 978-3-8233-9180-7 / 9783823391807