Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T10:20:34.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

When accent preservation leads to clash

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2017

QUENTIN DABOUIS
QUENTIN DABOUIS*
Affiliation:
Université François-Rabelais de Tours, Département d'anglais, 3 Rue des Tanneurs, 37041 Tours CEDEX 1, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In English, some complex words can display exceptional accent preservation (EAP): they can preserve an accent from their base even when this would violate a general restriction against adjacent accents (e.g. retúrn → retùrnée). This article analyses EAP both empirically and theoretically. The analysis of a set of 291 derivatives from Wells (2008) shows that this phenomenon can be partially attributed to the relative frequency of the base and its derivative and partially also to syllable structure, and that these two factors have a cumulative effect. It is also shown that the existence of a more deeply embedded base (e.g. colléct→ colléctive → còllectívity ~ collèctívity) can increase the likelihood for a derivative to display EAP. A formal account of the phenomenon is proposed building on Collie's (2007, 2008) ‘fake cyclicity’ analysis, using weighted constraints (Pater 2009, 2016) and Max-Ent-OT (Goldwater & Johnson 2003). Finally, a model of lexical access building on Hay's (2001, 2003) model and integrating more deeply embedded bases is proposed.

Keywords

Englishstressaccentfaithfulnesspreservationclashfrequencycyclicitylexical access
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 363 - 404
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank the audience of the Thirteenth Old World Conference in Phonology, which was held in Budapest in January 2016 and where an early version of this research was presented. I am also indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. Finally, thanks to Sabine Arndt-Lappe, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Christophe dos Santos, Jean-Michel Fournier and Nicola Lampitelli for remarks and discussion.

References

Abasq, Véronique. 2007. Préfixation et particules adverbiales en anglais contemporain: Etude du comportement accentuel. PhD thesis, Université de Tours.Google Scholar
Abercrombie, David. 1976. Stress and some other terms. Work in Progress (Department of Linguistics, Edinburgh University), 9, 51–3.Google Scholar
Benua, Laura. 1997. Transderivational identity: Phonological relations between words. University of Massachussetts.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2007. On the nature of the cycle. Paper presented at the 15th Manchester Phonology Meeting.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2012. The architecture of grammar and the division of labour in exponence. In Trommer, Jochen (ed.), The morphology and phonology of exponence, 8–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2016. Paradigmatic dependencies without cyclic containment as UR acquisition. Paper presented at the third meeting of Phonological Theory Agora, Tours.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. Forthcoming. Stratal phonology. In Hannahs, S. J. & Bosch, Anna R. K. (eds.), The Routledge handbook of phonological theory. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo & McMahon, April. 2006. English phonology and morphology. In Trommer, Jochen (ed.), The handbook of English linguistics, 382–410. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1994. Principles of English stress. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris. 1968. The sound pattern of English. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chung, Sandra. 1983. Transderivational constraints in Chamorro phonology. Language 59 (1). 35–66.Google Scholar
Collie, Sarah. 2007. English stress preservation and stratal optimality theory. PhD thesis. University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Collie, Sarah. 2008. English stress preservation: The case for ‘fake cyclicity’. English Language and Linguistics 12 (3), 505–32.Google Scholar
Dabouis, Quentin. 2016. L'accent secondaire en anglais britannique contemporain. PhD thesis, University of Tours.Google Scholar
Dabouis, Quentin & Fournier, Jean-Michel. Forthcoming. Syllable weight and stress in English: The case of disyllables. In Durand, Jacques, Przewozny, Anne & Yamada, Eiji (eds.), English word stress: Theories, data and variation. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar
Dabouis, Quentin, Fournier, Jean-Michel & Girard, Isabelle. 2017. Ternarity is not an issue: Secondary stress is left edge marking. Paper presented at the 25th MFM Fringe Meeting (PTA Dataset Workshop) at the University of Manchester (24 May).Google Scholar
Davis, Stuart & Cho, Mi-Hui. 2003. The distribution of aspirated stops and /h/ in American English and Korean: An alignment approach with typological implications. Linguistics 41 (4), 607–52.Google Scholar
Fidelholtz, J. 1975. Word frequency and vowel reduction in English. Chicago Linguistic Society 11, 200–13.Google Scholar
Fournier, Jean-Michel. 1990. Analogie et isomorphisme, conflits et conspirations. 5ème Colloque d'Avril sur l'anglais oral, 74–87. Villetaneuse: Université Paris-Nord: CELDA, diffusion APLV.Google Scholar
Fournier, Jean-Michel. 2010. Manuel d'anglais oral. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
Fox, Anthony. 2000. Prosodic features and prosodic structure. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fry, Dennis B. 1955. Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 27, 765–9.Google Scholar
Fry, Dennis B. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech 1, 126–52.Google Scholar
Goldwater, Sharon & Johnson, Mark. 2003. Learning OT constraint rankings using a maximum entropy model. In Spenader, Jennifer, Eriksson, Anders & Dahl, Östen (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Variation within Optimality Theory, 111–20. Stockholm: Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Guierre, Lionel. 1979. Essai sur l'accentuation en anglais contemporain: Eléments pour une synthèse. PhD thesis, Université Paris-VII.Google Scholar
Guierre, Lionel. 1983. L'accent préfère-t-il les longues? Méthodes en linguistique anglaise, Travaux n° XXXIX. Saint-Etienne: CIEREC.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2011. Sentential prominence in English. In Van Oostendorp, Marc, Ewen, Colin J., Hume, Elizabeth & Rice, Keren (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology, vol. 2: Suprasegmental and prosodic phonology, 2778–806. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Kenstowicz, Michael. 1991. The Free Element Condition and cyclic versus noncyclic stress. Linguistic Inquiry 22 (3), 457–501.Google Scholar
Hammond, Michael. 1989. Cyclic secondary stresses in English. Proceedings of the annual meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, vol. 8, 139–53. Stanford, CA: Stanford Linguistics Association, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Hammond, Michael. 1999. The phonology of English: A prosodic optimality-theoretic approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, Michael. 2003. Frequency, cyclicity, and optimality. Paper presented at the Second International Korean Phonology Conference, Seoul National University.Google Scholar
Harris, John & Gussmann, Edmund. 1998. Final codas: Why the west was wrong. In Cyran, Eugeniuc (ed.), Structure and interpretation: Studies in phonology, 139–62. Lublin: Folium.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2001. Lexical frequency in morphology: Is everything relative? Linguistics 28 (6), 1041–70.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2003. Causes and consequences of word structure. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer & Baayen, Harald. 2002. Parsing and productivity. In Booij, G. E. & van Marle, J. (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2001, 203–35. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer & Baayen, Harald. 2003. Phonotactics, parsing and productivity. Italian Journal of Linguistics 15 (1), 99–130.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1980. A metrical theory of stress rules. PhD thesis, MIT.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1982. Extrametricality and English stress. Linguistic Inquiry 13 (2), 227–76.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical stress theory: Principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hedia, Sonia Ben & Plag, Ingo. 2017. Gemination and degemination in English prefixation: Phonetic evidence for morphological organization. Journal of Phonetics 62, 34–49.Google Scholar
Heuven, Walter V. J. Van, Mandera, Pawel, Keuleers, Emmanuel & Brysbaert, Marc. 2014. Subtlex-UK: A new and improved word frequency database for British English. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 67, 1176–90.Google Scholar
Hulst, Harry van der. 2012. Deconstructing stress. Lingua 122 (13), 1494–1521.Google Scholar
Hulst, Harry van der. 2014. Representing rhythm. In Van der Hulst, Harry (ed.), Word stress: Theoretical and typological issues, 325–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1975. Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Language 51 (3), 639–71.Google Scholar
Jensen, John T. 2000. Against ambisyllabicity. Phonology 17 (2), 187–235.Google Scholar
Jones, Daniel. 2003. Cambridge English pronouncing dictionary, 16th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Daniel. 2006. Cambridge English pronouncing dictionary, 17th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kager, René. 1989. A metrical theory of stress and destressing in English and Dutch. PhD thesis, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
Kaisse, Ellen M. & Shaw, Patricia A.. 1985. On the theory of Lexical Phonology. Phonology Yearbook 2, 1–30.Google Scholar
Kaye, Jonathan. 1995. Derivations and interfaces. Frontiers of phonology, 289–332.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1979. Metrical structure assignment is cyclic. Linguistic Inquiry 10 (3), 421–41.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1982. From Cyclic Phonology to Lexical Phonology. In Van der Hulst, Harry & Smith, Norval (eds.), The structure of phonological representations I, 131–75. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1985. Some consequences of lexical phonology. Phonology Yearbook 2, 85–130.Google Scholar
Krazka-Szlenk, Iwona. 2007. Analogy: The relation between lexicon and grammar (LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics). Munich: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Mohanan, Karuvannur Puthanveettil. 1982. Lexical Phonology. PhD thesis, MIT.Google Scholar
Myers, James & Li, Yingshing. 2009. Lexical frequency effects in Taiwan Southern Min syllable contraction. Journal of Phonetics(37), 212–30.Google Scholar
Newell, Heather & Scheer, Tobias. 2007. Procedural first. Paper presented at the 38th Poznań Linguistic Meeting, Gniezno (13-16 September).Google Scholar
Pater, Joe. 1995. On the nonuniformity of weight-to-stress and stress preservation effects in English. Manuscript, McGill University.Google Scholar
Pater, Joe. 2000. Non-uniformity in English secondary stress: The role of ranked and lexically specific constraints. Phonology 17, 237–74.Google Scholar
Pater, Joe. 2009. Weighted constraints in generative linguistics. Cognitive science 33 (6), 999–1035.Google Scholar
Pater, Joe. 2016. Universal Grammar with weighted constraints. In McCarthy, John J. & Pater, Joe (eds.), Harmonic grammar and harmonic serialism, 1–35. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
Plag, Ingo, Kunter, Gero & Schramm, Mareile. 2011. Acoustic correlates of primary and secondary stress in North American English. Journal of Phonetics 39 (3), 362–74.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan & Smolensky, P.. 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Rutgers University and University of Colorado.Google Scholar
Raffelsiefen, Renate. 1993. Relating words: A model of base recognition. Part I. Linguistic Analysis(23), 3–161.Google Scholar
Raffelsiefen, Renate. 1999. Diagnostics for prosodic words revisited: The case of historically prefixed words in English. In Hall, T. Alan & Kleinhenz, Ursula (eds.), Studies on the phonological word (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 174), 133–201. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Raffelsiefen, Renate. 2007. Morphological Word Structure in English and Swedish: The evidence from prosody. In Booij, Geert, Ducceschi, Luca, Fradin, Bernard, Guevara, Emiliano, Ralli, Angela & Scalise, Sergio (eds.), On-line proceedings of the Fifth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting, Fréjus, 15−18 September 2005, 209–68. University of Bologna.Google Scholar
Schane, Sanford A. 2007. Understanding English word accentuation. Language Sciences 29 (2–3), 372–84.Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias. 2011. A guide to morphosyntax–phonology interface theories: How extra-phonological information is treated in phonology since Trubetzkoy's Grenzsignale. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Siegel, Dorothy C. 1974. Topics in English morphology. PhD thesis, MIT.Google Scholar
Stanton, Juliet & Donca Steriade. 2014. Stress window and base faithfulness in English suffixal derivatives. Paper presented at the 22nd Manchester Phonology Meeting.Google Scholar
Szpyra, Jolanta. 1989. The morphology–phonology interface: Cycles, levels and words. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tournier, Jean. 1985. Introduction descriptive à la lexicogénétique de l'anglais contemporain. Paris and Geneva: Champion–Slatkine.Google Scholar
Wells, J. C. 2008. Longman pronunciation dictionary, 3rd edn. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Wilson, Colin & George, Benjamin. 2009. The MaxEnt Grammar Tool. Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University and Department of Linguistics, UCLAGoogle Scholar