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On English sentence stress and the nature of metrical structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

H. J. Giegerich
H. J. Giegerich
Affiliation:
Department of English Language, University of Edinburgh
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Extract

This essay is concerned with a section of the suprasegmental phonology of English that has traditionally been called ‘sentence stress’: a domain that goes beyond the simple word and its accent, covering prominence relations within lexical compounds and syntactic phrases. Some almost commonplace assumptions are usually made about sentence stress in the phonological literature of English: first, that the distinction between compound stress and phrasal stress leads to a phonological contrast, so that in a compound noun like black board the left-hand constituent is the stronger one whereas in a phrase, black board for example, the right-hand one is. Second, that this prominence differentiation consists of a further contouring of the main stresses of the simple words involved so that word stress serves as input for sentence stress differentiation, as in Gérman tèacher vs.Gèrman téacher. Also frequently observed is a class of exceptions to this second assumption: the thìrteen mén cases, where the primary stress of a word in isolation, thirtéen, gets shifted in certain contexts for rhythmic reasons.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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