CHAPTER III - ACCENTUATION

Summary

§ 1. Nature of the Latin Accent. Was the Latin accent one of pitch or stress? Did the accented syllable in a Latin word differ from the other syllables in being uttered at a higher note than they were, or with a greater force? The two things are obviously quite distinct. For a syllable to be sounded at a high or low note is one thing, with energy or with gentleness is another, just as a musical note may be sounded strongly or gently (forte or piano), a thing quite different from its being a note high or low on the musical scale. Most languages do indeed combine in a greater or less degree pitch-accent with stress-accent. The accented syllable, if pronounced with more energy than the unaccented, is generally at the same time pronounced at a slightly higher (or lower) pitch. But, for all that, it is usually possible to say decidedly of one language: this language has a stress-accent; of another: this language has a pitch-accent. Our own language for example is clearly a language of stress-accent. It distinguishes its accented syllables by giving them greater energy of articulation than the unaccented; and it shows the usual characteristics of a language with stress-accentuation, namely, a slurring or Syncope of short syllables immediately following the accented syllable (e.g. ‘méd(i)cine’; cf. dám(o)sel,’ ‘fánt(a)sy’ and ‘fancy,’) and an obscuring or reduction of unaccented vowels (e.g. ‘father,’ where the e has the sound of the ‘obscure’ vowel of the word ‘but’; ‘savage,’ ‘minute,’ ‘orange’).