We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2025
0 Introduction
In this chapter, we investigate the hypothesis that exceptional stress properties of English are under-represented in a systematic fashion.
What does under-representation mean here? It means that some phonological property occurs less often than expected. For example, in a sample of 19,528 English words, we find 3949 words with trochaic stress (σ´ σ˘ ) and 1416 words with final stress (σ˘σ´). On the assumption that both patterns should be equally likely, the latter class is clearly under-represented with respect to the former and a statistical comparison confirms this: χ2(1, N = 5365) = 1195.916, p < 0.05, Cramér's V = 0.472.
If we assume feet in English are generally trochaic, as argued, for example, by Hayes (1981), and assume the general framework of Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993; McCarthy and Prince 1993b), then in the case of a disyllable with final stress, its markedness could stem from the fact that the initial syllable is unfooted (Parse-σ) or it could stem from the fact that a monosyllabic foot is built (FtBin): σ˘ [σ´ ]. Both constraints would be violated by the winning candidate.
If we assume that it is avoidance of unfooted syllables that makes iambs marked and less common, then this predicts that forms like σ˘σ´σ˘ should also be under-represented; if what is driving the under-representation of σ˘σ´ is avoidance of monosyllabic feet, then no such prediction is made about forms like σ˘σ´σ˘. Interestingly, when we turn to three-syllables words, the facts confirm that it is monosyllabic feet that are avoided, not unparsed syllables. Forms like σ˘σ´σ˘ are much more frequent (1233) than words like σ`σ´σ˘ (159).
This is consistent with the general claim of Input Optimization (Hammond 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017) and thus provides an argument for that framework. The claim there is that input representations are skewed so as to reduce phonological complexity, the rank and number of violations exhibited by winning candidates. This chapter offers a statistical analysis of the distribution of exceptional stress in English, demonstrating that the distribution can be unified by assigning a penalty to constraint violations commensurate with the rankings of the constraints.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
