Lecture 8 The accentual structure of English words

Inseparable from the syllabic structure of words is their accentual structure. In disyllabic and polysyllabic words their accentual structure is constituted by the occurrence of syllables with different degrees of special prominence in different positions in to the beginning, middle, and end of words.

The greater degree of special prominence given to one or more syllables as compared with that of the other syllable or syllables in on and the same word is known as word accent (hence the terms accentual structure, pattern, type).

Languages differ from one another in the principal means by which the special prominence of speech sound is achieved and word accent thus effected. Therefore types of word accent are distinguished first of all according to the articulatory means by which it is effected.

1. One of such means is the pronunciation of a syllable in a word with a greater force of utterance as compared with that of the other syllables of the same word. Word accent effected by this means is called dynamic, or force, stress.

2. A syllable can be made specially prominent by uttering it on a different pitch level or with a different pitch direction than the other syllable or syllables of the word. Word accent effected by this means is called musical, or pitch, or tonic accent.

3. A syllable can be made more prominent when its vowel is pronounced longer than another vowel or other vowels of the same tamber or historical or historical length in the unstressed position in the same word or in other words of the language. Word accent effected by this means is called quantitative accent.

4. Some linguists, e.g. G.P. Tprsuyev, distinguish also qualitative accent, which is effected by preserving unobscured the quality of the vowel phoneme in the accented syllable.

Word-stress

The majority of British phoneticians distinguish 3 degrees of word-stress. The strongest stress is called primary stress, the second strongest secondary stress, while all the other degrees of stress are grouped together under the cover term of weak stress. The syllables bearing either primary or secondary stress termed stressed, while syllables with weak stress are called, somewhat inaccurately, unstressed.

H.A.Gleason and most other American descriptivists distinguish also 4 degrees of word-stress in English, calling and indicating them as follows: (1) primary stress, (2) secondary stress, (3) tertiary stress, and (4) wek stress.

The distinction between secondary and tertiary stresses is very subtle one, and there are, so far, no generally recognized formal indicators of their occurrence in relation to the primary stress or pitch levels. The result is that the allocation these two degrees of stress to syllables in particular words is a subjective matter, and even phonetically trained linguists sometimes differ from each other in this respect.

Thus, H.A.Gleason writes: “ The contrast of secondary stress with tertiary stress may be seen in such a pair as black bird: black bird. The first implies a bird that is described as being black; the second a particular kind of which, incidentally, may or may not be black.

The contradictions and discrepancies of word-stress are due to two factors. The first is that the American descriptivists’ interpretation of the nature of English word accent is oversimplified. They reduce it to different degrees of loudness, the perception of which is highly subjective, and underestimate the role of the other components of word accent, viz. changes of pitch level and pitch direction, of quality and quantity.

The second factor is that the American descriptivists and, to a lesser extent, British phoneticians do not discriminate between word, accent, phrase accent, and sentence accent. They do not take into account the fact that word accent is a constituent feature of the phonetic structure of the word as a vocabulary item, which exists as such when it is pronounced in isolation, in the so-called citation for, or, at the most, as part of compound words or free word combinations also pronounced in isolation.

Sentence accent is, on the contrary, a constituent part of the phonetic structure of the spoken sentence and one of the components of intonation in the broad sense of the term.

The semantic facto is one of them. In a sentence, semantically more important words are pronounced with greater stress.

The second solution is to find reliable objective criteria for determining the position of the tertiary stress in words pronounced in isolation. This is important from a theoretical point of view because the existence of tertiary word-stress in English can hardly be doubted.

Different types of word accent are distinguished not only to its nature or degree, but also according to its position, place, or incidence, in different words of the language. From this point of view two types of word accent are distinguished: (1) fixed, and (2) free.

Within free word accent two subtypes are distinguished on morphological grounds: (1) constant accent, and (2) shifting accent. A constant accent is one which remains on the same morpheme in different grammatical forms of a word or in different derivatives from one and the same root. For instance, the accent is constant in all the case forms of the Russian noun ноша, ноши, ноше, ношу, нош, ношах. It is also constant in such English words as wonder, wonderful, wonderfully.

A shifting accent falls on different morphemes in different grammatical forms of a word or in different derivatives from one and the same root, e.g. сад-сады, вода-воды, сад-садовод, вода-водавоз, active-activity.

The first and the oldest of the English word accentuation tendencies is known as the recessive tendency, and the incidence of the accent in accordance with it is called recessive accent, or stress.

The presence in English of a great number of short words has caused the development of one more tendency in the incidence of word accent. This is so-called rhythmic tendency, while the accent determined by it is called rhythmical.

There is a third tendency clearly distinguishable in English word accentuation. It is a manifestation of constant accent in word derivation.

Like all phonetic phenomena, word accent must also be analyzed from a functional, or phonological, point of view. The first function of word accent is constitutive function. The second function of word accent is distinctive function. The third function is identiflactory, or precognitive function.