Given our discussion above concerning the variability of the position of stress in a language like English, it might reasonably be asked whether there are any rules which govern the placement of stress in a word. Clearly, for languages such as Czech or French, such rules are easily and simply stated; ‘Place main stress on the initial syllable’ (for Czech) or ‘Place main stress on the final syllable’ (for French). But for many languages, including English, this approach is clearly not going to work, as we have seen; the rules will need to be rather more complex to allow for the wider range of possible sites for stress. But it is important to be aware that there are nonetheless rules governing stress placement in English. It is not a case of having to learn the position of stress for each individual word. That stress placement is usually predictable can be shown quite easily; consider the words ‘hariolate’ and ‘oblavity’. The chances are that you will not be familiar with either, yet if you are a native speaker of English (and probably even if you’re not), you will be likely to pronounce the first (which means ‘to tell the future with beans’) with main stress on the initial syllable and secondary stress on the final, and the second word (which doesn’t mean anything at all – we made it up) with stress on the antepenultimate syllable. That (most) speakers agree on this suggests that there must be some principles or rules determining where stress is placed.
So what does determine where stress falls in an English word? There are a number of factors involved, including the word class (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) and the nature of any suffixes that may form part of the word (-ate, -ic, -ity, etc.). A full account of stress placement in English is far beyond the scope of this book, but we will look at some of the more obvious generalisations in this section.
One of the most important factors in locating stress within the word is syllable structure. Consider the stress placement in the nouns listed below, where syllable boundaries are again indicated by dots.
(6.5) a. e.le.phant b. hy.e.na c. ve.ran.da wa.lla.by com.pu.ter u.ten.sil al.ge.bra po.ta.to con.vic.tion oc.to.pus ko.a.la pen.tath.lon
In (6.5a), the words have antepenultimate stress, whereas those in (6.5 b & c) have stress on the penultimate syllable. For the majority of nouns in English, stress is determined by the nature of the penultimate syllable, or more specifically the nature of the rhyme of the penultimate syllable, since what (if anything) is in the onset is irrelevant to stress placement. In (6.5a) the penultimate rhyme is just a short vowel nucleus, whereas in (6.5b) the penultimate rhyme has a long vowel or a diphthong in the nucleus and in (6.5c) the penultimate rhyme is a short vowel nucleus followed by a consonant in the coda. So there is more ‘phonological material’ in the rhymes of the penultimate syllables in the words in columns b) and c).
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Syllables (or rhymes) consisting of long vowels, diphthongs or those with codas, such as those exemplified by the penults in (6.5 b and c) are known as heavy; syllables with rhymes consisting only of a short vowel are known as light (for more on syllable weight, see Section 10.4.2). For the majority of English nouns of more than two syllables, if the penultimate syllable is heavy, it takes stress; if the penultimate syllable is light, stress is placed one syllable to the left, on the antepenult (even if this is also light, as in ‘elephant’). In two syllable words, the penultimate typically bears the stress irrespective of its weight, as in ‘muskrat’, ‘turnip’, ‘parrot’, ‘cobra’.
These generalisations hold true for large numbers of nouns in English, though there is a relatively small set of exceptions, such as ‘kangaroo’, ‘chimpanzee’, ‘balloon’, ‘monsoon’, ‘abyss’, which all have stress on the final syllable. One generalisation we can make about such exceptions is that in each case the final stressed syllable is heavy, but it is not true that all nouns with final heavy syllables have final stress, as words from (6.5) like ‘elephant’, ‘octopus’, ‘utensil’ indicate.
So stress placement in English is dependent in part on syllable weight – whether a particular syllable is heavy or light, with heavy syllables attracting stress. Languages for which syllable weight is important in determining stress are said to be quantity sensitive, and include Russian, Arabic and many others. Those languages for which syllable weight is irrelevant (i.e. where stress falls on a particular syllable irrespective of its internal structure) are known as quantity insensitive, and include French, Czech and Hungarian.
For verbs in English we can make a statement similar to that for nouns, except that the key syllable is not the penultimate, but the final syllable: (6.6) a. con.si.der b. a.ppeal c. in.tend
a.sto.nish en.ter.tain co.llapse i.ma.gine con.fuse re.pre.sent pro.mise de.ny su.ggest
In (6.6), the columns parallel those in (6.5) in that (6.6 b and c) have heavy final syllables, and so attract stress. The words in (6.6a), however, appear to have final syllables which aren’t the same structure as the equivalent penults in the nouns. In (6.5a) the penults are light, consisting only of a short vowel, but in (6.6a) there is a coda consonant in the final syllable in all four verbs for rhotic varieties, and in all but ‘consider’ for non-rhotic Englishes. To get around this, and to maintain the generalisation about stress placement and syllable weight, we have to ignore the final consonant in English verbs, if there is one. That is, the stress rules of English act as though the final [ʃ] of ‘astonish’ or the final [n] of ‘imagine’ simply aren’t there; the final syllables of these two verbs behave as if they were [ni] and [i] respectively. As such, they are light, and push stress one syllable to the left, onto the penult. Note that this is not just an arbitrary sleight of hand applied to the verbs in (6.6a); it also applies to the verbs in (6.6 b and c), which remain heavy even without the final consonant, having either a
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long vowel or diphthong, or a short vowel followed by (one) consonant, in their rhymes.
When some element of phonological structure is invisible to a rule in this way, it is said to be extrametrical; that is, outside the domain to which the rule applies. As a further example of this idea, returning to the noun stress patterns, we can combine the generalisation regarding nouns with that for verbs by saying that for nouns, the whole of the final syllable is extrametrical, that is, invisible to the stress rules. The rules then apply in the same manner to the final visible syllable for both nouns and verbs.
As was the case with nouns, not all verbs adhere to the pattern outlined above; there are many sets of exceptions to the general rules. Verbs like ‘permit’, ‘express’, ‘begin’, ‘discuss’, for instance, all have final stress even though they have the same final syllable structure as the verbs in (6.6a). As we said above, this is not the place for a complete account of English stress placement; the point to be made is that it is possible to state some generalisations, and that syllable weight is an important conditioning factor in these generalisations.
Adjectives in English are even more complex, typically behaving either like nouns, as in
(6.7) a. won.der.ful b. en.thra.lling c. a.ttrac.tive in.cre.di.ble u.ni.ted tri.um.phant con.fi.dent a.ma.zing a.ttack.ing or like verbs, as in
(6.8) a. so.lid b. in.sane c. co.rrupt sim.ple com.plete un.kempt ur.gent ob.tuse in.tact
The distinction is in part dependent on the morphological structure of the adjectives; those with suffixes, as in (6.7), often behave like nouns, those without suffixes, as in (6.8), mainly behave like verbs. Further, the nature of the suffix may well influence the stress placement; the adjective-forming suffix ‘-ic’, for example, attracts stress onto the immediately preceding syllable, as in ‘photograph’ but ‘photographic’. This is true not just for adjectival suffixes, but also for other word classes; the noun-forming suffix ‘-ity’ behaves like ‘-ic’ in attracting stress to the immediately preceding syllable, as in ‘personal’ but ‘personality’, and ‘-ation’ always takes main stress on the first syllable of the suffix, so ‘consider’ but ‘consideration’. Suffixes such as ‘-ic’, ‘-ity’ and ‘-ation’ are known as stress-shifting suffixes, and contrast with suffixes like ‘-ly’, ‘-al’ and ‘-ness’ which are stress-
neutral, in that they have no effect on stress placement: ‘personal(ly)’,
‘inflection(al)’, ‘squalid(ness)’.