LOS TERRITORIOS, LOS SUSTENTOS

In my view, on an impressionistic account, it is found that Cantonese has no contrastive stress pattern in words similar to that of the English word pairs 'permit (v.) and permit (n.)\ or similar to the Mandarin compound/phrase pair 'dOng.xi (thing: compound) and dOng xT (east and west: phrase)’, or the Thai noun-noun compound/noun-verb sequences (weak- strong vs. strong-strong) (for examples see Potisuk et al 1996: 213). I can give no minimal pairs in Cantonese whose lexical meaning changes depending on the stress pattern. English is well known to have variable lexical stress. On the other hand, many languages are reported to have fixed lexical stress (Hyman 1977: 52). For example, Finnish is said to have fixed first syllable stress (Lehiste 1993: 239) and Polish is said to have fixed penultimate syllable stress (Hyman 1977: 52). However, there is neither variable nor fixed lexical stress in polysyllabic words in Cantonese, in Hyman's study of the incidence and placement of stress in 444 languages (Cantonese is not included), he reports that 16 have no stress-accent or tone (1977: 6 6). Clearly Cantonese is not the only language in the world which does not

make lexical use of stress. I take comfort from these findings in denying that prominence in Cantonese is achieved through stress.

Whoever attempts to categorise a stress word-pattern in Cantonese would have about as much success as one who attempts to categorise a lexical tonal-pattern in English. However, I am not saying that every single word in Cantonese is perceived with the same degree of prominence in utterances. There is no contrast of stressed-unstressed syllables in Cantonese, but different degrees of prominence between syllables in utterances do exist.

Regarding isochrony, the language does not exhibit stress-timed rhythm. This does not mean that the language has to fall into the type of syllable-timed rhythm, which is defined as a language which shows a tendency for every syllable to "recur at equal intervals of time" (Abercrombie 1967: 97). In my experience, only school children tend to give approximately regular intervals of time to syllables (except the final syllable of a single utterance which may tend to be lengthened very much) and to give equal force in articulation to syllables thereby manufacturing a 'machine gun' effect when they try to recite aloud a given text, a poem, or a

multiplication chart, by memory. They fail to signal the points of interest, or the points of reference, that are appropriate in telling a story. No doubt such a style was employed by the informant of Jones and Woo in reading 'literary texts', which were consequently transcribed by Jones and Woo (1912) as J'J'J , or for three-syllable poems,

four-syllable poems and five-syllable poems, respectively (1912: 87). Such a style differs from the style of everyday conversation, is not acceptable to teachers and is regarded as a wrong way of reciting. The variation of prominence of syllables in actual speech tends not to be faithfully reflected in text readings. If one gives equal prominence to every single syllable he/she speaks in the language, one will sound foreign to the natives. If one attempts to learn the language and to articulate correctly, one should be able to manage not only all the segmental elements but also the suprasegmental parameters including how prominence is assigned to syllables in utterances.

As we discussed in chapter one, there is considerable variety of syllable structure and vowel and consonant form in Cantonese. The consonants and vowels both have different sonority and different phonological length. However, the phonological length of syllables varies to a great extent in actual speech. Thus a phonologically long syllable (say, an open syllable containing a long vowel) is sometimes realised in a much shorter form than a phonologically short syllable (say, a plosive-coda syllable containing a short vowel) when they occur in sequence. Syllables in sequence in utterances are not perceived as having equal duration. Thus Cantonese cannot be described as a language exhibiting a syllable-timed rhythm (like French for example, as claimed by Abercrombie 1967). Prominence in Cantonese lands on a lengthened syllable. We tend to hear sequences of alternating lengthened and shortened syllables in actual speech as linked into groups which we call 'feet' (the term is borrowed from Abercrombie (1967: 131)). A foot is a rhythmic beat. For this, I would like to borrow the term 'prominence based rhythm’ from Laver to describe the perceived rhythm of Cantonese. (He uses the term for describing the rhythm of languages with widely varying syllable duration in which prominence arises in syllables of heavy metrical weight, syllables receiving lexical stress, or both, with unstressed syllables being made particularly non-prominent through vowel reduction. (Laver 1994: 529)).

I shall speak of prominence rather than stress simply because the greater force of articulation (i.e., stress, as defined above) is only one part of the picture of achieving prominence in Cantonese. Prominence is achieved primarily by longer duration, which can also be accompanied by greater loudness and the exaggeration of the pitch, interweaving with the lexical tones and ultimately governed by intonation in utterances.