Exaptation and English stress

McCully, Chris

doi:10.1016/s0388-0001(01)00036-5

Cited by 15 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Finally, the noun-verb stress contrast also seems to be cognitively functional as it facilitates online processing, particularly in individuals with limited vocabularies (Kawamoto, Farrar & Overbeek, 1993, cited in Sereno & Jongman, 1995; Arciuli & Cupples, 2003, 2006). These findings lend empirical support to McCully's (2002: 343) assessment that “[s]tress marking is being used signally […]”.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…Nouns display a strong tendency to be stressed on syllables at, or closer to, the beginnings of words (‘left-hand stress’), while verbs tend to be stressed word-finally (‘right-hand stress’). This paper investigates the potential of the stress contrast as an indicator of word class (McCully, 2002). Specifically, it pursues the question whether class-specific stress can assist language learners in their acquisition of nouns and verbs, respectively, by acting as a phonological cue for their categorisation and storage in the mental lexicon (henceforth ‘stress typicality hypothesis’).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kelly and Bock (1988) found that disyllabic nouns exhibit left-hand stress at a rate of up to 94 per cent, while disyllabic verbs are left-stressed at only 31 per cent. In verbs introduced to English since 1700, left-hand stress is even more uncommon at as little as 5 per cent (McCully, 2002). 1 More important for our purposes is the converse finding that up to 95 per cent of all left-stressed items in Kelly and Bock's (1988) sample turned out to be nouns, while up to 85 per cent of right-stressed items were verbs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trochaic bias overrides stress typicality in English lexical development

Baumann

2020

J. Child Lang.

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This paper investigates whether typical stress patterns in English nouns and verbs are available as a prosodic cue for categorisation and accelerated word learning during first language acquisition. The stress typicality hypothesis states that left-stressed nouns and right-stressed verbs should be acquired earlier than the reverse configurations if stress effectively signals lexical class membership. In this view, class-typical stress patterns are expected to facilitate learning of novel items. A series of generalized additive models (GAMs) based on a comprehensive set of lexical data (CELEX) as well as a large set of age-of-acquisition (AoA) and concreteness ratings reveals that stress typicality plays a minor role in early acquisition, as it is generally superseded by a preference for left-hand (or ‘trochaic’) patterns in both nouns and verbs. This may be explained by general cognitive constraints (perceptual salience and recency) or exposure to the dominant pattern in the ambient language.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trochaic bias overrides stress typicality in English lexical development

Baumann

2020

J. Child Lang.

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“…Examining stress patterns up to and including Chaucer, but not beyond, Minkova (1997) rejected earlier proposals that either the OF/AN, or the Latin stress rule had displaced the left-edge Germanic stress in pre-1400 English; similarly, Redford (2003), adding a hypothesis of ‘hovering’ stress for doublets in verse 31 . McCully (2002) looks at post-1500 OED data, and McCully (2003: 355) talks of ‘the phonological crisis provided by the spectacle of incoming romance rules’, and provides arguments against what he labels ‘the catastrophe model’; his focus is on evaluating the empirical validity of competing descriptive models, but as far as source ME data go, it is still Chaucer/Chaucerian versus later, or contemporary English, as in the most recent study of historical noun–verb stress contrasts (Hofmann 2020). Should one need further justification for our diachronic fact-finding mission, one particular recurrent statement about the chronology of prosodic change in English attempts a more explicit timeline for the stress innovations in PDE: Sequence of changes in stress parameters: 1400 : Foot direction Leftward, Main stress Left (as in OE) 1530 : Foot direction Rightward , Main stress Left 1660: Foot direction Rightward, Main stress Right (Cited from Fikkert, Dresher & Lahiri (2006: 146); also in Dresher & Lahiri (2005: 82–3), Dresher (2013: 61), Lahiri (2015: 231), Dresher & Lahiri (2015) 32 …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early metrical and lexicographical evidence for functional stress-shifts

Minkova¹,

ZHOU²

2022

English Language and Linguistics

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Only three Present-Day English diatones, outlaw, rebel, record, out of the current 235-item list in Hotta (2015), are on record prior to the seventeenth century. Whether this type of functional prosodic contrast was inherited or innovative is controversial. We revisit the Old English metrical evidence for functional stress-shifting and present new attestations of verb–noun pairs in Middle English verse in an effort to establish if the limited inherited stress-shifting model survives, and, if so, whether or how it accommodates the incoming loan vocabulary. The additional verse attestations support the idea of continuity, yet the scarcity of data falls short of statistical verifiability. A search into detailed lexicographical information for 1200–1550 reinforces the hypothesis of continuity by documenting the differential patterns of borrowing of nouns and verbs, prefixed and unprefixed. Taken together, these two sources endorse a proposal that in its earliest stages functional stress-shifting was predicated on prefixation, and that the ongoing conflict between prefixal defooting and Align-L (Root, PrWd) in ME is a necessary component of the diachronic account of English prosody.

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“…English is a language in which lexical stress can be movable (e.g., PERmit is a strong-weak sequence associated with a noun, whereas perMIT is a weak-strong sequence associated with a verb; McCully, 2002). However, trochaic (i.e., strong-weak) nouns are far more frequent than iambic (i.e., weak-strong) nouns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Production of Lexical Stress in Non-Native Speakers of American English: Kinematic Correlates of Stress and Transfer

Chakraborty

Goffman

2011

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose To assess the influence of L2 proficiency on production characteristics of rhythmic sequences in L1 (Bengali) and L2 (English), with emphasis on linguistic transfer. One goal was to examine, using kinematic evidence, how L2- proficiency influences the production of iambic and trochaic words, focusing on temporal and spatial aspects of prosody. A second goal was to assess whether prosodic structure influences judgment of foreign accent. Method Twenty Bengali-English bilinguals, 10 with low proficiency and 10 with high proficiency in English, and 10 monolingual English speakers participated. Lip and jaw movements were recorded while the bilinguals produced Bengali and English words embedded in sentences. Lower lip movement amplitude and duration were measured in trochaic and iambic words. Six native English listeners judged the nativeness of the bilingual speakers. Results Evidence of L1 to L2 transfer was observed through duration but not amplitude cues. More proficient L2 speakers varied duration to mark iambic stress. Perceptually, the high proficiency group received relatively higher native-like accent ratings. Trochees were judged as more native than iambs. Interpretation Even in the face of L1-L2 lexical stress transfer, non-native speakers demonstrated knowledge of prosodic contrasts. Movement duration appears to be more amenable to modifications than amplitude.

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Exaptation and English stress

Cited by 15 publications

References 7 publications

Trochaic bias overrides stress typicality in English lexical development

Trochaic bias overrides stress typicality in English lexical development

Early metrical and lexicographical evidence for functional stress-shifts

Production of Lexical Stress in Non-Native Speakers of American English: Kinematic Correlates of Stress and Transfer

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