Vowel Distribution and Accentual Prominence in Modern English

Abstract

There is in the field of English phonological investigation no general agreement on the terminology, concepts, and methodology to be used in the description of the modern English stress system. There is, above all, no uniformity in the use of the words-STRESS, ACCENT, and PROMINENCE-among the various Writers. For example, Daniel Jones draws a line between STRESS ("degree of force of utterance") and PROMINENCE ("degree of general distinctness, this being the combined effect of the tamber, length, stress, and [if voiced] intonation of the syllabic sound"). 1 John Kenyon, on the other hand, assumes the presence of some degree of stress wherever the particular vowel is of full grade quality (" .. .light accent is somewhat variable in strength, and often can be detected only by the quality of vowel sound in the syllable"). 2 Kenyon further uses the word ACCENT "to indicate the stress given to a syllable above that of the preceding or the following syllable in a word of rp.ore than one syllable." 3 Jones does not use the word ACCENT at all. W. F. Twaddell in a recent article in Language lists a number of definitions from the works of American linguists (Bloomfield, Bloch and Trager, Pike, Trager and Smith, and Hall) which seem to equate STRESS, INTENSITY, LOUDNESS, AMPLITUDE, and PROMINENCE with one another.'

Correlation of Metrical and Phonological Units of Language

“…For English, there are descriptions in which prosodic features are defi ned by inherent features (Hubbell 1950;Caff ee 1951) and descriptions in which prosodic features defi ne inherent features (Berger 1955). An example of a language where prosodic features are clearly defi ned by inherent features is Mordovian (Paasonen 1903).…”