Stress and duration in three varieties of English

Abstract

This paper investigates stress placement in the English of Spanish speakers, Nigerian English and Singapore English. This investigation reveals that they have in common several patterns of stress placement that are distinct from British or American English. We show that these patterns cannot be accounted for by transfer. A different explanation is suggested, one that explains the recurrent patterns in terms of English vowel duration. It is proposed that in determining stress in multisyllabic words, L2 speakers assess the duration of syllable nuclei and assign stress to the syllable containing the longest vowel. In contrast with transfer, which holds L2 speakers' first languages responsible, this proposal attributes the distinct patterns of stress placement to the target language, making possible a unified account of the shared patterns in the three varieties of English. As L2 speakers, regardless of their first languages, grapple with the same target language, it should have a similar effect, giving rise to the common patterns of stress placement in the three varieties of English.

Some segmental rules of Nigerian English phonology

“…In Nigeria, similar studies have been carried out at the suprasegmental level, describing word-stress, rhythm and intonation patterns of this variety of English. Atoye (1991: 1) claims debatably in his study that in NigE stress is established on the "initial, medial penultimate and final syllables" in a way which at this stage cannot be explained, unless "speculatively"; but later studies, in addition to Simo Bobda (1994), whose data on Cameroon English word-stress is almost identical to the Nigerian data, like Simo Bobda (1995) and Peng and Ann (2001), provide ample evidence for the predictability of word-stress in NigE, while Jowitt (2000) provides similar evidence on intonation, Udofot (2003) on stress and rhythm, and Gut (2005) and Gut and Milde (2002) on prosody, for example.…”

Accommodating (to) ELF in the international university

“…They also tend to use word stress in ways that differ from native English, often placing the stress on the phonetically longest syllable in a word, e.g. on '-ate' in words such as 'educate' and on '-ise' in words such as 'supervise', leading Peng and Ann (2000) to hypothesize that an international wordstress rule may be emerging. ELF speakers also tend to avoid weak forms, using the full vowel sound rather than schwa in words such as 'but', 'for', 'them' and the like.…”

Understanding the Innerworks of Word Stress in RP and Cameroon English: A Case for a Competing Constraints Approach

“…It should be stressed that the term "constraint" is not quite used in the Optimality (OT) sense, and that the analysis offered here is not based on OT, although it resembles it. This work follows studies showing data on stress peculiarities in Cameroon English (CamE) and neighbouring varieties such as Nigerian English (Kujore 1985;Atoye 1991;Simo Bobda 1995, 1997, 2004Peng and Jean 2001), and further studies on the predictability of stress in these varieties (Peng and Jean 2001;Simo Bobda 1994, 2008. The data for CamE is clearly established in the literature, and shown in Chapter Three of Simo Bobda (1994), for example.…”