Weight and final vowels in the English stress system

Abstract

This paper presents both dictionary evidence and experimental evidence that the quality of a word's final vowel plays a role in assigning main stress in English. Specifically, a final [i] pushes main stress leftwards – three-syllable words ending with [i] have a strong tendency to take antepenultimate stress. This pattern is compared with the Latin Stress Rule for English, according to which words with heavy penultimate syllables should have penultimate stress. Both pressures are shown to be productive in experiments. Two analyses of the final-[i] generalisation are tested, one using the ‘cloned’ constraint Non-finFt[i], and one using the ‘parochial’ constraint Antepenult[i], which directly penalises [i]-final words which do not have antepenultimate stress. Although it is has less typological support, Antepenult[i] is argued for on the grounds that it correctly predicts participants' behaviour on words with both a heavy penult and a final [i], which are extremely rare in the lexicon.

Modelling German Word Stress

“…Moreover, this finding is compatible with the assumption that the position of word stress can be determined by means of analogy (Guion et al 2003;Arciuli et al 2010;Burani et al 2014;Moore-Cantwell 2020).…”

“…In this way, the algorithm is able to represent stress assignment on the basis of phonological/orthographic neighbors, as has been demonstrated in previous studies (e.g. Guion et al 2003;Arciuli et al 2010;Burani et al 2014;Moore-Cantwell 2020).…”

“…A further factor to be considered is the role of analogy which has been demonstrated in a number of languages including Italian (Burani et al 2014) and English (Guion et al 2003;Arciuli et al 2010;Moore-Cantwell 2020). According to the analogical approach, stress is assigned on the basis of similarity between word forms.…”

Syllable weight and natural duration in textsetting popular music in English

“…With this first test, I confirm this tendency while controlling for stress level and position in the word by considering only stressed initials of disyllables. The division between light and heavy syllables is nuanced in English (Moore-Cantwell 2021), but for present purposes, I follow Olejarczuk & Kapatsinski (2018: 385) in treating syllables ending with monophthongs except /i, u/ as light and those ending with /i, u/, codas, diphthongs and syllabic consonants (including the rhotic) as heavy. In DALI 2, heavy syllables as initials of disyllables are mapped onto quarter (i.e.…”

Oral Business English Recognition Method Based on RankNet Model and Endpoint Detection Algorithm

“…It is found that lexical parameters and audibility have influence on word speech recognition in monosyllabic speech test [2]. The quality of final vowels of words plays an important role in English major stress [3]. Acoustic cues of word stress promote offline and online language processing to a certain extent [4], because speakers are sensitive to auditory feedback in stressed and unstressed syllables [5].…”