Is there a term in English for a word whose primary stress is on the antepenultimate syllable? In Spanish, for example, it's called an esdrújula. *************************************************************** 04-27-04, 10:52 AM maiku You mean words like Spanish teléfono, right, Juan? (or should I start calling you Joan? Cool)
Antepenultimate stress is very common in English; in fact, a large majority of words of three or more syllables exhibit that pattern. But the words stressed in that way do not really form a natural class of any sort, and as far as I know there is no special term for them, nor is there any special need for one.
As it happens, the stress is on the antepenult in both of the English forms telephone and telephony (but not in telephonic). These cases reflect a fairly regular pattern in English, but the second more clearly indicates that a shift in stress is going on. In Chomsky and Halle's groundbreaking work The Sound Pattern of English, the placement of stress in both these forms is accounted for by the operation of a transformational rule they call the Alternating Stress Rule. Chomsky and Halle cite the following examples, to which many more could be added:
There are hundreds of exceptions and apparent exceptions, though. For some words, the Alternating Stress Rule apparently applies only optionally--e.g., refugee, magazine. A class of more outright exceptions, as noted by Chomsky and Halle, includes Tennesee, attaché, chandelier, kangaroo, and chimpanzee, along with a fairly large number of others ending with the suffixes -eer, -ier, -ee, or -ette.
As you know, Juan, native Germanic words in English were normally stressed on the first syllable (with the exception of a few unstressed prefixes). When the stem was monosyllabic, as it usually was, or had a single unstressed prefix, and when two unstressed inflectional suffixes were added to it, the result was a word stressed more or less accidently on the antepenult. There is, of course, a very large class of these English words, too. But unlike the previous ones, they have nothing to do with the Alternating Stress Rule. That rule applies mainly to words which should have been stressed on a final tense vowel. Instead, this final stress is reduced by the Alternating Stress Rule to a tertiary stress and the primary stress is shifted left two syllables--hence the name of the rule.
So English words with antepenultimate stress derive in various ways, and, as I said, do not form a natural class. *************************************************************** 04-27-04, 02:45 PM FredPuli Maiku : is there a word for a word which is stressed differently according to its function ? The one that immediately comes to mind may be peculiar to British English. It's 'consort' which is 'to conSORT' and 'a CONsort' and so we may 'conSORT with the CONsorts of others',. Surely, however, if that is local, there must be others that are not. Consort must be of the same root for noun and verb; it is not a homograph, where the root of each identical spelling differs. There the stress or pronunciation may differ to avoid misunderstanding but here no confusion is likely. *************************************************************** 04-27-04, 03:35 PM maiku In American English, too, we say, "Do not consórt with pimps and other low types, and by no means permit your cónsort to do so. We also say, and so do you, I think:
The prisoner's cónduct scarcely permitted the prosecution to condúct a decorous trial. The jury voted to convíct, and, thank God, he is now a cónvict, safely behind bars. The cóntent of the case for the defense did not contént the defendant, of course, who plans to contést the verdict, but this is certain to prove no cóntest.
This criminal may objéct as much as he likes, but he is now what he was always destined to be--an óbject of scorn.
I'm surprised, Fred, that you haven't noticed the large number of such examples in English (there are far more) and their great regularity. The primary stress is on the first syllable for the noun, but is shifted to the right for the verb.
A somewhat subtler example is the distinction between the noun "gráduate" and the verb "gráduâte". In both cases, the primary stress remains on the first syllable. But the verb, unlike the noun, has a tertiary stress on the final syllable. That's because it (the verb) obeys the Alternating Stress Rule (see above) while the noun obeys a certain wrinkle of this I won't try to explain here, which unstresses the vowel in the suffix -ate.
There is no single word I know of for these cases, but they have certainly been noted, and they may be characterized as cases of functional shift of stress. Does that do? *************************************************************** 04-27-04, 03:38 PM teeceeum
quote:Originally posted by maiku: As it happens, the stress is on the antepenult in both of the English forms _telephone_ and _telephony_ ...
Am I misunderstanding something here? I always thought that the first syllable of telephone received the stress. Is my Tennessee-ism showing through again? *************************************************************** 04-27-04, 04:13 PM maiku I probably should have explained the term "antepenultimate," teeceeum. You can click on it here to see how it's defined by M-W, or you can simply believe me, if you want, that it means third from the end, or next-to-next-to-last. The antepenultimate syllable of any three-syllable word is therefore the first syllable, as in telephone. In telephony, a four-syllable word, the antepenultimate syllable is the second (from the front).
Of somewhat greater interest here might be how you, as a native Tennessean, pronounce the word Tennessee. As I pointed out, this word is optionally excepted from the Alternating Stress Rule, and sometimes not. I say Tennessée, myself, but I recall a popular country song by Jimmy Dean with the title,"You oughta see Ténnessee, Mamselle," where the stress was on the first (or, in this case, antepenultimate) syllable. *************************************************************** 04-27-04, 04:57 PM FredPuli Thanks maiku. I was aware of there being many examples; then, as with policemen, there's never one there when you want one, so consort had to do Smile
Now where does 'laboratory' fit into this? The M-W dictionary helpfully gives a voice saying it stressed as we think most Americans do and , on the second loudspeaker symbol, as all English people do. This has caused confusion in the past. Visiting American scientists at Cambridge have asked for directions to the laboratory and been sent towards the lavatory; the stress and the tendency to shorten the first O causes us to substitute a word we do recognise for the one the speaker says. *************************************************************** 04-27-04, 06:35 PM maiku You're just bent on sandbagging me, aren't you, Fred? Wink
If you knew about all the other possible examples, or even if you just suspected there might be some, you might have taken a little time, as I had to do, to dredge up some of them, at which point you would have been able to see for yourself, as perceptive as you are, what the pattern was. Wouldn't that have been more gratifying than bugging me for my humbly offered answer was? Huh? Smile
But forget that. In truth, I'm not at all sure what to make of the stress pattern for the word "laboratory." But there is one thing to notice right off which might point in the right direction: in both American and British pronunciations of this word, it normally has only four syllables, not the five you would expect from its spelling. In America, the second vowel is typically elided, and in Britain the fourth.
If this vowel elision is taken to precede the operation of the Alternating Stress Rule (open to question), and if this rule applies at all, then the primary stress would be placed in your version--guess where? On the antepenultimate syllable. Ta Da!
Unfortunately, the same rule would then appear to place primary stress on the second instance of the vowel "a" in the American version. Actually, the rule can be constrained to avoid that consequence, but really to no avail, because in fact the rule can't apply to either of these forms in any case, since neither of them contains a tense vowel in the final syllable.
At this point I can do no better than to point you to the detailed discussion of words with the suffixation -atory in Chomsky and Halle. This discussion is too technical for me to try to explain in detail here. Furthermore, I don't think Chomsky and Halle's analysis of these cases is worth much, myself. It seems highly artificial and stretched, to me.
In conclusion, all I can say is that the American version, with primary stress on the first syllable, is entirely in keeping with the Germanic genius of the English language, and does not need the Alternating Stress Rule to explain it at all, but that your British corruption of the word, with the primary stress on the second vowel, is inexplicable for all rational beings and must be owing to something I have longed believed: you Brits are all crackers! *************************************************************** 04-28-04, 09:44 AM teeceeum
quote:Originally posted by maiku: Of somewhat greater interest here might be how you, as a native Tennessean, pronounce the word _Tennessee_. As I pointed out, this word is optionally excepted from the Alternating Stress Rule, and sometimes not. I say Tennessée, myself, but I recall a popular country song by Jimmy Dean with the title,"You oughta see Ténnessee, Mamselle," where the stress was on the first (or, in this case, antepenultimate) syllable.
I apologize for going stupid one more time. Of course I understand antepenultimate. I should quit trying to post from work.
I stress the first syllable of Tennessee as do most people I know. However, most of us have also been told that we are wrong. The name of our state derives from a Cherokee word (or chief), tansi or tanasi, either of which have stress on the first. (I'm working from memory here so don't flay me if I miss a point.) All of that may be attributed to collquialisms, I suppose, since town names in my part of the country often appear by their spelling to be mispronounced. For example, The city of Erin is near to me. It's pronounced Ee-rin, not Err-in as one might think. *************************************************************** 04-28-04, 12:25 PM doñadiana English/Spanish Dictionary
quote: esdrújulo -a adj. (gram.) proparoxytonic: dactylic (verse): m (gram.) proparoxytone
*************************************************************** 04-28-04, 02:38 PM maiku TCM: Thanks for your report on how Tennessee is pronounced in Tennessee itself. I had a hunch it was commonly stressed on the first syllable there, but I wasn't sure.
Proper names have this wonderful virtue, that their owners can pronounce them any way they please, and the way they pronounce them is necessarily the only authentic, correct one. So please don't be put off by people who try to tell you that Tennesseans don't even know how to say the name of their own state right. The way Tennesseans say it is the right way, by definition.
Although Americans don't fracture borrowed names quite as wildly as our British cousins do, we have some of our own problems with them. One of my favorite examples is cited by Thomas Pyles in his excellent book on the history and development of English. There never were any buffalos, or American bison, anywhere near the New York city now called Buffalo. It turns out, according to Pyles, that this name is a corruption of the French name for the place, which was beau fleuve.
In keeping with your example of the city of Erin in Tennessee, I can report that there is a Milan, Michigan, and don't try to tell the residents there that they live anywhere but in MY-lun. This pronunciation reflects the tendency I noted above, inherent in the Germanic roots of English, to move the stress to the initial syllable. The accepted pronunciation of Detroit, bad enough French as it already is, is only made worse by the form fairly often heard these days: DEE-troit.
I understand that people from your neck of the woods (sorry, no offense meant) commonly have what are inaccurately called long initial vowels in a number of other words, besides Erin. For example, do you not say yourself, TCM, eye-RACK for Iraq, and A-rab for the people who live there? Nothing wrong with that, just interestingly different.
Doñadiana: Thanks for the translation of Juan's word. I never heard the word probaroxytonic before. My American Heritage dictionary informs me that it denotes words in classical Greek with antepenultimate stress. I've never heard it used to describe any English words, and for reasons already pointed out, it has no real theoretical value as applied to English that I can see. Still, it's always nice to learn a new word. Smile *************************************************************** 04-28-04, 04:12 PM teeceeum Once again I misspoke. (I'm tellin' ya... I gotta quit posting from work.) We accent the last syllable of Tennessee. The historians of the state (of which, one of my ancestors was the first) say that the proper pronounciation should stress the first syllable in keeping with the pronunciation of the Cherokee word(s) tansi/tanasi. And no, I don't say Eye-RAC nor AY-rab. But those in the rural parts of the state often do. I too find local pronunciations quite interesting and find no reason to criticize them. Unless, of course, it's my name they are mispronouncing.
What is even more interesting to me is that speech patterns here have taken on a distinct Mid-Western or neutral accent. I think that may have begun with my generation. While I won't be mistaken to be from any other part of the country, I don't display the same speech patterns or accent as my parents or my sister. My daughter could just as easily be from Columbus, OH, or Indianapolis if you judged by her speech.
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