Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the question of why in the case of some English disyllabic combining forms, the stressed penult contains either a long or short vowel; e.g., the combining form zygo- can be pronounced either /ˈzʌɪɡəʊ/ or /ˈzɪɡəʊ/, with the nucleus of the stressed penult being interchangeably the diphthong /ʌɪ/ and the short monophthong /ɪ/. It is argued that long pronunciations such as /ˈzʌɪɡəʊ/ are mainly due to occurrences in pen-initially stressed formations such as zyˈgoma, zyˈgosis, zyˈgotic, etc., in which pre-tonic y has the potential of being phonetically realized as /ʌɪ/. Short pronunciations such as /ˈzɪɡəʊ/ are, by contrast, mainly due to formations such as ˈzygospore and ˈzygotene, in which the stressed syllable is separated from the right word boundary by at least two unstressed syllables (which, given the oft-mentioned stress-timing of the English language, may count for an English speaker as rhythmically unfortunate).
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