Abstract
The deaccentuation of given and/or repeated elements is familiar from many dialects of English. We propose that deaccentuation is essentially an optional postlexical phonological process of stress retraction triggered by two constraints: *Stress-Copy, which assigns a violation to a stress peak on a word with a segmentally identical copy in the left context, and Rightmost, which assigns a violation to every word between a stress peak and the right phrase edge. We quantify deaccentuation by defining it as being perceived with less stress than expected, where expected stress is calculated by an implementation of Liberman and Prince's (1977) phrasal stress algorithm. We provide empirical evidence for our analysis based on the first inaugurals of six former U.S. presidents.
Highlights
The deaccentuation of given and/or repeated elements is attested in many dialects of English
Deaccentuation is a phonological rule of English. b
Our analysis is built on the assumption that stress is fundamentally a mechanical phenomenon grounded in syntax and phonology (Chomsky & Halle 1968)
Summary
The deaccentuation of given and/or repeated elements is attested in many dialects of English. The transcriptions show that the second occurrence of a word is perceived as deaccented (COUNTER...counter, CHALLENGE...challenge) and the closest content word preceding the deaccented word is perceived as accented (SIDES, INVITE). This accentuation appears directly tied to deaccentuation. An alternative hypothesis is based on form: DEACCENT REPEATED holds that deaccentuation targets the second of two segmentally identical strings. CHILDREN2 is both coreferential with and segmentally identical to CHILDREN1, so it should be deaccented on both counts, but it carries nuclear stress Note that both hypotheses only account for deaccentuation.
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