Rhythm and language change in English

Abstract

Disyllabic English nouns tend to be stressed on the first syllable, whereas disyllabic verbs tend to be stressed on the second syllable. In concert with other papers, this report argues that the stress asymmetry was partially caused by two factors: (1) a rhythmic preference for alternations between strong and weak beats, and (2) contextual differences between nouns and verbs that bias verbs toward second syllable stress. In particular, verbs are more likely than nouns to receive inflections that take a syllabic form. Because such syllabic inflections are weakly stressed, their appearance on disyllabic words with first syllable stress will produce two consecutive unstressed syllables. Verbs might therefore be pressured toward second syllable stress, which would establish rhythmic alternation. Prior research has found that stress assignments of disyllabic pseudowords acting as verbs can be modified in the predicted ways through syllabic -ed and -ing inflections. The experiments reported here extend these findings to (1) nouns, (2) plural and third person present singular -es, and (3) actual English words. A final experiment indicates that the locus of the alternation preference is in speech perception and not speech production. The discussion examines reasons why other modifications that could create rhythmic alternation are not observed, the implications of the analysis for stress patterns on trisyllabic English words, and implications of the noun-verb stress difference for one type of language creativity. The paper in general illustrates how basic research in psycholinguistics can be used to study long-term structural changes in language.