Rhythmic Stress in Spanish

Abstract

Modern Spanish regularly employs a variety of word orders, depending on its need for expression. This plastic quality makes for rhythmic beauty, but is a constant source of trouble for students of this tongue.1 It is all well and good to warn the beginner not to expect logic in language; but expect it he does, and to him, logic is what he knows as common and right. If a certain construction does not fit his logic, he wants a rule to make it fit. In the classroom, the inexperienced teacher tends to follow and depend on the textbook as rigidly as the student does. Consequently, how the rules are stated in the book is an item of considerable importance. The basic factor in Spanish word order is a simple one: tonic stress. A comprehension of stress patterns should not be hard for the speaker of English, since he is already familiar with syllable-, word-, and sentence stress. And yet most beginning textbooks in Spanish do not make use of this approach, or else fail to carry it far enough. This stress concept applies fundamentally to two basic types of word order: (1) that of the adjective and its noun, and (2) sentence groups. The first of these also is generally characteristic of the other Romance languages. In our time, the second has value mainly for Spanish, although it was once common to all the Romance tongues-Germanic as well-, and has left distinct traces in all of them, including Modern German and English. To begin with, it should be pointed out that, of the two elements in a Spanish sentence (or phrase), such as noun and adjective, the second has the logical stress: i.e., 1 2'.2 In the case of three or more elements (such as subject, verb, and complements), the first and last have the stress, while the intermediate position is the weaker one: i.e., 1' 2 3. Accordingly, in order to determine whether a descriptive adjective should precedeits noun in Spanish, it is necessary to decide only what its rhythmic stress is in English. For example, the sentence I want a good book to read may be stressed I want a good book to read (Quiero un buen libro para leer), or I want a good book to read (Quiero un libro bueno para leer). In either case, the important word follows.