Principles of English Stress

by Luigi Burzio

Overview

In this provocative work, Luigi Burzio argues that many common assumptions within stress theory, and phonological theory more generally, are in fact rather arbitrary. He proposes radical departures from recent tradition. In Part I he analyzes stress in the underived English lexicon, arguing that the basic accentual groups or "feet" are not monosyllabic or bisyllabic, as often assumed, but rather bisyllabic or trisyllabic. This analysis brings significant simplifications to other recent theorizing, including the elimination of standard extrametrically and all rules destressing. In Part II Professor Burzio deals with morphologically complex words, and argues that various phenomena of stress presevation, including the apparent stress "neutrality" of a class of affixes, are all predictable reflexes of a single principle of Metrical Consistency. In addition to a superior account of stress, the proposed metrical theory yields a unitary account of a wide spectrum of vowel-length alternations, in an overall conception of phonology which is modular, like that of comtemporary syntax. The book makes a major theoretical contribution to the analysis of English word stress and to phonological theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521023801
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/17/2005
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Linguistics , #72
Pages:	388
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.98(d)

Table of Contents

1. General introduction; Part I. The Stress of Undesired Items: 2. Null vowels and extrametricality; 3. The stress pattern of English; 4. Stress without destressing and vowel reduction; 5. Stress and vowel length; Part II: Stress and Word Formation: 6. Weak preservation; 7. The range of stress 'placing' suffixes; 8. Strong preservation; 9. The range of neutral suffixes; 10. Extensions and refinements.

Editorial Reviews

"The ideas explored in Principles of English Stress are highly original, the analysis is remarkably comprehensive, the arguments are lucidly presented and will surely prompt a serious reconsideration of many central tenets of metrical stress theory." Michael Kenstowicz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

From the Publisher