Lexical Stress Variation : Key Disyllable Classes in Australian English
Résumé
Lexical Stress of Multicategorial Words and Exceptional Disyllables in Australian English
Phonological descriptions of Australian English rarely contain comments on word-stress assignment in that particular variety of English. In 1965 Mitchell and Delbridge wrote: "Very few differences in word-stress between English and Australian speech may be observed." After them, authors such as Bernard in 1981, Sussex in 1989, Taylor in 1989, Turner in 1989 and Butler in 2001 confirmed their remark. However, the lists of examples given by these authors only add up to approximately thirty items.
In this study I seek to explore word-stress assignment in Australian English in a more systematic way in order to find wether the variations between Australian English and British English and/or American English are idiosyncratic or follow a specific pattern. This analysis will focus on multicategorial words and exceptional disyllables (baring lexical stress on the last syllable) since lexical stress is often unstable in those words when one compares the diverse varieties of English. It is unsurprising that most of the examples given by the authors belong to those classes if one does not take into account compound words and words of three or more syllables which will not be take into consideration in the present work.
This study is first and foremost a dictionary-based one and uses the transcriptions given in the Macquarie Dictionary for Australian English and those present in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary for the British and American varieties of English. When necessary the study will be completed with oral data and/or information regarding the frequency of the item at stake.
Bibliography
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Domaines
LinguistiqueOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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