Linguistic Society of America

Stress in English Words by G. F. Arnold Review by: Archibald A. Hill Language, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1959), pp. 564-567 Published by: Linguistic Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/411241 . Accessed: 29/09/2013 22:50
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564

LANGUAGE, VOLUME 35, NUMBER 3 (1959)

extended quotations from authors ranging chronologically from Sweet to Fries. Aside from about a page and a quarter of illustrations, there are, in a space of about four pages, only enough lines other than quotations to make the necessary transitions. The various authorities quoted could certainly be expected to differ in point of view, and even in trustworthiness. Yet the only criticism which Simko offers for any of the quotations is to say that Fries may have dated some changes somewhat too early. The following statement is typical of the conclusions finally reached (112, in the penultimate paragraph of the book):
The theoretical value of the present word-order investigation lies in its denial of opinions suggesting that the simplification of English inflections must have been preceded by a stabilization of the word-order. In reality the inflectional decay took place before the fixation of the word-order. The conclusion to be drawn is that inflectional simplification is, as a rule, followed by the stabilization of the word-order in cases where this is still to some extent free.

The conclusion is one which is at least moderately astonishing, not because it is inherently unlikely, but because to establish such a conclusion it would have been necessary to present the details of inflectional survival in relation to the various types of order here studied, and further to give at least some attention to possible ambiguity in cases where inflectional morphemes have been lost and order signals have not yet been established. In the absence of such discussion, the conclusion seems unrelated to the data. Stress in English words. By G. F. ARNOLD. (Reprinted from Lingua, Vol. 6, Nos. 3 and 4.) Pp. 96. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1957.
Reviewed by ARCHIBALD A. HILL, University of Texas

It is not only difficult to analyze English stress, it is difficult to discuss it without misunderstanding. Discussions, printed or oral, can go wrong if the dialects differ. I can remember at least one heated discussion that subsided when it was discovered that one party had primary-tertiary stress on blackboard, while the other had primary-secondary. If definitions of fundamental terms are not given, or if they differ, discussion can go even farther astray. For instance, an unwary reader of Dwight L. Bolinger's recent article, English stress: The interpenetration of strata, might be seriously misled by the statement that 'three phonemic [stress] levels make the best choice'.' Bolinger later makes it clear that he is using the term 'phonemic' as equivalent to 'distinguisher between words', and does not apply it to distinguishers between sentences. Actually, Bolinger sets up extra sentence entities, so that his position is quite different from what it seems to be on first reading. All these difficulties are to be found in Arnold's study. When he remarks 'it is necessary to extend the significance of the term compound word to include words of the type arm-chairin which the tonic syllable occurs within the second element' (13, footnote 18), I find some difficulty in understanding him, since the idiolects I know place the primary stress on the first element of armchair. There
1Study of sounds 296 (compiled by the Phonetic Society of Japan; Tokyo, 1957).

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is certainly difficulty over definitions, since (as pointed out below) stress is stated to be rhythmic but no definition of rhythm is given. Furthermore, Arnold's title, Stress in English words,is our only real hint of his approach to phonemic analysis. Apparently Arnold would agree with Bolinger that phonemes are found in words only, but he does not, as Bolinger does, go on to take up sentence distinctions in other ways. Arnold begins his discussion with a reference to Trager and Bloch, The syllabic phonemes of English, and states that the setting up of four stress phonemes in that article was for the purpose of reducing the vowel phonemes to six. It is not necessary to consider whether the purpose of that very influential article was actually as stated, since the six-vowel frame for English has been generally abandoned, while the four stresses have not. The second main basis for Arnold's study is Stanley Newman's article in Word, Vol. 2, which sets up six phonetic levels of stress, arranged into three phonemes. Arnold attempts to reconcile the position of these two articles, and does so by maximizing the correlation between vowel quality and stress, at the same time that he attempts to reduce stress sequences to relatively regular patterns. It should be said at the outset that Arnold is attempting to reduce the number of stress phonemes, but that he is not concerned with reducing four to three. Since he is concerned only with citation forms of words-all his data are drawn from Daniel Jones, English pronouncing dictionary4 (1937)-he tacitly assumes that a fourth stress is unnecessary. The limitation of his data brings him, then, into accord with Jones's statement, which he quotes (7-8): 'it seems possible to distinguish up to four degrees of stress ... [but] It is often possible to manage sufficiently well with three degrees, and sometimes even two.' Arnold's real concern is to do away with phonemic status for his middle grade of stress. He describes it thus (9): 'A careful study of all entries in EPD strongly suggests that any secondary stress found preceding a principal stress is in reality a principal stress which lacks the pitch prominence always associated with a principal stress.' This is a familiar position, which has been recently held in this country by Charles F. Hockett and Martin Joos, though both have now abandoned it.2 Yet in the narrow framework in which Arnold operates, his position is defensible. For instance, Arnold argues (9) that the pronunciation /i:kwi'distant/ (his transcription) is necessarily given with a pitch peak on the third syllable. This is quite certainly the form of normal citation. Not even Sledd's now famous /2w6n3darfil,/ occurs except in conversation or phonetic demonstration. Arnold is therefore able to describe his middle stress as always 'non-tonic strong stress'. Yet, having thus moved towards a simple binary analysis, he seems to move in the other direction, setting up more grades than two'in this way we shall, when necessary, be able to refer to strong (i.e. having nontonic strong stress) lenis vowels and weak (i.e. taking weak stress) fortis vowels' (20). Exactly what this statement would mean in phonemic terms is not clear, since Arnold avoids phonemic analysis and terminology. A guess, however, is
2 For Hockett's most recent statement, see Linguistics and the teaching of English as a foreign language, Language learning 62-3 (special issue, June 1958). Joos stated his latest position at the Second Texas Conference.

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566

LANGUAGE, VOLUME 35, NUMBER 3 (1959)

that Arnold means that these are allophones of stress assignable to nontonic strong stress and to weak stress, which are controlled in occurrence by the vowel quality. A main part of Arnold's theory is mentioned in the quotation just given. He holds that there are two series of vowels to be found in English words in syllables other than those which receive the principal stress. One series occur 'normally rhythmically strong and thus have non-tonic strong stress'. The others occur 'normally rhythmically weak, and so have weak stress'. These weak (or lenis) vowels are /i a u o/; the fortis series consists of all other vowels and diphthongs (19). It is clear that in part the possibility of setting up lenis vowels is due to the transcriptional system used. As long as Arnold follows Jones in not writing /a/ under stress, shwa is undoubtedly a lenis vowel. Yet even in this system there is trouble. Though /i/ is called a lenis vowel, its occurrence in stress patterns seems unpredictable. Thus, in the pretonic sequence strong-weak it occurs strong (incubation) and weak (audibility) (23). If we examine all the sixteen pretonic stress patterns enumerated between pages 22 and 51, we find only one position in which /i/ does not occur; this is the next-to-last position in the pattern of strong followed by three weaks (45), where a lenis vowel would certainly be expected. It would seem that if one of his lenis series occurs in all positions but one, a predictive correlation between stress and vowel type is impossible. A second main part of Arnold's theory concerns the nature of stress. Stress (apart from principal stress) is rhythmic (11):
We believe that the degree of stress placed upon any syllable in the word or utterance can be freely determined by reference to the rhythm pattern that accompanies the word or utterance ... The phenomenon which, by recurring at more or less regular intervals, creates what may be called ... a feeling of rhythm in speech is generally admitted to be stress.

And (95-6):
We must reiterate our conviction that articulatory force is frequently a difficult and, sometimes, an impossible yardstick for the recognition of linguistic stress in English and that the rhythm patterns inherent in English words form a much more reliable and indeed easier method, not only of determining the placement of the linguistic strong stress, but also of distinguishing between the two universally agreed categories of linguistic stress, namely strong and weak.

This is Arnold's final statement, and this represents his reconciliation of the position of Bloch and Trager with that of Newman. The quoted sentences are by no means clear. Apparently stress is not articulatory force and (one may guess) it is not intensity. It is not pitch, since Arnold has previously identified principal stress with pitch. It can scarcely be length, since length is assigned separate phonemic status. I am forced to guess that 'rhythmic stress' may possibly amount to no more than the statement that stress is identifiable in sequentially arranged alternations, not when heard in isolated syllables. If this is so, the statement is a commonplace. If it is not so, I cannot identify rhythm, and the statements given are completely subjective. The patterns devised by Arnold in working out his theory produce some rather startling transcriptions of pronunciation. For instance, he defines the rhythmic

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pattern of compatibility as regularly alternating weak-strong throughout, with a final strong on the last syllable (16). Does this mean that Arnold pronounces the -ty of this word with a major stress, or does it merely mean that (in American terms) a stronger allophone of weak falls on this syllable? Arnold makes some attempts to give rules for instances of patterns which do not show correlation of vowel quality and stress. One such rule is this (14):
When, in a pre-tonic sequence of three or more syllables, all vowels, or all except the last are of the type usually associated with weak stress, a non-tonic strong stress occurs on vowel /i/ of that syllable in the pre-tonic sequence which corresponds to the tonic syllable of related words.

This rule is used to explain the stress which falls on the first vowel of civilization, since there is a related word civil. Even if we give Arnold the benefit of the doubt on the validity of his rule, it is still true that he should have specified that he meant 'related minimal word', since the form of his statement does not rule out the interpretation that there should be a strong stress on the second syllable, rather than on the first, since there is also a related form civility. It is interesting that Arnold's final position is curiously close to that of Chomsky, Halle, and Lukoff, who also reduce all stress differences to the binary opposition of stressed and unstressed. But where Chomsky, Halle, and Lukoff operate with a nonphonemic morphological set of junctures as a means of reducing the number of stress phonemes,3 Arnold accomplishes much the same result by reducing all speech to isolated words and thus avoiding junctures altogether. Note his statement (11):
The second procedure [that of testing words in sentences] we have rejected completely since the stress pattern of the isolated word is often changed to a greater or less extent as soon as the word is placed in an utterance context.

Arnold's presentation is both similar to and different from previous attempts at reduction of stress phonemes, and no more successful. Ob-Ugric metrics: The metrical structure of Ostyak and Vogul folk-poetry. By
ROBERT AUSTERLITZ.(FF communications, Vol. 70, No. 174; edited for the

Folklore Fellows.) Pp. 128. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1958.

Reviewed by ARCHIBALD A. HILL, University of Texas

This study shows some of the faults that could be expected from its origin and history. It was begun as a Columbia University dissertation, and in accord with the rigidity characteristic of such documents, it is occasionally repetitious, as when the discussion of cohesive and isolated lines on page 39 is largely parallel to the earlier discussion on page 24. The book was printed abroad, and accordingly there are occasional misprints, such as 'prosletyzing' for 'proselytizing' (9). It is a pleasure to be able to report that trifling faults of this easily pardoned sort are the only blemishes on a really excellent monograph. Its origin and history contribute also to important and unique positive qualities. As a thesis the study was directed by John Lotz, and in consequence fits
3 On

accent and juncture in English, For Roman Jakobson 65-80 (The Hague, 1956).

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