hmm.

[fox]

1061 words into a ~2000-word essay (though that's a deceptive figure, including as it does my name, the date, the essay title, and a couple of ascii-art diagrams of word stress trees -- i'm serious, none of you except ellen_fremedon and maybe one or two others have any idea how much geekery my work requires), and i'm not sure i really have a point.  i'm certainly not sure i'm actually addressing the question:  How is English lexical stress determined, according to the theory of Metrical Phonology?

please note that Metrical Phonology is not the opposite of Standard or Imperial Phonology.  (although life would be pretty different if it were.)

this essay has, however, enabled me to write sentences like (discussing the word polypropylene):

That is, it is clear that the primary stress of the word falls on the -pro- syllable; and it is clear (for the moment) that the -ly- and ­-py- syllables are without stress; and it may even be clear that the po- syllable is more prominent, and the -lene syllable less prominent, between the secondary-stressed syllables.  But how can it be clear, in a system that places such importance on the idea of relative prominence (which Liberman and Prince introduce in their Prospectus) that there is a degree of stress between that found on -pro- and that found on po-?

and, as always, expect to be taken seriously.

Comments

[decarnin.livejournal.com]

Wheeeeeeeeee!

=8-)

[sowilo.livejournal.com]

This is interesting, especially given the fact that your lecturers are likely to pronounce things differently than you do. Aluminium , anyone?