Re: Variable Strees-Accent indicating word-class

Piotr,

thank you for taking the time to answer so completely.


Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2008 9:09 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] RE: Variable Strees-Accent indicating word-class


> On 2008-06-08 15:25, Patrick Ryan wrote:
>
> > We are all familiar with many examples like:
> >
> > cónvert, noun; convért, verb.
> >
> > I am wondering how far back this pattern of stress-accent
> > differentiation
> > can be traced?
>
> Not _very_ far: to Early Modern English, with a lot of vacillation and
> unsteadily increasing productivity in more recent times. The difference
> is the result of more-or-less obligatory stress retraction in
> (Franco-)Latinate nouns (as opposed to verbs and adjectives). I would
> attribute the difference to the fact that verbs, when inflected, often
> receive an extra syllable ([convert]ing, [convert]ed, formerly also inf.
> [convert]e(n), 3sg. [convert]eth, 2sg. [convert]est); adjectives like
> <converse> are associated with adverbs in -ly ([converse]ly); and in
> both cases the unstressed final syllable protects the penult stress from
> shifting. Borrowed nouns with more than one full vowel seem to have had
> variable stress in Middle English (though poets like Chaucer used the
> iambic variant mostly in line-final positions; cf. Mod.E bamBOO, but
> BAMboo FURniture, depending on the rhythmic environment), and even now
> the second syllable usually has a full vowel (like that of the
> final-stressed verb). But denominative verbs like <to comfort> are
> trochaic, not iambic, and completely homophonous with the nouns they are
> derived from.
>
> Piotr
>
>