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Linguistic Society of America

Stress in English Words by G. F. ArnoldReview by: Archibald A. HillLanguage, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1959), pp. 564-567Published by: Linguistic Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/411241 .

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LANGUAGE, VOLUME 35, NUMBER 3 (1959)ANGUAGE, 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 ofabout four pages, only enough lines other than quotations to make the neces-sary transitions. The various authorities quoted could certainly be expected todiffer in point of view, and even in trustworthiness. Yet the only criticism whichSimko offersfor any of the quotations is to say that Fries may have dated somechanges somewhat too early.The following statement is typical of the conclusions finally reached (112, inthe penultimate paragraphof the book):The theoretical value of the present word-orderinvestigation lies in its denial of opinionssuggesting that the simplification of English inflections must have been preceded by astabilization of the word-order. In reality the inflectional decay took place before thefixation of the word-order. The conclusion to be drawn is that inflectional simplificationis, as a rule, followed by the stabilization of the word-order in cases where this is stillto some extent free.

The conclusion is one which is at least moderately astonishing, not because itis inherently unlikely, but because to establish such a conclusion it would havebeen necessary to present the details of inflectional survival in relation to thevarious types of order here studied, and further to give at least some attentionto possible ambiguity in cases where inflectional morphemes have been lost andorder 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 ARCHIBALDA. HILL, University of TexasIt is not only difficult to analyze English stress, it is difficult to discuss itwithout misunderstanding. Discussions, printed or oral, can go wrong if thedialects differ. I can rememberat least one heated discussion that subsided whenit was discovered that one party had primary-tertiary stress on blackboard,while the other had primary-secondary. If definitions of fundamental terms arenot 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 in-terpenetration of strata, might be seriously misled by the statement that 'threephonemic [stress]levels make the best choice'.' Bolinger later makes it clear thathe is using the term 'phonemic' as equivalent to 'distinguisher between words',and does not apply it to distinguishers between sentences. Actually, Bolinger setsup extra sentence entities, so that his position is quite different from what itseems 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 includewords of the type arm-chair in which the tonic syllable occurs within the secondelement' (13, footnote 18), I find some difficulty in understanding him, since theidiolects I know place the primary stress on the first element of armchair. There1Study of sounds 296 (compiled by the Phonetic Society of Japan; Tokyo, 1957).

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 ofabout four pages, only enough lines other than quotations to make the neces-sary transitions. The various authorities quoted could certainly be expected todiffer in point of view, and even in trustworthiness. Yet the only criticism whichSimko offersfor any of the quotations is to say that Fries may have dated somechanges somewhat too early.The following statement is typical of the conclusions finally reached (112, inthe penultimate paragraphof the book):The theoretical value of the present word-orderinvestigation lies in its denial of opinionssuggesting that the simplification of English inflections must have been preceded by astabilization of the word-order. In reality the inflectional decay took place before thefixation of the word-order. The conclusion to be drawn is that inflectional simplificationis, as a rule, followed by the stabilization of the word-order in cases where this is stillto some extent free.

The conclusion is one which is at least moderately astonishing, not because itis inherently unlikely, but because to establish such a conclusion it would havebeen necessary to present the details of inflectional survival in relation to thevarious types of order here studied, and further to give at least some attentionto possible ambiguity in cases where inflectional morphemes have been lost andorder 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 ARCHIBALDA. HILL, University of TexasIt is not only difficult to analyze English stress, it is difficult to discuss itwithout misunderstanding. Discussions, printed or oral, can go wrong if thedialects differ. I can rememberat least one heated discussion that subsided whenit was discovered that one party had primary-tertiary stress on blackboard,while the other had primary-secondary. If definitions of fundamental terms arenot 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 in-terpenetration of strata, might be seriously misled by the statement that 'threephonemic [stress]levels make the best choice'.' Bolinger later makes it clear thathe is using the term 'phonemic' as equivalent to 'distinguisher between words',and does not apply it to distinguishers between sentences. Actually, Bolinger setsup extra sentence entities, so that his position is quite different from what itseems 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 includewords of the type arm-chair in which the tonic syllable occurs within the secondelement' (13, footnote 18), I find some difficulty in understanding him, since theidiolects I know place the primary stress on the first element of armchair. There1Study of sounds 296 (compiled by the Phonetic Society of Japan; Tokyo, 1957).

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REVIEWSis certainly difficulty over definitions, since (as pointed out below) stress is statedto 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 wordsonly, but he does not, as Bolinger does, go on to take up sentence distinctionsin other ways.Arnold begins his discussion with a referenceto Trager and Bloch, The syllabicphonemes of English, and states that the setting up of four stress phonemes inthat article was for the purpose of reducing the vowel phonemes to six. It is notnecessary to consider whether the purpose of that very influential article wasactually as stated, since the six-vowel frame for English has been generallyabandoned, while the four stresses have not. The second main basis for Arnold'sstudy is Stanley Newman's article in Word, Vol. 2, which sets up six phoneticlevels of stress, arranged into three phonemes. Arnold attempts to reconcile theposition of these two articles, and does so by maximizing the correlation betweenvowel quality and stress, at the same time that he attempts to reduce stress se-quences to relatively regular patterns.It should be said at the outset that Arnold is attempting to reduce the numberof 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 drawnfrom Daniel Jones, English pronouncing dictionary4 (1937)-he tacitly assumesthat 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 possibleto distinguish up to four degrees of stress ... [but] It is often possible to managesufficiently well with three degrees, and sometimes even two.'Arnold's real concern is to do away with phonemic status for his middle gradeof stress. He describes it thus (9): 'A careful study of all entries in EPD stronglysuggests that any secondary stress found preceding a principal stress is in realitya principal stress which lacks the pitch prominence always associated with aprincipal stress.' This is a familiar position, which has been recently held in thiscountry by Charles F. Hockett and Martin Joos, though both have now aban-doned it.2 Yet in the narrow framework in which Arnold operates, his positionis defensible. For instance, Arnold argues (9) that the pronunciation/i:kwi'distant/ (his transcription) is necessarily given with a pitch peak on thethird syllable. This is quite certainly the form of normal citation. Not evenSledd's now famous /2w6n3darfil,/ occurs except in conversation or phoneticdemonstration. Arnold is therefore able to describe his middle stress as always'non-tonic strong stress'. Yet, having thus moved towards a simple binary analy-sis, 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 non-tonic 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 Englishas a foreign language, Language learning 62-3 (special issue, June 1958). Joos stated hislatest position at the Second Texas Conference.

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LANGUAGE, VOLUME 35, NUMBER 3 (1959)that Arnold means that these are allophones of stress assignable to nontonicstrong stress and to weak stress, which are controlled in occurrenceby the vowelquality.A main part of Arnold's theory is mentioned in the quotation just given. Heholds that there are two series of vowels to be found in English words in syllablesother than those which receive the principal stress. One series occur 'normallyrhythmically 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 thetranscriptional 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 istrouble. Though /i/ is called a lenis vowel, its occurrence in stress patternsseems unpredictable. Thus, in the pretonic sequence strong-weak it occursstrong (incubation) and weak (audibility) (23). If we examine all the sixteen pre-tonic stress patterns enumerated between pages 22 and 51, we find only one posi-tion in which /i/ does not occur; this is the next-to-last position in the patternof strong followed by three weaks (45), where a lenis vowel would certainly beexpected. It would seem that if one of his lenis series occurs in all positions butone, 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 utterancecan be freely determined by reference to the rhythm pattern that accompanies the wordor 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 bestress.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 andthat the rhythm patterns inherent in English words form a much more reliable and indeedeasier method, not only of determining the placement of the linguistic strong stress, butalso 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 po-sition of Bloch and Trager with that of Newman.The quoted sentences are by no means clear. Apparently stress is not articula-tory force and (one may guess) it is not intensity. It is not pitch, since Arnoldhas 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 stressis identifiable in sequentially arranged alternations, not when heard in isolatedsyllables. If this is so, the statement is a commonplace. If it is not so, I cannotidentify rhythm, and the statements given are completely subjective.The patterns devised by Arnold in working out his theory produce some ratherstartling transcriptions of pronunciation. For instance, he defines the rhythmic

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REVIEWSEVIEWSpattern of compatibility as regularly alternating weak-strong throughout, witha final strong on the last syllable (16). Does this mean that Arnold pronouncesthe -ty of this word with a major stress, or does it merely mean that (in Americanterms) a stronger allophone of weak falls on this syllable?Arnold makes some attempts to give rules for instances of patterns which donot 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 lastare of the type usually associated with weak stress, a non-tonic strong stress occurs onvowel /i/ of that syllable in the pre-tonic sequence which correspondsto the tonic syllableof 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 doubton the validity of his rule, it is still true that he should have specified that hemeant 'related minimal word', since the form of his statement does not rule outthe 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 Chom-sky, Halle, and Lukoff, who also reduce all stress differences to the binary opposi-tion of stressed and unstressed. But where Chomsky, Halle, and Lukoff operatewith a nonphonemic morphological set of junctures as a means of reducing thenumber of stress phonemes,3 Arnold accomplishes much the same result by re-ducing all speech to isolated words and thus avoiding junctures altogether. Notehis statement (11):The second procedure [that of testing words in sentences] we have rejected completelysince the stress pattern of the isolated word is often changed to a greater or less extentas soon as the word is placed in an utterance context.Arnold's presentation is both similar to and different from previous attemptsat reduction of stress phonemes, and no more successful.Ob-Ugric metrics: The metrical structure of Ostyak and Vogul folk-poetry. By

ROBERTAUSTERLITZ. FF communications, Vol. 70, No. 174; edited for theFolklore Fellows.) Pp. 128. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1958.Reviewed by ARCHIBALDA. HILL, University of Texas

This study shows some of the faults that could be expected from its origin andhistory. It was begun as a Columbia University dissertation, and in accord withthe rigidity characteristic of such documents, it is occasionally repetitious, aswhen the discussion of cohesive and isolated lines on page 39 is largely parallelto the earlier discussion on page 24. The book was printed abroad, and accord-ingly 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 pardonedsort are the only blemishes on a really excellent monograph.Its origin and history contribute also to important and unique positive quali-ties. 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).

pattern of compatibility as regularly alternating weak-strong throughout, witha final strong on the last syllable (16). Does this mean that Arnold pronouncesthe -ty of this word with a major stress, or does it merely mean that (in Americanterms) a stronger allophone of weak falls on this syllable?Arnold makes some attempts to give rules for instances of patterns which donot 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 lastare of the type usually associated with weak stress, a non-tonic strong stress occurs onvowel /i/ of that syllable in the pre-tonic sequence which correspondsto the tonic syllableof 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 doubton the validity of his rule, it is still true that he should have specified that hemeant 'related minimal word', since the form of his statement does not rule outthe 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 Chom-sky, Halle, and Lukoff, who also reduce all stress differences to the binary opposi-tion of stressed and unstressed. But where Chomsky, Halle, and Lukoff operatewith a nonphonemic morphological set of junctures as a means of reducing thenumber of stress phonemes,3 Arnold accomplishes much the same result by re-ducing all speech to isolated words and thus avoiding junctures altogether. Notehis statement (11):The second procedure [that of testing words in sentences] we have rejected completelysince the stress pattern of the isolated word is often changed to a greater or less extentas soon as the word is placed in an utterance context.Arnold's presentation is both similar to and different from previous attemptsat reduction of stress phonemes, and no more successful.Ob-Ugric metrics: The metrical structure of Ostyak and Vogul folk-poetry. By

ROBERTAUSTERLITZ. FF communications, Vol. 70, No. 174; edited for theFolklore Fellows.) Pp. 128. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1958.Reviewed by ARCHIBALDA. HILL, University of Texas

This study shows some of the faults that could be expected from its origin andhistory. It was begun as a Columbia University dissertation, and in accord withthe rigidity characteristic of such documents, it is occasionally repetitious, aswhen the discussion of cohesive and isolated lines on page 39 is largely parallelto the earlier discussion on page 24. The book was printed abroad, and accord-ingly 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 pardonedsort are the only blemishes on a really excellent monograph.Its origin and history contribute also to important and unique positive quali-ties. 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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