2519: Germanic Stress Rule: Morae & Dreimorengesetz Nov 5, 2021
While the penultimate stress rule describes the stress accent for Latin, a similar rule for Germanic languages was proposed, called Dreimorengesetz (three-mora rule), wherein the stress is placed 3 morae before the end of each word; a mora is a unit for which a light syllable (generally a short one) is one mora and a heavy syllable (generally a long one) is two morae. This has its own problems, especially in the way it necessitates categorizing the final syllable as always light, but it does provide somewhat of a sense of Germanic languages' stress.
2518: Penultimate Stress Rule Nov 4, 2021
Languages often have inbuilt rules for how each word will take stress, such as Finnish or Proto-Italic were stress is indefinitely on the first syllable, but other times it is dependant on other factors in the environment. Even in Classical Latin, which is slightly more standard, the penultimate stress rule states that if the penultimate syllable is naturally long or if it ends with a consonant it will have the stress accent, and otherwise the stress accent falls on the third-to-last syllable. There are some exceptions, especially around sounds that have been elided or historically syncopated (or of course, doesn't have enough syllables), but this will cover the vast majority of Latin words, and words of other languages.
2513: I Longum: ꟾ Oct 29, 2021
Latin vowels used to be written with apexes, which looked more like traditional accent mark than the macrons used for writing out long vowels in Latin today. This was the only form of punctuation, if it can even be called that, sine historically Latin had no lower-case, no spaces words or breaks for sentences. The only other variable in this system was 'i longum' or 'long i', written as ꟾ which represented the long vowel but didn't take the accent mark. While it is true that J developed from I, it is more accurate to say that J developed from ꟾ. Moreover, in Latin orthography, if two i's would be written together, the second would be ꟾ to distinguish it from N or even U (V). Likewise, in Dutch, there is a common digraph for the long [iː] sound written as IJ, and often further stylized with a smaller i in front, sometimes written as Y, though the Y was not related historically.
2480: Latin Vowel Length: Different Vowels? Sep 26, 2021
Latin, like many languages but unlike English, distinguished between long- and short-vowels. In some languages, these are merely the same vowels but said for roughly double the amount of time, which affects things like meter and syllable length. In Latin, even with Classical pronunciations, these vowels were qualitatively different. For instance, the letter I would be realized as [iː] (the symbol ː just indicates lengthening) when long like the vowel in 'seat' but long, whereas when short it was realized as [ɪ], like the vowel in 'sit'. Indeed, for all the basic letters vowel AEIOU, only A was qualitatively the same vowel, just lengthened [aː] and [a].
2296: (New) Hebrew Stress Mar 30, 2021
Traditionally, Hebrew stress was almost always placed on the final syllable of the word, though there is a pattern which places it on the penultimate syllable. Increasingly however the stress is placed on the penultimate syllable outside of that aforementioned pattern, in general colloquial use, names, and loanwords. Previously, the stress was always predictable depending on syllable weight—i.e. the syllable length and whether the syllable had a coda—but the stress now is phonemic, insofar as it is now used to distinguish between words of different meanings, such as
/ˈboker/ (בּוֹקֵר)—"morning" /boˈker/ (בֹּקֶר)—cowboy
2295: Prosodic Stress Mar 29, 2021
In addition to the way that an individual word will have stress, stress in a sentence adds or indeed creates meaning. For instance:
[*x* indicating stress]
*He* didn't rob her (indicates someone else was a robber)
He didn't rob *her* (indicates someone else was robbed)
This sort of differentiation of meaning can be seen in practically any part of a sentences, even though the literal, structural form will be the same. This is known as prosodic stress since it is the prosody of the sentence which acts to add meaning. Any fun examples of this, write in the comments.
2293: Secondary Stress Mar 27, 2021
Much like with personal matters, words can have not only primary but also secondary stress, especially in certain environments. As the name implies, there is a level of stress that most languages have that introduces phonetic distinctions, but there can also be a secondary level which is less extreme in its change of volume/pitch, but still has a function. In some languages like Hawai'ian or Estonian, this is a part built into every word or at least sentences no matter what, and is therefore predictable. In English, this not predictable, but common in certain structures such as with compounds where the first syllable has primary stress as in:
laundry-cleaner, where the first syllable of 'cleaner' has secondary stress. This makes it easier to determine when listening that there is indeed a compound rather than two distinct words.
2291: Stress in Tonal Languages Mar 25, 2021
It would be reasonable to assume that tonal languages, which already rely on changes in pitch to distinguish between words don't have stress or meter since those functions also involve volume, length, and even pitch. This assumption would be incorrect however. While it is true that these features are less relevant than in certain non-tonal languages, stressed syllables have been found in Mandarin for example by utilizing change in the fundamental frequency of the pitch (i.e. the swing in pitch of one individual tone) greater than that of the unstressed syllable, which would therefore have a more narrow change in pitch by itself.
2290: Simulfix and Transfix Mar 24, 2021
While suprasegmental patterns exist in order to distinguish between certain English nouns and verbs—e.g.rébel (n) - rebél (v)—this is not the only sort of suprasegmental morphology. For instance, these same patterns exist of course with strong verbs and strong nouns, like 'ring-rang-rung' or 'tooth-teeth' wherein the change is internal and is not only additional, unlike for instance the '-ing' suffix which removes no part of the root-word. This affix is known as a simulfix. Something similar exists within Semitic languages known as a transfix wherein a series of regular, patterned vowels (and at times, other consonants) are effectively inserted into meaningful templates of 2-4 (usually 3) consonants. Unlike with simulfix, the transfix is is attached to roots which cannot be used on their own, whereas the roots in languages that take a simulfix rely on existing phonemes that are usually but not always vowels.
2289: Suprafix Mar 23, 2021
If one wanted to make 'like' past-tense, all that's needed is a suffix: a term for a concept which is fairly well understood. For other matters though, there are processes that are more complicated to observe and are certainly less well known. For instance, in structural linguistics, the idea of the so-called 'suprafix' developed, which is a suprasegmental element added from a pattern such as with tone or stress, such as in English with the difference between
ímport (noun) - impórt (verb)
1278: Stress in Language Jun 10, 2018
Although there are ways to predict the stress on a syllable from phonology, a lot of that process also comes from the conventions of the language itself. In a 3-syllable hypothetical word that existed in Finnish, French, and Hebrew, it is extremely likely that the stress would be on the first, second, and third syllable respectively, because this is how those languages place stress in a polysyllabic word most of the time. In fact, this is less predictable in English, but because it is often the case that the words from Old English are stressed on the first syllable today, whereas those deriving from Old French or Latin will be stressed on the second syllable. The reasons why a language will have this stress-pattern is not exactly clear.
1140: Stress-Timing Jan 22, 2018
Certain languages like English, Thai, and Persian have what is called 'stress-timing'. This is the notion that while syllables may differ in length, the perceived amount of time stressing is the same, which is in contrast to syllable-timed languages like French, Welsh, Icelandic, and Mandarin as a form of isochrony wherein syllables are perceived as the same length as each other. These categories are rough and somewhat subjective, lacking definitive empirical evidence, but are widely accepted by many linguists. What this means is that, for example, an utterance like 'bid for peace' in which there are two stressed syllables on either side of an unstressed syllable, the unstressed syllable, in this case 'for' is pronounced for longer than it would were it not between two stressed syllables. Most of the world's languages are classified as stress-timed. You can now support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.