Читать книгу Stress Variation in English - Alexander Tokar - Страница 16

As BergBerg (1999: 125) points out, “[i]n view of the fact that comprehensiveness is top priority, the most appropriate method [for studying stress variation in English] is a dictionary analysis.” Thus, between October 20, 2013 and December 20, 2013, the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary/OED comprised 273,404 entries. Each of these entries was manually opened by the author and those entries that were found to contain at least two within-varietal transcriptions differing from each other with regard to the location of the primary stress symbol (ˈ) were saved to the hard drive on the authors’ PC. The entries saved were then manually classified with regard to the parameter “variety of English in which the words to which these entries refer occur with variable stressvariable stress.” Several .docx-files were created to accommodate the words with stress doublets in different varieties of Present-day English, including American English, British English, New Zealand English, South African English, Australian English, Scottish English, Canadian English, Irish EnglishIrish English, and Caribbean English. The information that was copied and pasted into these .docx-files included the words themselves, the word classes to which they belong, and the relevant transcriptions, which, as pointed out above, were found to differ from each other with regard to the location of the primary stress symbol (ˈ). Finally, the words in each separate .docx-file were manually classified with regard to the syllables upon which stress interchangeably falls in these words (i.e., e.g., ult–penult, ult–antepenult, penult–antepenult, etc.).

Studying stress placement variation in English using the OED as the source of the information of how words in English are pronounced has both advantages and disadvantages. As for the former, the OED defines itself as “the definitive record of the English language,” where the adjective definitive is used in the sense “exhaustive.” That is, the OED is a dictionary that aims at an exhaustive coverage of the English language, which is supposed to comprise all words that have ever existed in the language under consideration. With regard to pronunciation, especially the entries that in the online version of the dictionary have been updated since the year 2000 always contain both British and American English phonetic transcriptions (and in the case of some words, it is even indicated how they are pronounced in other varieties alongside British and American English. Thus, as mentioned above, a manual search for words with stress doublets has yielded instances of within-varietal stress variation not only in British and American English, but also in Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Scottish, Irish, and Caribbean English varieties):

The pronunciations given are those in use among educated urban speakers of standard English in Britain and the United States. While avoiding strongly regionally or socially marked forms, they are intended to include the most common variants for each word. The keywords given are to be understood as pronounced in such speech. (http://public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/key-to-pronunciation/, 30.06.2015)

Of particular importance is also the fact that in the case of words with stress doublets the OED often indicates which stress pattern had appeared in the English language prior to another variant. Thus, for example, it is thanks to the OED we know that applicable was originally pronounced with initial stress as /ˈaplᵻkəbl/, whereas the antepenultimately-stressed alternative /əˈplɪkəbl/ has existed in British English only since the late 19th century. Likewise, we know, thanks to the OED, that the penultimately-stressed /kənˈtɛmpleɪt/ had been the default pronunciation of contemplate “down to third quarter of [the] 19th cent[ury].” Sometimes the OED even attempts to explain why a particular English word has stress doublets in Present-day English. For instance, the word miscellany was in British English, similar to applicable, originally pronounced with initial stress but over the course of time came to be associated with the antepenultimately-stressed pronunciation /mᵻˈsɛləni/ (OED). In American English, by contrast, the word still vacillates between the stress patterns /ˈmɪsəˌleɪni/ and /məˈsɛləni/, with the former stress pattern being, however, more frequent than the latter (OED). With regard to the pronunciation /mᵻˈsɛləni/, the OED states that

[t]he pronunciation with stress on the second syllable arises by analogy with the stress pattern of other four-syllable words in -any-any (e.g. ACCOMPANY v., EPIPHANY n. […], MAHOGANY n., etc.). Although it is not recorded in dictionaries until the early 20th cent., there are traces of some earlier occurrences […] It has never gained great currency in North America, but by the end of the 20th cent. had become the dominant variant throughout the rest of the English-speaking world. (OED)

In summary, the OED is a very detailed English language dictionary, which lists multiple stress patterns (taking both British and American English into account) and sometimes even offers explanations for how a particular stress pattern could historically be arrived at (e.g., the factor of analogy). Additionally, it is sometimes pointed out which of the stress variants had historically been anterior to another variant. The OED is thus an indispensable research tool for anyone interested in the topic of stress variation in English from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

As for disadvantages, it was already observed that some actually existing stress patterns are not given in the OED.E.g., similar to applicable, comparable is not only /ˈkɒmpərəb(ə)l/ (OED) but also /kəmˈpeərəbəl/ (CruttendenCruttenden 2008: 246); an example of within-speaker variation involving these two stress patterns is gc_IZ-F8C14 (17.11.2016): The first comparable (00:00:20.190 --> 00:00:25.210) is stressed by the speaker /kəmˈpeərəbəl/, while at 00:00:29.360 --> 00:00:33.039 and 00:01:02.690 --> 00:01:08.480, the stress pattern used is /ˈkɒmpərəb(ə)l/. Similarly, it was mentioned in Chapter 1 that in the noun research, stress in Present-day English falls either upon the prefix re-re- or upon the root search. According to the OED, however, this variation is exhibited by research only in the combination market research, which is /ˌmɑːkɪt rᵻˈsəːtʃ/ vs. /ˌmɑːkɪt ˈriːsəːtʃ/ in British English and /ˈˌmɑrkət ˈrisərtʃ/ vs. /ˈˌmɑrkət rəˈsərtʃ/ in American English. A fairly similar case is hotel and motel, which are both interchangeably pronounced with final and initial stress, but in the OED, this variation is said to be exhibited by motel only in the combination no-tell motel, which is /ˈnəʊˌtɛl ˈməʊˌtɛl/ vs. /ˈnɛʊˌtɛl məˈtɛl/ in British English and /ˈnoʊˌtɛl ˈmoʊˌtɛl/ vs. /ˈnoʊˌtɛl moʊˈtɛl/ in American English.

The reverse situation is possible as well. In an attempt to serve as “the definitive record of the English language,” the OED sometimes gives stress contours that are no longer in use in contemporary English (cf. GimsonGimson 1972: v, lamenting that “[t]oo often, English dictionaries persist in showing pronunciations which are seriously archaic”). For example, desiccate is /dɪˈsɪkeɪt/ vs. /ˈdɛsɪkeɪt/ in the OED, but of 31 native English speakers whose voices could be heard in YouTube videos containing the spoken occurrences of this verb, not a single one used penultimate stress in it; in full agreement with this finding, the OD gives for desiccate only the antepenultimately-stressed transcription /ˈdɛsɪkeɪt/. A fairly similar case is decadent, which is /ˈdɛkədənt/ vs. /dɪˈkeɪdənt/ in the OED, but it is exclusively /ˈdɛkəd(ə)nt/ in the OD as well as in 171 YouTube videos in which decadent was found to have been pronounced by native English speakers 212 times. (Note, however, that if one stress pattern of a word is no longer used by English speakers, this fact must be accounted for in a comprehensive study of English stress, i.e., e.g., it is important to understand why desiccate and decadent are no longer stressed /dɪˈsɪkeɪt/ and /dɪˈkeɪdənt/. The inclusion of archaic stress patterns in the OED is thus actually an advantage of this dictionary in comparison with more specialized pronouncing dictionaries, focusing as a rule on contemporary English pronunciations.)

Note finally that in the phonetic transcriptions given in the OED, there is unfortunately no indication of boundaries between syllables. It is therefore not possible to (automatically) retrieve words exhibiting a particular phonological structure, e.g., trisyllables in which stress is penultimate or disyllables in which stress is final. Since the object of the present study is all English words (rather than only words with stress doublets), the absence of this technical possibility has necessitated the use of other lexicographic resources alongside the OED.