Frequency and Other Effects on Diatonic Stress Shift

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The paper addresses the historical development of the diatonic stress pattern in Modern English. Previous studies have revealed that the diatonic pattern, as exemplified by récord (n.) vs recórd (v.), appeared first in the late sixteenth century and have since grown to this day in a way that linguists often refer to as Lexical Diffusion. One question of theoretical importance about the diffusion of the diatonic stress pattern is why some words turn atonic earlier than others. In her “Word Frequency and Lexical Diffusion,” Phillips proposed the frequency effect as a contributing factor that termines the schedule of the diffusion, indicating that the least frequent words turned diatonic first. Following Phillips’s proposal, in this paper I attempt to reevaluate the frequency effect on the diffusion, making three points in particular. Firstly, my independent survey on the orical growth of diatones with reference to the word frequency database CELEX2 has made clear something expected: the most frequent words turned diatonic first. Secondly, in order to resolve the apparent contradiction, I argue that it is necessary to take account of the interplay between various effects including the phonetic effect and the prefix effect rather than assuming only the frequency effect as predominant. Thirdly, I point out theoretical problems that one must face when one examines a possible correlation between language change and the frequency effect.

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  • 人文研紀要

    人文研紀要 75 121-144, 2013-10-10

    中央大学人文科学研究所

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