Acceso usuarios
Ulrich Wandruszka
Studies of individual languages rarely discuss in any depth the question of how, or to what extent, the positioning of word stress in polysyllabic words is motivated functionally although addressing this issue would mean relating the structural levels of phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics systematically to each other. Given that in French practically all (Latin) syllables following the syllable which carries the main stress have been muted, words and word forms are oxytones, generally carrying stress on the last syllable. As a result, endings and suffixes which constitute the morphological head of a word and are, as such, normally unstressed, now also carry stress. This can be seen in faisait or nageur, which in English would correspond to was *doíng or *swimmér or in German to *machté or *Schwimmér respectively. Since stress is normally positioned on the lexical stem, which carries more information, a morphoprosodic mismatch leading to a countericonic stress pattern obtains in French. Interestingly, this phenomenon has hardly attracted serious attention in linguistics so far, and speakers of French have apparently remained undisturbed by the mismatch. The same is true of the counter-intuitive stress placed on enclitic pronouns in prends-lé! – táke it – nímm(e)s! or vient-íl? – is he cóming? – kómmt er? Apparently, language as an instrument also works when the encoding is suboptimal or dysfunctional. The reason for this must be that language is also supported by the (lexical) content of the signs, which nevertheless makes an appropriate interpretation possible.
