Predicting English word accent on morphological grounds

Vol. 3 No. 2

Year: 2007

Issue: Sep-Nov

Title: Predicting English word accent on morphological grounds 

Author Name: Dr. Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan 

Synopsis: 

Learners of English as a foreign/Second Language (EFL/ESL) can easily learn the correct pronunciation of English words, some linguists have tried to simplify English phonology in general, and English accent in particular, over the past 50 years or so; some schol¬ars have talked about four degrees of pri-mary, secondary, tertiary and weak stress (e.g., Bowen, 1975); some have considered only three degrees of stress: primary, sec¬ondary and weak (e.g., Stageberg, 1964) and some have concentrated on two levels of stress: accented vs. unaccented, or stressed vs. unstressed (e.g., Chomsky and Halle, 1968). No one of these scholars, however, has adopted an orthography-based approach to their discussion of English accent. Since orthography or spelling is the most fixed and static way of representing words in English, like in almost any other language, spelling- or orthography-based rules of accent/stress placement can relieve almost any ESL/EFL learner. In this paper, four easy-to-understand spelling-based rules for stress placement are presented which can help EFL/ESL learners to master correct pronunciation of English words.