Re: OT: YAEPT: emphasis

On 22/06/06, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...> wrote:
> > I'm really bad at questions of stress, at least which of two stressed
> > syllables bares the primary stress.
>
> I know several other people who say the same, and I totally fail to
> understand it.  To me, stress is such an obvious component of
> pronunciation.  And it drive me nuts when I encounter words stressed
> in an unnatural way -  to make them fit into the rhythm of a poem or
> song lyric, for instance.  Total cheating.
...
> Throughout the above he consistently says /p@r'mIt/, rather than
> /'p@r.mIt/.  And at least IML, the noun is always the latter; the
> former is the verb.
Argh, yes, that'd annoy me too: But (to me) it's the difference
between a stressed syllable and a fully unstressed vowel that reduces
to shwa ([p_h2:m@t] vs [p_h@mIt]). This sort of thing tho is largely a
question of vowel quality, not stress. Even when hearing Americans (or
whoever) speak, it still gets translated into terms of my own dialect,
and I'll still be aware of the vowel quality being different, even if
it wasn't.

My problem is determining which of two stressed syllable bears the
primary stress. And if you said [%gab@"pab@] and ["gab@%pab@], I could
probably (tho not always) tell you which way it went; but I can't
accurately retrieve from the underlying form into conciousness which
syllable has the primary stress. I imagine I largely pronounce it
correctly tho, because people rarely correct me for it :)

(Regarding "address", I have both forms in free variation without
regard to part of speech. I think I use /@dZres/ more often. I assumed
this was the way everyone does it.)

--
Tristan.