Re: USAGE: Stress in English

From:    Shreyas Sampat <shreyas@...>
> I interpret "phonemic" to mean not only providing distinction, but also,
> crucially, unpredictable. Here there's a systematic alternation; that
> doesn't do any work to prove phonemicity in this sense. If you were to
> have two nouns /'pr=mIt/ and /pr='mIt/, then I'd be persuaded.
The point is that from the vantage point of the phonology, it
*isn't* predictable.  You simply have to know something about
which lexical category it belongs to before you start trying to
predict anything.  What's more the alternation you refer is one
only a small minority of verbs take part in.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637