The recessive tendency

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 647.

Word Stress Tendencies

Distinctive / contrastive function

Identificatory / recognitive function

Constitutive function

The functions and tendencies of the English stress.

Word stress constitutes a word, it organizes the syllables of a word into a language unit having a definite accentual structure, that is a pattern of relationship among the syllables; a word does not exist without the word stress.

Word stress enables a person to identify a succession of syllables as a definite accentual pattern of a word.

Word stress alone is capable of differentiating the meaning of words or their forms.

The accentual patterns of words or the degrees of word stress and their positions form oppositions: E.g. 'import — im'port, 'billow — be'low.

According to Prof. V.O. Vasyliev (V.A.Vassilyev), the distinctive function makes word accent a suprasegmental phonological unit which performs a sense-differentiating function. He calls it accenteme.

According to Prof. V.O. Vasyliev (V.A. Vassilyev), they are:

The recessive tendency

The rhythmic tendency

The retentive tendency

The semantic factor

Unrestricted recessive tendency is observed in the native English words having no prefix, e.g. mother, daughter, brother, swallow, in assimilated French borrowings, e.g. reason, colour, restaurant.

Restricted recessive tendency marks English words with prefixes which have no referential meaning now, e.g. foresee, begin, withdraw, apart.