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On Stress And Syllabification, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

Of all the diverse properties of segmental strings, syllable structure is the one that stress rules most often refer to. In fact, they refer to a quite specific aspect of syllable structure: syllable weight. Generally, it is this distinction between heavy and light syllables that affects the placement of stress. The richness of this problem is apparent from its ramifications. First, in many languages the notion "heavy syllable" invokes a disjunction of syllables containing a long vowel or diphthong and syllables with a short vowel but closed by a consonant. Second, though heavy syllables often attract the stress, they sometimes …