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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: stress
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References: <57p39d$qa1@oden.abc.se> <5aokto$et8@oden.abc.se> <32d337f5.6767140@news.min <5at1t9$agm@vidar.diku.dk>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 16:43:04 GMT
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In article <5at1t9$agm@vidar.diku.dk>,
Klaus Ole Kristiansen <klaus@diku.dk> wrote:
>dgary@mindspring.com (D Gary Grady) writes:
>
>>m9548@abc.se (Kjell Rehnstroem) wrote:
>
>>>Yes, and the stress in Russian may mark different meanings. 
>
>>And in English, for that matter.
>
>Then why try to make it "regular"?  Many other elements of words are
>highly "irregular".  E.g. initial letters.  Some words start with an
>a, some with a b, and so on.  Would a language be easier if this was
>regular, e.g. all words must start with an a?

	It would probably be easiest to have stress completely
non-distinctive.  Some languages don't have it, some do, and of those
that do, some apply it regularly, some distinctively.  After all, who
includes distinctive pitch or tone in their conlangs?

	Since some speakers of a conlang are going to use syllable stress
no matter how much you try to educate them out of it, it might be useful
to include rules for it anyway, so that everyone in this class is erring
in more or less the same direction.  Something simple like initial
syllable stress or penultimate stress would work fine and shouldn't
overly confuse "stressless" speakers.  By the same token, you could
include guidelines for tonefall to assist learners coming from tonal
languages, such as high tone for the initial, penultimate, etc, syllable
(it should probably be the same syllable where you choose to allow stress 
accent) and low tone on all others.

	Really fluent speakers, who would use stress, pitch, and/or tone
solely for emphasis, could easily learn to ignore these non-distinctive
features.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
