Non-uniformity in English secondary stress: the role of ranked and lexically specific constraints

Abstract

The principles determining secondary stress placement in English display considerable non-uniformity (Prince 1993) in their application. While in some contexts a syllable will be stressed if it is heavy, or if it is stressed in the stem of a derived form, in other environments syllable weight and stem stress do not entail secondary stress. To take a relatively straightforward case, the primary stress of the stems in (1a) is preserved as a secondary stress in the derived forms (cf. monomorphemic T`tamagóuchi with initial stress), but stress preservation systematically fails in words like (1b). Here we have phonologically conditioned non-uniformity; stress preservation on light syllables is blocked in the environment of a following primary stress.