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alphabetisms</title></head><body>
<div>yes, single words morphologically (<i>PKW</i> is a count noun,
masculine gender inherited from the full form headed by<i> Wagen,</i>
plural -s as with other nouns with last segment a full vowel,
etc.).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>But NOT single words prosodically: <i> pee kaa wee</i> is
*three* prosodic words, each stressed (with stress implemented
differently in Swiss Geman and German German). Larry rightly
said so. That's why I said we're talking about tone/intonation
(Larry mentions pitch-accent). Record yourself and do look at
pitch tracks!</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Frans</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Larry,<br>
<br>
Yes, the connection to other lists such as phone numbers seems
plausible. On the other hand, phone numbers are just lists, whereas
alphabetisms are words. And the fact that in Swiss German,
alphabetisms are often not stressed on the last letter, seems to
support my conjecture (French borrowings also get initial stress in
Swiss German). Also, the fact that contrastive stress can be
lexicalized (as in German 'PKW, which is stressed on the first
syllable also when it does not occur next to 'LKW) seems to show that
we're not dealing with phrasal expressions synchronically. (Or maybe
there are also phrases with lexicalized contrastive stress?)<br>
<br>
Anyway, we clearly need more data from more languages, though it will
be hard to find languages whose alphabetisms are not influenced by
French or English. (Are there alphabetisms in Georgian, Armenian, or
the languages of south and Southeast Asia that use a non-Latin
script?)<br>
<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
Larry M. Hyman wrote:
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Martin - If your conjecture re French is
correct, it would presumably be PHRASAL stress. On the other hand, if
each letter is a phonological word, then this just the "nuclear
stress rule" of SPE, no? In other words, this is not
"lexical stress". Larry<br>
<br>
----<br>
<br>
David - Sounds interesting. Wish I had data from other languages for
you. It's actually not on the last syllable, but rather on the
stressed syllable of the last "letter": cf. WWW (which is
harder to say that World Wide Web), which has antepenultimate stress
on the last W.<br>
<br>
I've tried to think of counterexamples, but your rule works, e.g.
LSMFT ("Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco" ... a TV ad in the
US from the 1950s), or E-G-B-D-F*, which was not originally an acronym
but has been made into one ("Every good bird does fly") etc.
The same works for other "lists". E.g. numbers: My zip code
here at Berkeley is 9-4-7-2-0*, for instance (I'd also stress the last
number of my social security number). The same happens when you mix
letters and numbers: E.g. my father's amateur radio call was W-6-V-B-D
(which he would repeat as "W-6-Victor-Baker-Dog"*, with
phrasal stress on Dog*). In any such "listing" of
elements each one is treated as a separate prosodic word, so it would
be natural to assign English "pitch-accent" to the
last prosodic word (letter, number etc.).<br>
<br>
Larry<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Dear all,
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I'm interested in patterns of lexical
stress in a specific type of acronym -- let's call them
letter-by-letter acronyms -- whose pronunciation consists of each
letter bearing its own individual name, eg. English US [yu:es], LFG
[elefji:], etc. (Not all languages have letter-by-letter
acronyms, for example Hebrew does not.)<br>
<br>
In two languages that I'm familiar with, English and Papuan Malay,
word stress is commonly or predominantly penultimate; however,
letter-by-letter acronyms invariably place the stress on the last
syllable, eg. [yu:ES], [elefJI:]. Is this a coincidence, or is
there a general principle at play here? (One might perhaps wish
to argue that the final stress is phrasal rather than lexical, but in
other respects these acronyms behave like single words.)</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>This is a very interesting observation
that had never occurred to me. In two other languages that I'm
familiar with, German and Russian, the same holds true: Lexical stress
in alphabetisms is always on the last syllable, although other words
may have stress elsewhere (and prefer to have stress elsewhere,
especially in German). I disagree with Wolfgang Schulze's claim that
stress may also be initial in German. I cannot say 'FDP (Freie
Demokratische Partei), except contrastively (e.g. die 'SPD und die
'FDP). (But it is true that the exact conditions for contrastive use
are unclear. These two abbreviations also contrast with respect to
their last letter, though less saliently. And one can also say, in
coordination, 'CDU und 'CSU, although these two do not contrast
in theeir first letter at all.)</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
My guess would be that this stress pattern represents a borrowing from
French, which was a dominant language when this kind of abbreviation
became widespread.<br>
<br>
Incidentally, the term "alphabetism" is relatively
well-established for what David has in mind, and there is no need for
the ad-hoc term "letter-by-letter acronym" (see
http://urts120.uni-trier.de/glottopedia/index.php/Alphabetism).<br>
<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
P.S. On the topic of "pseudo-partitive" (a cup of tea) and
"true partitive" (a cup of the tea): Doesn't someone have a
better pair of terms for these? "Pseudo-partitives" are of
course much more common, so it's really strange to have only a
"pseudo-" term for them.<br>
<br>
--<br>
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath@eva.mpg.de)<br>
Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz
6<br>
D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307,
(priv.) +49-341-980 1616<br>
<br>
Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics<br>
(http://www.glottopedia.org)</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
<br>
--<br>
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath@eva.mpg.de)<br>
Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz
6<x-tab> </x-tab><br>
D-04103 Leipzig <br>
Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616<br>
<br>
Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics<br>
(http://www.glottopedia.org)</blockquote>
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