taking poll on pronunciation

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Nila Friedberg wrote:

> Dear Rich,
> 
> The relevant issue with English stress placement, according to
> Chomsky and Halle (1968), is whether the syllable is heavy (i.e., a
> heavy syllable is a closed syllable or a syllable containing a
> phonologically long/tense vowel).  In nouns the antepenultimate 
> syllable is stressed if the penultimate syllable is short and open
> (as in MI-se-ry or PRI-so-ner); and otherwise stress falls on the
> penult, as in ve-RAN-da or ho-RI-zon (where -RAN- and -RI- are both
> heavy syllables).

This is a good model. Unfortunately, any treatment of English stress 
necessarily includes some circularity, because stress placement has 
historically altered vowel quality, and vowel quality has historically 
altered stress placement. Is it "ho.rí.zon" with "long i" due to stress 
in an open syllable (stress lengthens), or is the stress on the second 
syllable because of the vowel length (heavy syllables attract stress)? 
Assuming the source was an end-stressed French word, why don't we have 
"hó.ri.zon" /hō.rĭ.zŏn/?

> So perhaps the English stress rule may explain why Americans say
> "pi-ROZH-ki" in Russian ("ROZH" being a closed syllable). But since
> Russian has no phonologically long vowels, it is really hard to say
> why Americans say "GOR-ba-chev" (interpreting 'ba' as a light
> syllable) versus "sha-ra-PO-va" (interpreting 'po' as a heavy
> syllable). I think the transfer of the English stress rule into
> Russian is a really complicated issue, and what one needs to know
> here is how exactly Americans transfer the notion of English
> phonological length into Russian, where this category is not
> phonological.

As a monolingual American classifying Russian vowels in terms of my 
native "length," I would assign /iyu/ to the "long" category and /eoa/ 
to the "short" category (unless I identified ы with my /ĭ/). Keeping in 
mind that monolinguals don't know or care a whit about Russian and just 
make guesses based on the spelling, we can make several educated guesses 
about these two names:

1) "Gór.ba.chev" has two heavy syllables, and the one in initial 
position (where many native words are stressed) is favored over the one 
in final position (where few native words are stressed). Even if the 
final syllable were given primary stress, a secondary stress would 
automatically fall on the initial syllable (two away from the primary), 
and there would then be strong pressure for retraction by reclassifying 
the secondary stress as primary and the primary stress as secondary.

2) "Sharapova" has only one vowel that "looks" long, namely the third 
one -- an "o" in an open syllable is generally long in English, 
notwithstanding exceptions like "domino" (where I would close the 
syllable by reassigning the /m/). In a word with one heavy syllable that 
also happens to be penultimate, the temptation to stress it is 
irresistible. It would never occur to an American to read the "po" here 
as /pə/ -- "o" rarely spells schwa in English, though of course every 
rule has exceptions ("Dəlóres," "Tərónto").

There is also a putative "pattern" that Slavic names in -ova are always 
stressed on the "o"; this may be a relic of the millions of Polish 
immigrants, all of whose names bore penultimate stress (Do Brits follow 
the same rule? If so, that would squash this conjecture). Americans 
don't know that Czech has fixed initial stress, Russian has movable 
stress, and Polish has fixed penultimate stress. They all look alike to 
us. This would also account for the treatment of "-(sk)aya."

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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