accusative cursing - stress

[Tom Zurinskas]

Thanks James.

In coming up with a way to show stress in a simplified spelling system, I
looked at using double consonants.  Would it be better to use the double
consonant before or after a vowel to indicate a stressed syllable?  I looked
at words that have the stressed vowel between two sets of double consonants,
like the word accommodate, to see how they are misspelled.  Turns out 75% of
the time the second double is dropped (like "accomodate").  So in English
there must be a propensity to think that stress comes after double
consonant.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL4+
See truespel.com and the 4 truespel books at authorhouse.com.





>From: James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: accusative cursing
>Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:34:02 -0400
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>Subject:      Re: accusative cursing
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >Interesting to me is the relationship between double consonants and
>stress.
> >If a double consonant were to be used to indicate stress in a phonetic
> >spelling system, should it come before or after the stressed vowel.  I
>take
> >for example desert and dessert.  So I would believe the best place for a
> >double consonant to indicate stress is before the stressed vowel.
>
>"Desert" and "dessert" are something of an exception -- the
>pronunciation of "dessert" is exceptional not just for the stress but
>for the "length" before an orthographic double consonant and the
>voicing of an orthographic double fricative. Normally in English a
>double consonant after a syllable indicates a "short" vowel. (And let
>us not forget the homophone verb "desert".)
>
>In American spelling, when adding -ing or -ed, doubling of the
>consonant indicates a stressed short vowel, and a single consonant is
>either an unstressed short vowel or a stressed long one. There are
>exceptions, of course, but consider "traveling" and "rappelling" and
>"reconciling", or "exciting," "exiting," and "benefiting" (and
>"befitting"). And this rule tends to guide other pronunciation, too:
>the consonant(s) that matter(s) come(s) after the vowel. I'm hard
>pressed to come up with a pattern of influence from the consonant(s)
>before the vowel, except for inasmuch as a couble consonant before is
>likely (but not certain) to indicate stress on the previous syllable
>and therefore probably not stress on the vowel in question. Consider
>"conning" versus "connive," "felling" versus "fellate" (but "filing"
>and "dilate") -- it's the formerly open syllable (now, if ultimate,
>ending in consonant plus "silent e") that gets the "long" vowel.
>(Naturally, this being English, all rules have exceptions.)
>
>To me, "nekkid" indicates clearly ['nEkId]; "nekid" would be ['nikId]
>because of the orthographically open syllable, but it could also
>stand for [n@'kId] or [nE'kId], though that would require some good
>reason to be so, given the word's evident variation (in context) on
>"naked" (which, mind you, ceteris paribus, would be pronounced
>[neIkt]).
>
>Funny thing how spelling can make so much difference in some of these
>things. Pretty much everyone in Canada pronounces "stupid" as
>['stupId] and not ['stjupId], but if you spell it "stoopid" that
>indicates that the person is speaking in a low-grade, uneducated
>manner. Likewise, many high-price Brits pronounce "ate" as [Et], but
>if you spell it that way ("et"), it's emblematic of a country hick.
>And so on. The implication being, evidently, that these people,
>forced to exhaust themselves writing it down, would write it that
>way... ditto with "nekkid," I suppose. Who transcribes New Zealanders
>as saying "seeven" for 7? It would downgrade them. But they all do...
>from a North American perspective. To them it's the natural way to
>say it. And why shouldn't [n'EkId] be the normal way for speakers of
>a given dialect to say "naked", if that's how their vowels have
>shaped up?
>
>James Harbeck.
>
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