query: lexical stress in acronyms

[David Gil]

Dear all,

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.)

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.)

I'd appreciate any comments, data from other languages, and 
bibliographical references to stress patterns in letter-by-letter acronyms.

Thanks,

David

-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321 
Fax: 49-341-3550119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/