query: lexical stress in acronyms

[Frans Plank]

Dear David (et al),

Swiss German (which is Alemannic, dialectologically speaking) differs 
from German German (including, I believe, German varieties of 
Alemannic) in having an initial effect:

SBB	ess bee bee		(Schweizer Bundesbahnen)
SBG	ess bee gee		(Schweizer Bankgesellschaft)
DRS	dee err ess		(Schweizer Radio DRS, no idea what it 
abbreviates)
ETH	ee tee haa		(Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule)
FDP	eff dee pee		(Freisinnig-Demokratische Partei)
SF	ess eff			(Schweizer Fernsehen)
PC	pee tsee
TV	tee fau			(Television)
AG	aa gee			(Aktiengesellschaft)
KZ	kaa tsett			(Krankenzimmer)
OECD	oo ee tsee dee		(Organisation fuer wirtschaftliche Entwicklung
				und Zusammenarbeit)
ZDGST	tsett dee gee ess tee	(Zentrale Dienste Generalstab)

etc.

In German German you get this sort of effect only in instances of 
salient contrasts:
PKW	pe ka we	(Personenkraftwagen)
LKW	ell ka we	(Lastkraftwagen)
			compound stress, regardless of contrast

but regular
AKW	a ka we		(Atomkraftwerk)



But this wasn't really my point.  My point is that you need to look 
at tones and intonation to appreciate what is going on here, and what 
you naively describe in terms of the placement of "stress".  There's 
lots of relevant work.

As to Swiss German vs. German German, they are well known to differ 
tone-wise (default pitch accent L*H in SG, H*L in GG;  etc.), but not 
lexical/phrasal stress-position-wise.

Frans



>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/
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