query: lexical stress in acronyms

[Paolo Ramat]

The Italian case: alphabetical abbreviations (i.e. acronyms) which look like 
real words: 'NATO (vs. French OT'AN), 'USA etc. are not spelled out but 
pronounced as real words: ['nato] etc. The same holds also for 'words' which 
do not completely respect the Italian phonetic rules: 'AIDS (vs. Fr. SI'DA: 
we have simply adopted the American abbreviations!). One syllable short 
acronyms are spelled, in order to avoid confusion: FI (Forza Italia, 
Berlusconi's party) is ['ef:e'i], AN (Alleanza Nazionale) is ['a'en:e]. For 
unpronounceable acronyms such as CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del 
Lavoro) there is a sort of spelling: cigi'elle. However *cigielle* is 
nowadays a noun and nobody (or very few people) knows what the acronym 
actually refers to. This is the case also for 'FIAT (Fabbrica Italiana 
Automobili Torino), 'OPEL, etc.


prof.Paolo Ramat
Università di Pavia
Dipartimento di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata
tel. ##39 0382 984 484
fax ##39 0382 984 487


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Hopper" <hopper at CMU.EDU>
To: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: query: lexical stress in acronyms


> One little further point on alphabetisms:
>
> A group of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts students might be referred 
> to as:
>
> all 'B.As and 'M.A.s (with contrastive stress on the first elements, where 
> in isolation they would be B.'A., M.'A). This is like German 'PKW und 
> 'LKW.)
>
> But suppose we need to call a meeting of a group consisting of all Master 
> of Arts students and all Teaching Assistants. Is this group:
>
> all 'M.A.s and 'T.A.s
> or
> all M.'A.s and T.'A.s?
>
> Does it make any difference how the abbreviation is unpacked?
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>> In Swedish, l-by-l acronyms with 3 letters have stress on the lfinal
>> syllable (LFG, USA, PKK, .), whereas l-by-l with two letters have stress
>> on the initial syllable (FN, BG, TT, .). I am currently away from my
>> books, but I beleve someone has written an article about this. I'll check
>> t when I get back home, in mid-August.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Jan
>>
>>
>> 26 jul 2007 kl. 08.55 skrev 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/
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________________________________ Jan Anward
>> Professor Department of Culture and Communication Linköping University 
>> 581
>> 83 Linköping Sweden Tel: +46 13 28 40 37 Fax:+46 13 28 28 10
>> jan.anward at liu.se http://www.liu.se/isk/research/jan/
>>
>>