رسالة شخصية حول النبر في الانجليزية

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

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Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 11:41:22 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Dinha Gorgis" <gorgis_3@yahoo.co.uk> Add to Address Book
Subject: RE: Word-stress in English
To: "Sarah Collie" <sejcollie@hotmail.com>

Dear Sarah,

I thought you might be interested in the most-heated debate about word-stress assignment in English that
roughly goes like this: (1) stress is unpredictable (Peter Roach, for example); (2) stress is highly predictable (myself, among others); and (3) stress is neither; rather the word with its stress is stored in the lexicon (some American researchers). Browse through 'word-stress assignment in English' using yahoo or google search engines. My students were asked to browse through the Advanced Learners Dictionary last term to verify my claims; they came up with 55 words ( of Latin, Greek, or French origin) standing as exceptions. I intend to write a paper about my rules, but piles of paper work and teaching load are frustrating. However, here's one simple rule for multisyllabic words:

Counting from right to left, stress the ultimate if the vowel is tense (fortis),e.g. detainee. If it is lax (lenis), move to the penultimate. If its vowel is tense, stress it. If it is lax, move to the antepenultimate. Even if its vowel is lax, stress it.;
English seems to favour this. Discount ultimate syllabic consonants as syllables with words of five syllables or more. Bisyllabics are largely determined by the syntactic category they belong to; still the above rule operates to a large extent as well.

By the way, I use my rules for pedagogical purposes only.

Best,

Dinha

[محمد إسماعيل بطرش]

Dear Dinha
No doubt that you are an old hand in manipulating English as a foreign language like most of us.
I think spoken English, like any other language, permits a wider sense of intention through semiotics where the tone and gestures may add too much to the simple grammatical structure of the phrase or sentence. In this, the shift in stress would add or subtract from the grammatical structural meaning. As such a positive sentence may bear a negative meaning or a kind of sarcasm. When we shift the stress from one word to the the immediate next word in a simple sentece such as: This is a man, stressing this, implies that this and nobody else is the man. Then in stressing the verb denotes his being and not anything else, then a man and no other creature, This, in addition to the hand movement of the speaker, his look or his facial expressions which may add uncountable possible meanings to the phrase or sentence, This may avail the play directors with ample possibilities which may turn the tragedy into a comedy and so on.
I believe that this availabiliy and possibility is found in any human language. Let us consider the actors' dlalogue in the "School for the Rioteers" and see how the original text may give different meanings at the hand of the comic actors.
Greetings, Muhammad Ismail Batrash

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

Dear Muhammad,
Thanks for your comments, but the message addresses only the question of word-stress as is made explicit in the heading

Regards,
Dinha

[فواز الجبر]

Dear Dr. Dinha

I think that your message discusses the ( stressed syllable) within a word,

while Dr, Mohammad's one

is about ( word stress) in the context.

My great respect to both of you

Fawaz

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

Dear Dr. Dinha

I think that your message discusses the ( stressed syllable) within a word,

while Dr, Mohammad's one

is about ( word stress) in the context.

My great respect to both of you

Fawaz
Dear Fawaz,
We either talk about 'word-stress' or 'sentences stress'. My observation is pertinent to the former, whereas Muhammad's to the latter which constitutes an integral part of the prosody and hence the linguistic meaning that may be influenced by extralinguistic factors.

Happiness!

Prof. Dinha