Two critical problems in accent rules

Abstract

Beginning with the paper of Chomsky, Halle & Lukoff (1956) a theory of accent has been developed which attempts to explain by certain fairly simple rules the complex pattern of degrees of prominence assigned to any given sentence. In the present paper I will not be concerned with those rules which specify the main stress for stems (or, more precisely, for words containing only one stem), but only with the rules which introduce degrees of prominence in compound words and phrases. Let me call these latter rules Phrase-Accent-rules, or for short, PA-rules. The general conditions on the form and the manner of operation of PA-rules may be stated as follows: (i) PA-rules apply cyclically, beginning with the innermost, or lowest constituents of given final derived phrase markers, proceeding ‘upward’ until the topmost constituent is reached. (ii) PA-rules pick out one of the several primary accents of a constituent to which they apply, and make it the main accent of that constituent, thereby lowering all other accents by one degree. (iii) Formally, PA-rules are strictly local transformations whose structural descriptions recognize only three factors: first, the constituents, or bracketing, of a sentence; second, the categorization of the constituents; and third, the previously assigned accents.